24 THE FAITHFUL READER from a thoroughly Christian perspective even though he lives—by his own confession—contrary to the Bible’s teaching for the first third of the story. Indeed, the development of Crusoe as a character revolves around the struggle to understand his own internal impulse to make ungodly choices which lead to increasingly serious consequences. His stubborn selfishness leads the young Crusoe to abandon his parents, “without asking God’s blessing, or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows,” and to risk physical and spiritual danger in pursuit of wealth. He even calls his abandonment of his parents’ counsel, “my original sin.” He admits that he was by no means poor or unprepared for success at home, because his father had done everything he could to prepare him for a “competent” living. Yet this would not satisfy the young man who—almost too late— realizes that his problem is within him: “that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.” Of course, what Crusoe observes is the universal sinfulness of humanity, for “None is righteous, no, not one …. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12). Reflecting on his inability to control sinful tendencies despite the painful consequences of his own greed, Crusoe acknowledges that this universal corruption on human nature is ultimately irresistible for those who do not know Christ. One’s tendency toward sin actually grows more powerful each time one indulges the flesh. Eventually, Crusoe is presented with an offer to make a huge amount of money quickly by stooping to grasp a share of the wicked profits of the slave trade. He laments “that I was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father’s good counsel was lost upon me.” For it was on this fateful voyage bound for the Slave Coast of Guinea that Crusoe suffered shipwreck and washed up alone on the shore of an exotic island, far from normal trade routes and with no hope of rescue. By his own account, the castaway’s “state of life” prior to this crisis had been persistently contrary
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