Charity and Why Your Money Will Never Be Enough

Scrooge’s early worldview and overall disposition toward humanity at the beginning of A Christmas Carol can be summed up in the brief yet enduringly recognizable phrase, “Bah, humbug,” a sentiment that has deeply penetrated modern Christmas culture. While the phrase is often treated humorously or nostalgically around the Christmas season, it more accurately reflects modern attitudes of suspicion and cynicism towards charity and generosity.

Charity, specifically around the Christmas season, has the tendency to be reduced to a quaint sentimental practice, a result of consumerism, or small religious acts of financial giving, divorced from lasting moral responsibility or with detachment from one’s community. Charles Dickens challenges this mindset directly, arguing that money alone is not enough.

Through Scrooge’s internal transformation, Charles shows that generosity is not merely a passing venture or fleeting emotion as our more selfish and and confort oriented impulses might like to be true, but rather something closer to the central orientation of one’s life, a moral pilgrimage rather than a seasonal obligation. This process resembles the idea of the habitual self-examination and growth described in The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, where the journey toward goodness requires perseverance, humility, and transformation.

True charity and generosity, then, flow from a reshaping and reorientation of the self towards love, community, and responsibility for others. This vision is deeply in line with the Christian ethic, reflecting the biblical understanding that generosity does not arise from obligation, calculation, or guilt, but as a byproduct of God’s own self-giving love, and thus should be echoed in our love as well. Through Scrooge’s redemption, Dickens ultimately argues that charity rooted only in money is insufficient. Only love enacted through moral responsibility can restore both individuals and society.

At the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is confronted in his office by two gentlemen who visit his office seeking donations to help the poor and destitute, particularly those unable to work in factories or survive in workhouses due to harsh and inhumane conditions. One of the men explains the urgency of the situation, stating:

“It is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

Scrooge’s response reveals the severity of his worldview. When asked to contribute, he replies coldly in his defence of the already established workhouses:

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned. They cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there.”

When one of the gentlemen gently objects that “many can’t go there; and many would rather die,” Scrooge responds without hesitation:

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Even when pressed further, Scrooge refuses to acknowledge any moral responsibility, going so far as to conclude:

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

It is clear from Scrooge’s reaction that he believes personal moral responsibility is irrelevant—one might say “humbug”—and that his own business is what truly matters in life and what he orients himself around.

This point of escalation of the conversation shows that Scrooge reduces charity simply to a financial calculation, refusing the moral responsibility that the Author presents as an integral part of true generosity itself. Rather than holding a similar belief as Dickens, of business as moral responsibility toward others, especially the vulnerable, expressed through presence, care, and community rather than financial calculation, Scrooge firmly holds to his belief that the only business he should be concerning his life with are the ones concerning his own profit, efficiency, and non-interference.

Moral responsibility, in his view, is not his concern at all, only financial obligation, which he vehemently resents. He expresses this resentment most clearly in his “surplus population” comment, which is intrinsically dehumanizing and reduces people he deems lesser to something unnecessary.

When Scrooge critically points out the “surplus population,” his sentiment is consistent with views found today. Similarly, modern debates over overpopulation and underpopulation run rampant in the news and social discourse, reducing humanity to numbers and statistics.

In fact, obsessive anxiety over overpopulation has existed for thousands of years and has often been held by the wealthy, fortunate, or self-described enlightened members of societies.

From early human instincts, an image of an ungenerous and tight-fisted god entered the human imagination. The myth of Gilgamesh, for example, depicts humanity as nearly wiped out, leaving only a few survivors whose ability to reproduce is severely limited.

A similar sentiment appears in the writing of the Roman Christian author Tertullian, who wrote, “What most frequently meets our view, and occasions complaint, is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us. In very deed, pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.” Tertullian's rhetoric, though intended as moral provocation rather than a personal opinion, nonetheless reflects a recurring tendency among elites to frame human life as excessive.

Such extreme and disturbing sentiments were also held during the time of Charles Dickens. This can be seen through some of the work of Thomas Malthus, who voiced concerns during a period of unprecedented population growth alongside improving technology.

These sentiments continue to be echoed today by billionaires and other influential figures who claim that the world cannot support more people, as well as by those who express extreme anxiety about underpopulation.

They influence the broader populace by promoting the assumption that if powerful people believe something, it must be true.

And yet, the Bible presents a very different vision. It consistently reassures humanity of the generosity of the One who created it. Jesus offers a clear analogy in the New Testament:

26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I gilded it of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

But is it not enough to be successful? In a materialistic and oddly “classless” society that would blush if confronted for her prejudice, success seems to be enough. You have the job, the six figures, and the respect of your fellows and family because you are “successful.” What more could one ask out of life?

In Marley’s confrontation with Scrooge, this rhetorical question suddenly becomes the chain that the damned wear as they wail in agony, realizing only in their damnation that success and prestige were not enough at all. Scrooge confronts Marley, saying:

“But you were always a good man of business.”

Scrooge now begins to apply this logic to himself, to which Marley responds:

“Business!” cried the ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.” (p. 24)

If Scrooge’s worldview in the opening of the novel reveals the failure of transactional charity, Marley’s appearance reveals the cost of living by that worldview. This exchange suggests that Marley ultimately realized that moral responsibility and charity were his true business, something akin to his very purpose in life, and that his professional success was only a small part of what his life could have been.

As Marley reiterates:

“Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one’s life’s opportunities misused. Yet such was I. Oh, such was I.”

But what are these “missed opportunities”? Are they merely giving an allotted amount of money to one’s favourite charity each year, or agreeing to donate two dollars at a grocery store checkout? Perhaps, for a Christian, they are reduced to brooding over the ten percent that provides a sense of justification and the earned title of being a generous Christian.

Whatever form they take, Marley and his damned companions, whom Scrooge can see wailing in the night, do not seem to believe this is enough. They do not believe their failure was a lack of obligation, calculation, or periodic guilt offerings given once a year or whenever convenient.

Instead, the loss they now recognize so painfully is the waste of an entire life shaped by how they conducted themselves within the “little sphere” they occupied.

C. S. Lewis captures this understanding of charitable living through an analogy:

“It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns. A garden is a good thing, but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from the wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it. Its real glory is quite a different kind. The very fact that it needs constant weeding and pruning bears witness to that glory.”

Like Lewis’s garden, Scrooge’s moral life did not collapse because of active cruelty alone, but because neglect and non-interference allowed charity to wither.

So the question must be asked of Scrooge, as it is asked of all of us: how will you respond? You may at first, like Scrooge, claim that the natural order of the world is unperverted and should be allowed to run its course; however, it will.

But just as Scrooge, guided by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, looked and could not look away, so too, if we examine our own lives, we may come to a similar conclusion that we should do better.

From all of this analysis, Scrooge’s present and future appear bleak. How does someone so distracted and irresponsible change?

Here, the first Spirit softens Scrooge’s heart by showing him a former version of himself. The Spirit begins by revealing Scrooge as a young boy, tenderly reminding him of the love, friendship, and joy he once experienced in his youth.

In doing so, the Spirit restores a sense of wonder, creativity, and love to Scrooge, even if at first it is a more limited love of the self.

Dickens writes, “Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, ‘Poor boy!’ and cried again.”

Shortly after, Scrooge mutters, “I wish,” putting his hand in his pocket and looking about him after drying his eyes with his cuff, “but it’s too late now.”

When the Spirit asks what the matter is, Scrooge responds, “Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something. That’s all.”

Later, the Spirit of Christmas Past shows Scrooge his former employer, the man under whom he apprenticed.

When the Spirit mentions the boss’s virtues only briefly, Scrooge interrupts passionately, saying, “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil.”

“Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

In this reflection, Scrooge recognizes that generosity is not measured by wealth alone, but by the way one treats others.

The Spirit then reveals Scrooge’s former lover, showing the moment she releases him as his priorities shift toward wealth and security.

She gently explains, “You fear the world too much. All your hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sword or reproach.”

“I have seen your noble aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion gains and engrosses you. Have I not? It is only natural to value our resources. We only have so much, after all.”

As Scrooge watches, he is forced to confront the painful reality that he no longer loves her as he once did, because she is no longer what he values most.

In this moment of sorrow, Scrooge looks back at what he has lost due to his growing greed and fixation on wealth.

He realizes the grave mistake he made by losing sight of true “business,” as Dickens defines it, and instead allowing his desire for more to consume him entirely.

Seeing the modest gathering of the Cratchit family, with their prized goose and meagre food that nonetheless seems more than enough when accompanied by joy and love, deeply affects Scrooge.

Tiny Tim’s contented spirit lifts everyone around him, and for the first time, Scrooge is confronted with the humanity of those he once dismissed.

Moved by what he sees, Scrooge pleads with the Ghost of Christmas Present, asking whether Tiny Tim will live.

When the Spirit replies that “the child will die,” Scrooge agonizes over the possible death of the lame child, someone he previously would have grouped among the surplus population.

This moment reveals Scrooge’s growing change of heart toward the poor and destitute.

In response, the Spirit echoes Scrooge’s own words back to him:

“If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Hearing his own words repeated, Scrooge hangs his head in shame.

Overcome with grief and remorse, he realizes how deeply wrong his former viewpoint was.

The Ghost of Christmas Present then rebukes him sharply, saying:

“If man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is.”

“Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child.”

“Oh God! To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

The Ghost of Christmas Future does not teach Scrooge compassion, but confirms what he has already learned by revealing the final cost of refusing it.

Scrooge is not most disturbed by the particular nature of his death, but by how it is received by others.

Seeing that he will be unmourned, unloved, and remembered only for his selfishness frightens him beyond the point at which he can continue to ignore the future.

Charles Dickens shows that through the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, a human being can undergo reflection and transformation.

However, with the explicit presence of supernatural spirits in the novel, the question arises: how can we hope to change ourselves?

I would argue that we live in a world just as supernatural as Ebenezer Scrooge’s, if not more so.

Instead of a group of three Christmas spirits, we have the Holy Spirit, who constantly knocks on the doors of our hearts, even when we fail to notice Him.

Beyond simply revealing that we need to change and that we are not enough on our own, God acts supernaturally through His sacrifice for us.

In doing so, He fills in the parts of us that are broken or lacking, ultimately making us whole.

This restoration leads us to become enough and, in turn, to become better.

The ultimate charity Christians can experience is Christ and His sacrifice for us.

Likewise, the ultimate charity Christians can give to others is a reflection of the generosity God has first given to us.

Throughout the Bible, God consistently calls humanity to reflect His generosity, even while working within the cultural immaturity and expectations of surrounding nations.

One of the most controversial yet compelling defences of God’s generosity is found in the book of Deuteronomy.

In this book, God not only encourages the people of Israel to act charitably toward one another and to avoid replicating the systems of bondage practiced by neighbouring nations, but He also commands the Israelites to establish social systems that protect the needy and vulnerable within their society.

Charity is therefore not presented as an optional sentiment, but as a moral responsibility embedded within the structure of communal life.

As one scholar explains, “Through a host of institutions, most notably the tithe, Jewish law makes the giving of charity a mitzvah, a commandment, not an option.”

“The framework is theological; charity is based in something higher and more enduring than feelings of compassion or guilt.”

“A verse in Proverbs, pregnant with repercussions in both Judaism and Christianity, renders the vertical dimension explicit: ‘He who is generous to the poor makes a loan to the Lord; He will repay him his due.’”

God’s concern for charity is further emphasized at the conclusion of His legal instructions in Deuteronomy.

Rather than stopping with personal moral obligations, God commands the Israelites to extend generosity beyond their own households.

During festivals and feasts, they are instructed not only to invite their sons and daughters, but also their male and female servants.

The emphasis of these commands is directed especially toward the marginalized within Israel, ensuring that charity reaches those most easily overlooked.

These celebrations include major feasts such as Passover and the Feast of Booths, which become key expressions of the Lord’s kindness and the generosity of the land toward the vulnerable.

This radical vision of charity reaches its fullest expression in the Eucharist, which is inseparable from Christian charity.

The Eucharist is the place where Jesus invites all people to participate in His generosity.

All who wish to receive the bounty of Christ are welcome: the marginalized, women, the poor, the rich, the successful, and the broken alike.

In doing so, Christ calls believers to reflect this same generosity in their own lives, not only through wealth and resources, but through love, presence, and affection.

In this way, the Eucharist becomes the model of Christian charity.

It is a form of giving without expectation of return or profit, arising purely from an overflow of love that cannot be contained.

This mirrors Scrooge’s transformation.

When he witnesses the love, goodness, and charity that once surrounded him, he is not merely compelled to give occasionally.

He is seized by an urgent need to live charitably, as though awakened by a Christmas spirit to a reality in which charity can no longer be ignored.

As C. S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves, “The invitation to turn our natural loves into Charity is never lacking.”

Sources & Additional Influences:

Dickens, A Christmas Carol

The Holy Bible (ESV)

Lewis, The Four Loves

Model of Christian Charity (The Lord’s Supper Series) — YouTube video, https://youtu.be/dy1_ukT3VIk

That’s all folks! If you’ve read A Christmas Carol, feel free to tell me what you thought about it in the comments below. ❤❤❤

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