BeScrooged: Imagining a Full Life of Generosity

Few among us are quite so lost as the anti-hero of A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge lives a small, miserable life in sooty nineteenth-century London, rebuffing affection and offering none, showing a high disdain for the hungry and the sick, dismissing charity, faith, and family as nothing but a humbug. But the great moral of the tale lies in Scrooge’s seemingly miraculous transformation; he awakens from a shattering dream the very opposite of his former self—a person who loves, shares, and gives with unusual generosity. What if we all could take a dose of Scrooge’s healing medicine? What if we all possessed the power to see ourselves and the world anew—and be better people for it? In their challenging new book BeScrooged, father-and-son authors Gordon and Mark MacDonald show us how we can do just that. Their prescription for change is not to await an overnight visitation but to embark on a deliberate journey of reflection and action in our daily lives. Drawing on deep experience—Gordon as a longtime evangelical Christian pastor and bestselling author, Mark as the marketing strategist behind some of our era’s most influential Christian ministries—the MacDonalds have spent more than a decade helping to build a global movement for Christian generosity. In BeScrooged the authors distill their insights into an easy-to-follow yet penetrating four-week program for developing the joyful, life-changing spirit of giving that lies of the heart of this movement. For each week, the authors introduce us to a new theme. Each day of the week comes with a biblical reading and commentary, followed by questions for thought and discussion and a real-world “BeScrooged Activity” designed to help participants connect the chapter’s insights to their own lives. The ultimate destination? An Ebenezer-like “full-life generosity” that encompasses how we deploy our worldly goods, emotional resources, and physical and spiritual energies. • In Week One: We meet seven Scrooges of the Bible and ask ourselves, What do I worship, crave, obsess over? These may be the very things that stand in our way. • In Week Two: We learn about seven powerful ways Jesus Christ embraced and embodied generosity. How can we follow his example with friends and strangers alike? • In Week Three: Called to Full-Life Generosity, the authors offer seven biblically grounded and faith-based answers to the question, Why should we live generously? • In Week Four: Full-Life Generosity, we discover seven fundamental elements of the fully generous life, from encouragement to hospitality to being a doer eager to serve alongside others. In their friendly tone and hopeful message the MacDonalds enact the generosity they wish to cultivate. Readers will come away from BeScrooged just as Ebenezer awakened Christmas morning, looking forward with giddy delight to all the good they can do in the world.