The Hyde Within

My pastor recently finished a series on temptation, based on the passage from Luke’s Gospel about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Coincidentally, I’ve been simultaneously reading Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, a book about how one man’s desire to give into his sinful flesh leads to his downfall. 

 

The Writers' Museum (devoted in part to Stevenson), Edinburgh, Scotland

It’s a simple story: Mr. Hyde is the “good doctor” Jekyll’s evil persona—the creature he turns into when he gives himself over completely to his fleshly desires, untempered by moral conscience. Jekyll explains this in a letter to his friends at the end of the novel. At one point, Jekyll becomes so alarmed by the unrestrained evil of Hyde that he determines to give “Hyde” up for good (that is, to stop taking the potion that strips away his good side, leaving only his fleshly appetites). It is also becoming more difficult for Jekyll to return to his good self after each Hyde binge. Jekyll explains in this letter to his friends,

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”

Stevenson acknowledges here the universal battle with sin that each person fights within him- or herself. It is as old as Adam & Eve in the Garden. Jekyll decides that he wants to choose the “better part,” to do good, to be good, but in himself does not have the strength to be a good man. I’m reminded of the Apostle Paul in Romans, saying, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (7:18b).

Yet, Dr. Jekyll’s attempts to say no to temptation are half-hearted and therefore ineffective. He tries to go “cold turkey” from his Hyde persona, but without cutting off the possibility completely. He admits in his letter,

   “Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.”

It’s like the smoker trying to give up smoking but insisting on hanging around his friends who light up their cigarettes in his presence. How can one avoid the temptation if one is not willing to cut oneself off from it? How can I avoid eating donuts if I persist in standing near the donut table at church? Jekyll keeps his “Hyde house” and “Hyde clothes,” inviting the temptation—in fact, as he admits, “ready” to give in. Not surprisingly, he tells us that he’s only able to stay the course for two months before desires become stronger than conscience:

“For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.”

This is a spoiler alert: Jekyll, unable to resist temptation on his own, gives in completely to his Hyde persona, and the consequences are dishonor and death. Stevenson’s short novel is a powerful testimony to where the intentional and habitual practice of giving way to our sinful desires leads. The Apostle Paul, at the conclusion of his chapter in Romans on the seemingly futile struggle against our sinful flesh, provides the answer: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25a).