AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - III

[Continuing our reading of and meditations on The Christmas Carol]:
         

          Dickens already gives us an inkling of Scrooge’s social skills when he lists those present at Marley’s funeral: the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the “mourner” Scrooge.  The first three were there ex officio.  Scrooge as mourner is there all alone: he doesn’t even bring somebody along.  Even the traders who will later consider showing up at Scrooge’s funeral agree to go as a pack (even though one is insistent on a decent post-burial lunch).

          The author follows up on solitary Scrooge: “Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?  …  But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.”

          Dickens’s earlier description of Scrooge – a “solitary oyster” – is from the outside looking in.  Now we see the inside looking out, and it isn’t pretty: “what did Scrooge care!  It was the very thing he liked.”

          God has hardwired us for the good.  The first principle of practical reason, the first rule of human action that nobody has to teach us because – borrowing Jefferson’s phrase – it is “self-evident” is “do good and avoid evil.”  Nobody asks us to explain why.  If somebody is obtuse enough to try, the answer becomes shockingly self-evident: why should we do good and avoid evil?  Because it’s better (more good) to do good than to do evil.  Good is self-justifying: it doesn’t have to make a case for itself.

          We make excuses because evil always tries to ape good.  We see that in the first sin.  The devil starts out with questioning what God said, followed by outright denying the message, sowing doubt so that we choose by our own lights rather than God’s what appears “good.”  The rest, as they say, is history.

          Man’s hardwiring to the good and to order permeates God’s creation.  Even when we become ill, disease – clearly not a “good” thing – normally follows some orderly course.  When somebody is told “you have stage two cancer” and they ask “what next?” only an incompetent physician will say “heck if I know!”  He’s likely to say, “X will happen and then probably Y and, after maybe two years, Z.” 

          As you can see, even evil follows a certain order, because we all seek order and good.  Indeed, so strong is our attachment to the good that, even when we choose to do evil, we try to repackage it as good.  The first time we commit a sin, our guilt is often great.  But, the more and more we commit that sin, the more we do that evil, the more we try to redefine good and evil. “Is it really that bad?”  “Is it even wrong?”  “Isn’t it just the Church’s old-fashioned thinking that says ‘no!’”  “Can’t I be ‘accompanied’ in my wrongdoing so that I feel better about doing it?”

          That was Scrooge does.  The fact that people avoid him – they find him hateful – doesn’t concern him.  “It was the very thing he liked.”  The more they stayed away, the better.

          How often do we, too, try to recast our evil as good?  Stealing?  “He has more than me and I needed it.”  Lying?  “It was just a ‘little white lie!’”  Adultery? “She understands me!” 

          Scrooge’s conversion occurs when he stops looking at himself and the evil he does in a false light, trying to redefine them as “good.”  It occurs when he looks at himself honestly and sees what he has made himself into.

          That’s what Advent is for: an honest self-examination, guided by the Holy Spirit, that does not try to recast evil as good but looks evil in the eye – and resolves to remove it.