Doubt and skepticism as excuses.
It’s that time of year for “A Christmas Carol!” A yearly favorite. I don’t take this to be a story about the nature of ghosts and the afterlife. It is a story about what it takes to get us to examine ourselves and see ourselves as we really are in order to accurately repent. Scrooge uses skepticism and doubt to avoid his own personal responsibility and in many cases to blame others.
Here we have Scrooge’s encounter with Marley. At each step Scrooge has ways to justify himself. Here he doubts his own senses to get out of considering what Marley says (min 4:30).
Marley: why do you doubt your senses?
Scrooge: because a little thing affects them, a slight disorder if the stomach. You might be a bit of bad beef or blot of mustard, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you whatever you are. Humbug I tell you, humbug.
Scrooge isn’t wrong about our senses sometimes misleading us but he is using it here to avoid self-examination. Even if Marley is only a piece of his imagination or a dream he can still use the opportunity to examine how he has lived.
What will it take to overcome Scrooge’s self-deception? To break through his excuses so that he can see himself as he truly is? That’s the story of A Christmas Carol and that’s why it is a Christmas story. What will it take for humans to be redeemed?