Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 to a Scottish family of lighthouse builders. When he announced he was not joining the family profession, his father was disappointed but understanding. When he rejected the Christianity of his family, his father was devastated.
These decisions happened during Stevenson’s college years. Despite his doubts, and perhaps because he knew his parents cared deeply, his journey tacked Godward. In his late twenties he wrote his father, “Strange as it may seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, bringing me nearer to what I think you would like me to be. ‘Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who care to look for him.”
As a writer, Stevenson explored that strange world. His character Jekyll is virtuous, while Hyde is hideously immoral, yet they are the same man. Jekyll develops a serum to separate his good and evil personalities. He could thereby indulge his vices while proudly displaying his virtue. One fateful night, he becomes Hyde without the serum, and soon he is out of control. A horrified Jekyll believes he has no choice but to end his (and Hyde’s) life. The story’s popularity became imprinted on the cultural vernacular. To call someone “Jekyll and Hyde” is to say their good and evil sides are on unpredictable display.
Stevenson’s story draws attention to the human condition. Embedded within us is a bent toward virtue and vice. Unless you are of an utterly depraved mind (Rom. 1:28), you prefer more virtue and less vice. No serum can help with that. No ledger of virtuous deeds clears a record of vice. Trying harder is at best a temporary solution. So, how do you clear the guilt of a lifetime of misdeeds? Ultimately, how do you stand before a holy God, condemned by such a record?
Paul understood the tension. “The good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want” (Rom. 7:19). That’s the problem statement. Here’s the solution: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If Christ is in you…the spirit is alive because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:1,10). By faith, you stand before God in the righteousness of Christ. Hideous Hyde and proud Jekyll no longer frame your identity.
In his final years while living on a tropical island in the South Pacific, Stevenson wrote an evening prayer. “Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us…For our sins forgiven or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O God.” Gratitude and acceptance of God’s grace and forgiveness suggest you have seen the lighthouse pointing the way to your eternal home.