Five spiritual lessons from Scrooge for tough economic times

 

[caption id="attachment_12083" align="alignleft" width="231" caption="George C. Scott as Scrooge - wikimedia commons"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - When we think of the old Christmas tale of Scrooge at Christmas, we think of a shrewish old man who got his lessons from the spirits, but through hardship; but there is more to that old Scrooge tale and others like it that teach us about surviving hard times.

 

The poverty of 19th century era England  has been described in the works of Charles Dickens, and Reverend Cheryl Kincaid uses the lessons from this story to talk about how they can be used to guide our way through the continuing effects of the worldwide recession.

“Anxiety against poverty can makes us as calloused as Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens used the word Ebenezer purposely to address the church.  The word Ebenezer is taken from 1 Samuel 1:12, meaning “the Lord has brought us thus far,” says Reverend Kincaid.

 

Kincaid goes on to explain what this means further, “In Dickens day the church sought to shut out the poor through the poor law of 1834 which locked the poor out with prisons and workhouses. Now in the name of liberty and fear of economic apocalypse we might be doing the same thing, and be tempted self righteously lock our doors and eat a gruel nervously by the fire, and respond by muttering to ourselves, as Scrooge did, ‘are there no workhouses!

Here we are 150 years after Dickens times, and in far too many places, there are still children stealing for food money like Oliver Twist and working families without the means to get health care for their kids like Tiny Tim,” says Reverend Kincaid, the author of  Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (2010 Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

 

Many of the messages given in the tale of Scrooge are appropriate today, Kincaid continues, "With so many conservative Christian voices fearfully crying out against any governmental intervention, perhaps we should listen to some Christian voices who in the past spoke out against shutting our doors to poor because of our own self interests.  Charles Dickens reminds us, as the Old Testament prophets did, no lock is so strong that it will keep protect us from the haunting and from the misery of poverty that we allow in our world. "

Kincaid is making media appearances to discuss what she calls the “Five Lessons We Can All Learn from Spirits who visited Scrooge” as well as her book, which is receiving praise from both religious and secular readers for illustrating how we can use A Christmas Carol to learn the lessons of not only finance, but hope, faith, peace, love and joy.

Mark Strauss, a professor at San Diego’s Bethel Seminary underlines how useful stories can be for giving lessons and that “Cheryl Kincaid has produced a fascinating and insightful reading of the lessons of Advent through the lens of one of the most beloved of Christmas stories, Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol. Preachers and teachers will find here a treasure trove of ideas for teaching and preaching, and every reader will be inspired to reflect on the great redemptive themes of Christmas embedded in Dickens' classic story."

 

 Reverend Cheryl Kincaid is currently the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Clifton New Jersey.