Meeting our Scrooges

Yesterday we watched a wonderful production of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. It was fun… many characters played by just four actors.

Ebenezer Scrooge, an miserly, unpleasant old man, is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of Jacob Marley… The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come, show Scrooge how his mean behaviour has affected those around him.

The experience transforms Scrooge to be generous and kind-hearted.

Previously I’ve reflected on the way we treat the poor… our response to our ghosts of past present and future… how and why Scrooges redemption and transformation happened…

Yesterday I mused on how I respond to the Scrooges that I meet… self-centred individuals who choose not to see the suffering of others… unaware of or uncaring of the negative affect they have… unwilling to change from their destructive ways.

My natural reaction to avoid them. I don’t want their actions and attitudes to get me down. Their continuing negativity scares me; I can’t cope with an approach to life that is so destructive to others, and ultimately themselves.

The alternative is to stand up to them, to oppose their aggression – both active and passive – with aggression, confronting their attitudes with better attitudes, their strength with greater strength, their care-less selfishness with virtue.

Mine is the classic flight or fight response. Sadly neither change the Scrooges in my life. They don’t change me either.

A Christmas Carol presents an alternative. It listens to Scrooge’s past and present and possible future and challenges him to reflect. There’s no flight, no ignoring his faults or avoiding the issues; there’s no fight where he’s confronted with a greater power.

It seems to me that this third option is the Christian way. Jesus went out of his way to meet the dishonest tax collector, the disreputable prostitute or the contagious leper and gently and compassionately, firmly and clearly, helped them see an alternative better way.

It transformed Dickens’ Scrooge; perhaps it can transform my Scrooges; perhaps it will change me too.