It is not easy for me to dig Christian values out of the Lord of the Rings. In fact they all seemed to have rooted in the grounds of the Middle-earth. It’s hard to talk about Christian things in the Lord of the Rings, when you find that everything is Christian in the Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is not a world overtly religious, there show no temples, no churches, no priests and no altars; Neither do the Hobbits pray, nor the wizards offer sacrifice. They sing songs, but never worship; they speak no other tongues than the elvish. But the presence of God is everywhere in the Lord of the Rings, which I never noticed, as a fish does not ever notice the ocean, or a bird does not ever notice airflow below. Even the evil is also everywhere. As Frodo and his companions trudged over steep shoulders of hills and through dreadful steep valley, they were constantly overcome by the terror of Black Riders and their pursuit. Tolkien did not intend to make us know what they look like. In fact, they have no faces, simply hiding underneath the hood, like a black hole in deep shape. For me, I need no know their faces, because they are evil. On the contrary, I actually want to see what God is like in the Lord of the Rings. But God is also never mentioned, yet to my astonishment He is everywhere.
Without the presence of God, the Lord of the Rings would become sucked; without the rich embodiment of the significant Christian values intently made in the Lord of the Rings, the Middle-earth would become dry, barren, lifeless, only stunted trees, grass scanty, coarse and grey, leaves being faded and falling. The lord of the Rings is not Frodo, is instead Sauron. The Dark Lord Sauron needs the One Ring, for it has unlimited power that empowers him to rule the whole world. Frodo was chosen to bear the “Isidur’s Bane” until it is destroyed. For every now and again the Ring has been drawing the Enemy, and therefore the peril is becoming great, the Ringwraiths are in the pursuit, the Great Battle is at hand.
Beyond the wall of the Rivendell had so long lain hidden the greatest peril of the world. Hobbits are not wizards, not even one from the legendary league of Elves and Men. Black Riders are as fearsome, they do not have faces, nor have as much concrete features as other characters. They mostly appear in the dark, for the dark can make them powerful. We can’t ever clearly see them. Why? Maybe we also can not see ourselves. Tolkien sort of intently told us of many characters who could correspond something in us. We can identify the characters, because they are like us in the real world.
God has plans for everything in the Lord of the Rings. There are countless seemingly meaningless things that yet do not ever seem meaningless. Every little bit of trivial things helps perceive God’s purpose. For example, at the moment when the Ring was passed to Frodo as the heir of Bilbo, he was greatly distressed. He said nothing other than asked ‘Why? Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?” Gandalf, like a spokesman of Tolkien, gave a short but the most philosophical and theological, yet most confusing answer, ‘Such questions can not be answered.’ Frodo was chosen, not because of his any merit that other dose not possess, nor of his power or his wisdom. Why did God allow sufferings for Job? Gandalf and I can not answer such question either.
Why Frodo? Why Job? Why do bad things befall innocent people?
Still there is reason that can be found. Things do not happen by chance. God dose not choose Job by chance. God’s creation, sufferings, sins, Trinity do not happen by chance. Jesus’s brith, suffering, death, and resurrection do not happen by chance.
The Lord of the Rings so beautifully written has never ceased to amazed me, for the Christian values could be found everywhere in many details of the whole story. One of the things that stood out most, as far as I am concerned, is the realisation that evils are allowed to exist for the greater good. The One Ring, the ‘Bane’, the worst thing of all, was now inherited to the ordinary creature. Ordinary life becomes more valuable than the extraordinary. Gandalf, the powerful wizard, Aragorn, the noble descendent of Elendil, and Elrond, the great Lord of Rivendell are not heroes, the Hobbits are. The most important things are left for the most ordinary men to decide. They possess no power, nor great swords, but only virtues: faith, love, hope (at which I would discuss more broadly on the next Tuesday Morning).
God deliberately allowed evil to enter into the world, he could have made a sign in the Garden of Eden: No Snake. What is the worst thing that had ever happened in the world? What is the most hopeless doings made by the evil?
My answer is: The purposed torture and murder of the Almighty God. The day(Good Friday) that is the worst day for Christ have been our best day. Why do we celebrate? Because it means the hope of our Salvation.
The worst thing turned out to be the best thing ever.