An Inconvenient Truth: "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

There are two questions that determine a person's worldview. The first is "what is the nature of God?" The second: What is the nature of man? This second question can be answered in two ways, namely: man is basically good, or man is basically fallen, sinful, and evil. The first is presumed in such books as Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" (an excellent book in almost all other respects) and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein (which also has its redeeming points)." The latter is set forth in Robert Louis Stevenson's remarkable story, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."


"Jekyll and Hyde" is not very different from "Frankenstein" in many respects. Both Jekyll and Frankenstein are relatively kind, caring, brilliant men, who both posess a strange obsession. Both, in turn, act on that obsession. Frankenstein tries to create a man, and Jekyll endeavors to split his nature in half.

Despite these similarities, the two tales are fundamentally different. Frankenstein is a story of how society corrupts a good creature and turns him into a monster. Jekyll and Hyde tells how a naturally corrupted man creates a monster of himself.

These two stories represent the two possible views of human nature. The first is the view that man is basically good, and society and circumstances make him evil. The second is the Christian perspective on human nature: man is fallen and born evil; apart from the grace of God, there is no such thing as a good person.

One need merely look at the world to see the truth of the second. For instance, when I was a child, I had to be taught to tell the truth, be polite, and not steal. I did not need to be taught how to lie to my parents, yell at my brother, or sneak cookies. I was born adept at those skills.

Another example is the fallacy of the noble savage philosophy. The theory is that the more primitive a culture is, the more pure, unspoiled, and good are its members. This can be disproved with very little trouble. One need only listen to the stories of Dutch missionary Otto Koning to know that the Papua New Guinean tribe he lived with was not pure or unspoiled. They were, in fact, chronic thieves, headhunters, and cannibals. The tribes on the island had rivalries and wars. Their culture was no purer than ours. The evil was entrenched in their traditions.

These examples only serve to prove the truth of the Jekyll and Hyde philosophy. Mankind is inherently sinful. It is because he is sinful that he needs the mercy and grace of God. This is a fact that we naturally hate to believe. Who wants to think that they are a naturally wicked person? Because people so hate this concept, they generally attempt to explain away depravity. We applaud the decleration of one inconvenient truth, but by hook or by crook, we are determined to ignore the other.