A Christmas Carol isn’t just about ghosts — any more than Avengers: Infinity War is just about gloves.
Charles Dickens’ 1843 classic is not merely about ghosts, Christmas generosity, or even the dangers of wealth detached from anthropology. The book is a pro-human, pro-growth, and therefore pro-Christian rebuttal to the ideas of minister and economist Thomas Malthus. Malthus posited that, while population growth increased exponentially, the resource supply of the world only increased linearly, leading to an inevitable disparity between people and the food and living conditions available to them. The solution? ‘Decrease the surplus population,’ as Scrooge quips in Dickens’ novel.
If you’re not economically inclined, you may also recognize this as the essential philosophy of Avengers villain Thanos, who destroys half the universe in a gambit he describes as a fair, dispassionate, and inevitable response to the unchecked growth of life. This fundamental idea, that the growth of humanity is itself a problem to be solved (as opposed to a reason to solve problems), is at the root of many of our most foolish modern malaises, from net-zero energy fantasies, to critiques of modern food production, to the notion that having big families is “bad for the environment.”
And then there’s abortion — the malaise that almost all of you likely thought of the minute you read the phrase “population growth.”
Recently, the world learned of the death of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist and serial killer whose victim count ranges from three (Gosnell was convicted of the first-degree murder of three infants in 2013) to in the thousands if you count all of the abortions he performed. Which, we should count the abortions.
Amazingly, Gosnell’s demise was actually covered in mainstream media, with The New York Times running the headline “Kermit Gosnell, Imprisoned Abortion Doctor Convicted of Murders, Dies at 85.”
But the question is this: in a world where sustainability, equity, and the whims of modern elite society almost universally boil down to “maybe we do have too many people on this planet,” what crime in the postmodern worldview can you really charge an abortionist with?
Let’s break down the structure of that New York Times headline: “Kermit Gosnell, Imprisoned Abortion Doctor Convicted of Murders, Dies at 85.” In a world where science behind the pro-life worldview was taken seriously, that headline would be an obvious example of repeating oneself — it even sounds strange if you’re a pro-life person.
But think seriously about why it’s written that way. In the postmodern worldview, that headline is actually saying two separate things: (1) imprisoned abortion doctor, (2) convicted of murder. In the postmodern worldview, that is one good thing (abortion doctor) and one evil thing (murderer). In that worldview, be it from abortion advocates, Malthusians in the 1830s, or the Mad Titan, Gosnell’s abortions are considered virtuous — a validation of people’s choices for their own lives, even when validating those choices means terminating pregnancy.
I bring all of this up to make two points. First, that the pro-life argument in 2026 goes beyond the mere rebuttal of “my body, my choice.” It’s not simply that an unplanned pregnancy creates an uncertain future with a baby in it. It’s that an unplanned pregnancy is an impediment to a life that’s been already planned — and one to be removed, in the way that a fallen tree branch gets moved off the road.
This is the modern iteration of the ancient lie: that human life is the problem to be solved, not the reason to solve problems. It’s the lie we must rebut.
Second, it is worth remembering exactly why Malthus, Thanos, and Gosnell were wrong. Go back to Dickens. Many rich people were stingy in Victorian England all year round — why does A Christmas Carol happen at Christmas, and why is it named that? Because in a world where humanity itself is the disease, you eradicate the people that provide the least value. You leave the babies on the mountaintops, you eradicate the crutch-laden children, and you massacre the babies borne out of wedlock to disgraced families from backwater parts of the nation.
In other words, you kill the Tiny Tims and the Baby Jesuses.
Those are the people who got the axe first during all of human history, particularly in pagan societies, and still do in countless parts of the world today. It is only a Christian worldview that cultivates the intrinsic value of life, creates systems designed to get justice for victims, and affirms the multiplicative, creational power of human technology and innovation that truly gets you a better sort of world.
I do not claim to know the heart of Kermit Gosnell or his eternal fate. But the sum total of his deeds and the thousands of innocents who lie slaughtered in the wake of his “career” suggest that he may be learning just how seriously God deals with people who wage war against His creation.
May we take that sober realization as motivation to defend the value of life in our times and confront the many who lie about it, no matter where they come from.
