It's interesting to me that Scrooge doesn't reject all of this as a bunch of maudlin nonsense. What, I wonder, gives him the ability to see, really to see, his life as it truly was? And what gives him the ability to feel emotions that had for so long been absent from his heart?
The spirit leads Scrooge through a process of open-heart surgery, if you will. It begins with something that would move just about any person: a vision of his own childhood loneliness. Yet something else is at work in this scene. Once again, it's the magic of supernatural intervention. When the spirit is just about to whisk Scrooge away through the air, he protests for fear of falling. "‘Bear but a touch of my hand there,' said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, ‘and you shall be upheld in more than this!'" Indeed, ghostly magic enables Ebenezer Scrooge to take into his heart that which, otherwise, he might well have rejected as emotional poppycock.
Pastoral Reflections
What can transform a stony heart? For Charles Dickens, the answer has several layers. Nostalgia for the past seems to help. Looking afresh at one's life makes a difference. Supernatural assistance contributes. But, at the core, love changes people. Love, not of the romantic sort, but of the compassionate, self-giving variety, transforms hearts.
Here, once again, Dickens's anthropology is virtually Christian. Christians believe that the ultimate transformation in life comes as we experience God's love for us given through Jesus Christ.
Over a century before Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, another Englishman had something to say about the power of love to transform one's life. Consider how these words of hymn writer Isaac Watts express something like what happened to Ebenezer Scrooge.
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride...
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all...
For the Christian, the deepest and most transforming kind of love is celebrated, not at Christmas, but on Good Friday.
Mark D. Roberts, as Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge, is an advisor and frequent contributor to TheHighCalling.org. A Presbyterian pastor, Mark earned his Ph.D. in New Testament from Harvard University. He has written six books, including No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer (WaterBrook, 2005). This series of reflections on A Christmas Carol were previously posted on his blog, www.markdroberts.com, and are reprinted with permission.
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