Posted on 10/28/2001 9:57:03 AM PST by sourcery
Family.org: Finding God in 'The Lord of the Rings'
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Special: Harry Potter Finding God in 'The Lord of the Rings' By Jim Ware
September, 1931 "Look!" says one of them, a tall, long-faced fellow with the furrowed brow and twinkling eyes of a sage . . . or wizard. He points to a large oak. "There it stands," he says, "its feet in the earth, its head among the stars. A majestic miracle of creation! And what do we call it? A tree." He laughs. "The word falls absurdly short of expressing the thing itself." "Of course it does," responds the other, a round-faced, slightly balding, bespectacled man in his mid-30s. "Like any word, it's just a verbal invention — a symbol of our own poor devising." "Exactly," says the first man. "And here's my point: Just as a word is an invention about an object or an idea, so a story can be an invention about Truth." The other rubs his chin. "I've loved stories since I was a boy," he muses. "You know that, Tollers! Especially stories about heroism and sacrifice, death and resurrection — like the Norse myth of Balder. But when it comes to Christianity . . . well, that's another matter. I simply don't understand how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever He was) 2,000 years ago can help me here and now." "But don't you see, Jack?" persists his friend. "The Christian story is the greatest story of them all. Because it's the Real Story. The historical event that fulfills the tales and shows us what they mean. The tree itself — not just a verbal invention." Jack stops and turns. "Are you trying to tell me that in the story of Christ . . . all the other stories have somehow come true?" A week and a half later, Jack — better known to most of us as C.S. Lewis, teacher, author, defender of the Christian faith, and creator of the beloved "Chronicles of Narnia" — writes to his friend Arthur Greeves: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ — in Christianity. My long night talk with Tolkien had a great deal to do with it." June, 2001
Tom, a fiddler in a feathered cap, asks what I've been up to. I tell him about the writing project I've taken on with my friend and collaborator, Kurt Bruner: a book of Christian reflections on "The Lord of the Rings." " 'The Lord of the Rings'!" laughs Tom (who does not consider himself a believer). "Isn't that a pretty pagan book?" December, 2001 And yet, hype or no hype, there are a few filmgoers who are still wondering what it's all about. Especially serious-minded Christians. Elves, dwarves, wizards, goblins, magic rings — haven't we been through this kind of thing before — recently? Isn't "The Lord of the Rings" just another romp through the occultic world of Harry Potter? For answers, let's go back to Jack and "Tollers." Background What's the difference between Harry Potterand Lord of the Rings? Aren't they pretty much the same: magic, wizards, monsters and so on? In Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, Jim Ware and Kurt Bruner reveal J.R.R. Tolkein's faith and the Christian foundation of his books. Available November 16! Their long night talk about symbols and verbal inventions"was just the beginning. Through the years, Lewis and Tolkien were to spend long hours refining their ideas and incorporating them into their literary art. In part, they did this with the help of a group of like-minded Christian friends: The Inklings. Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and Child (an Oxford pub); Thursday evenings in Lewis' rooms at Magdalen; year in and year out, the Inklings met, talked, sipped tea, and critiqued one another's manuscripts-in-progress: books like Lewis' That Hideous Strength, Williams' The Place of the Lion, and, of course, "The Lord of the Rings." Their goal? To find ways of pouring the steaming, bubbling, heady stuff of the Real Story into the molds of their own invented stories. Intentions Lewis made no secret of his intentions. "Supposing," he once asked himself, reflecting on the nature of God, the sufferings of Christ, and other fundamental Christian truths, "that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency. . . ." This, he said, is exactly what he was trying to do in "The Chronicles of Narnia."1 As for Tolkien, he would have been shocked and angered to hear Tom refer to his work as pagan. " 'The Lord of the Rings,' " he wrote in a letter to a friend, "is of course a fundamentally religious and Christian work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Humphrey Carpenter, author of Tolkien's authorized biography, takes this claim seriously. Tolkien's writings, he says, are "the work of a profoundly religious man." According to Carpenter, God is essential to everything that happens in "The Lord of the Rings." Without Him, Middle-earth couldn't exist. But be forewarned: Evidences of God's presence are not as obvious in Tolkien's work as in Lewis' more allegorical style of writing. They are there, however — firmly embedded in the tales he insisted on calling "inventions about Truth." In fact, if you know what to look for, you may find them popping up everywhere. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you set out on the quest.
Looking . . . "Tollers," he says as Tolkien gets up to leave, "there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves." And so they did. But with what results? When we drink from the cup of their "verbal inventions" is it really the Living Water we imbibe? Or did my friend Tom get it right — are their tales merely exercises in "pagan" imaginative art? You've seen what they had to say. Now you'll have to decide for yourself . . . when you go looking for God in "The Lord of the Rings" at a theater — or bookstore — near you. Jim Ware is crazy about Celtic music. In fact, he plays the guitar and the hammered dulcimer, and he's likely to show up wherever there's an opportunity to play a few jigs and reels! But writing is his real passion. Jim is the author of three novels for children, as well as the co-author (with Kurt Bruner) of Finding God in the Lord of the Rings. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Joni, and their six kids.
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Of course I recognized, or thought I recognized the inherent Christianity. The Trilogy became an oft-visited friend and even though it was a very busy time for me, I comsumed as much of The Sillmarillion as time would allow.
And then something odd occured to me.
So many friends were becoming so immersed in the ficition that it was seemingly replacing reality. For example instead of celebrating traditional summer events, we'd have a huge festive gathering at mid-year, or Mid-Lieth if I recall my Tolkien correctly.
Some of us took names patterned after our favorite characters or races.
Some of us who began focusing on The Sillmarillion whispered to each other in the "inner circles" what a beautiful alternative telling of Creation the work was.
And therein lay the danger I began to recognize.
When The Great Fiction became more revered by some than The Story on which it was based, I fear too many fell. I was saved when I realized how long it had been since I read or related my life to The Bible, but how The Silmarillion was becoming a daily reference.
So although Tolkien's works stayed with me, I put the books down so much so that I have never actually finished The Silmarillion.
The stories are still often told in my house, my children have come to know them well. However I have always cautioned them to not let them become their masters; not fall into the trap of obsession as so many of my friends did, and remain so today.
It's a similar story with Star Trek of Star Wars or any number of other works of fiction. Enthusiasm and love of the work is fine, and reading especially encouraged. But fanatacism and obsession is the danger. And while the works themselves are hardly to blame, it's Man's inherent weakness to try and replace God's works with his own that pays tribute to The Evil and is one of Satan's Songs.
Can't wait for the movie!
prisoner6
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