Part of the duty of every Christian is to perform acts of compassion to the poor and needy. He cannot have a cold heart at Christmas to the needs of any human. The sin of ignoring the poor is a common theme of the prophets of the Old Testament.
Lately, the degenerate West has become enamored with self. This cult of selfishness disguises a hard heart behind “minding one’s own business.” These kind souls give men the liberty to starve next door while they make merry.
Their holidays are not holy days, but a stench to a righteous God.
Charles Dickens, in his justly classic Christmas Carol has the ghost of Jacob Marley say:
‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’
It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said, ‘I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?’
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
Scrooge was from a Christian culture, but had become secularized. His easy agnosticism (which caused him to disbelieve his own senses when confronted by a ghost) had allowed him to dismiss fears of the afterlife. He forgot death, because he only believed in this life.
Death, however, makes itself real to Scrooge in Christmas Carol. Scrooge realizes that if he does not celebrate Holy Days now that Paradise might be barred to him. What Dickens calls his “worldly mind” has allowed him to forget that, in the end, he will face the judgment.
Being born in a Christian culture is not enough if a man is not a Christian. Our works cannot save us, but a true Christian will work. Scrooge demonstrates his need for reclamation or salvation by his worship of a golden idol.
God spare every soul in Christendom from this great idolatry.
Dickens was right when he identified two great impediments to the Christian witness: ignorance and want. The Church cannot thrive when what is to be a “nation of kings and priests” is full of dullards and slaves. The Christian witness is mocked when we prosper and our neighbor starves.
Dickens has the ghost of Christmas Present confront Scrooge with the failure of the Christians of Britain in the form of two children:
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And abide the end!’
When we trap children in rotten government schools and teach to standardized tests, we breed Ignorance. When we encourage children to watch television and leave them closed to the higher things of culture, we create dangerous Ignorance.
When some children starve this Christmas or shiver in apartments with no heat, we raise Want. When children find it easier to get illegal narcotics than fresh fruit and vegetables in neighborhoods with liquor stores, but no groceries we make sickly Want.
When business rob and cheat, the government must act. There can never be one legal system for the poor and another for the rich in a truly Christian nation.
It is the doom of a Christian culture to ignore ignorance and want in our midst. We must cry for justice or the Christ Mass has become just another commercial venture. Our holy day will have become a blasphemy.
At the same time, Christians should beware an even greater temptation to evil in our age: forced compassion.
Dickens lived before the terrible experiment of socialism in the twentieth century. He had not seen compassion turned to covetousness. He did not see the battle against ignorance and want fought with tools that destroyed charity, liberty, and fraternity between the classes.
If the plutocrat is no Christian, neither is the idealistic monster who creates greater ignorance and want through his misuse of government power.
True charity cannot be compelled and neither Scrooge nor Tiny Tim would have been saved if Scrooge’s money had been screwed out of him by taxes and if government programs and regulations had taught Tim to depend on the state instead of becoming a free man.
Private charity ennobles both the giver and the receiver. Public charity enables the “giver” to escape contact with the poor and the poor to gain the illusion that they have the “right” to the property of others.
If Bob Crachit had joined the Socialists and attempted to “make a better London” by revolution, both he and Scrooge would have ended up dead in some tyrant’s concentration camp.
Such is the history of forced compassion.
Having said this too many traditional Christians agree, but do nothing. We cannot believe in private charity in the abstract and then do little or nothing. We cannot just send a check to a big non-profit.
Our parish has worked hard with a food, toy, and clothing drive this Advent, but each individual must do more. Who is the hurting Samaritan God has placed near you? Who is the neighbor hiding hunger behind a facade? Who in your Church may struggle to make the mortgage this month?
Find your own Bob Crachit this Holy Day and find that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive. Let the Star guide you to some house in your community and personally bring God’s blessing to it.
As a director of theater, Tiny Tim’s signature line (”God bless us, every one.”) is hard to stage. Coming from an actor it sounds cheesy and forced . . . unreal in a hurting world.
Here is what I know.
“God bless us, every one.” sounds best from a businessman carrying food and cheer to a hurting family. It sounds sincere when a young adult gives a valuable gift card to a friend who would otherwise receive little or nothing. When the poor are fed, the homeless clothed, the sick given medicine, then it can be said of each one of us as it was of Scrooge:
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
