[upbeat music] >> It's hard to talk
about Christian themes in The Lord of the
Rings, because everything is Christian in The Lord of the Rings. [audience laughter] But the themes are so
rooted in the very ground of Middle Earth that they don't stick out. You'll notice that
there's no overt religion in The Lord of the Rings,
there's no churches. There's no temples, there's no prayers. Why is that? Well, when Frodo and
Sam enter the Elf forest of Lothlorien, Sam says,
there's strong magic here, all over the place, but you
can't see anybody working it. Well, that's not just true of Lothlorien, that's true of all Lord of the Rings, and for a Christian,
that's true of the world. The presence of God is everywhere, so ubiquitous that you don't notice it, as a fish doesn't notice the ocean. In fact I would go so far as to say, that the single most important character in The Lord of the Rings is God. Why is that? Well, He's never
mentioned, how can you say He is the most important character? Well, first of all, who
is the lord of the rings? Sauron. So the most important named character in The Lord of the Rings is
the lord of the rings, duh. [audience laughter] But he's evil, why is he evil? Because he's playing God. This ring gives him unlimited power, if he could only get it, and keep it. All right, why is that evil? Why is it evil for anybody to play God? Only because he's not God, in other words, unless God existed, The Lord of the Rings would make no sense at all. It would be a wonderful
thing for Sauron to play God. Somebody's gotta be God. If God isn't God, let Sauron be God. Sauron, though, is the only
character that you never see. Tolkien describes the appearance of all the other characters,
and Sauron has some sort of a human form; he battle the Elves in that battle a thousand years ago. But all you see is his eye, nothing else. Why is that? If Tolkien had described
Sauron as fearsome, as something like a
dragon, or a horrible face, that would be effective,
but you don't see him. Why not? Maybe because we don't see ourselves. Maybe Tolkien is subtly telling us that each of the characters
corresponds to something in us. We can identify with all of them, but the one we hesitate to
identify the most with is Sauron. But maybe that's the one we
should identify the most with. What's the primal sin? Pride, rebellion, idolatry, playing God. Who does that most clearly? Sauron. Ooh, ouch, oops. Modern short act of contrition. If God is everywhere in
The Lord of the Rings, then a second theme has
to be divine providence. God has a plan for everything, and things that are seemingly meaningless are never meaningless. Little details that seem
to be due to chance, like Barliman Butterbur's forgetfulness in remembering that he has
this letter from Gandalf. Every little bit helps, and the bad things are used for good, for instance, Frodo gets the ring, the ring is bad, the ring is dangerous,
and Frodo says, why me? Like Job, why did you
put me on this dung heap? You know what dung is. It's a good word, it's in the Bible. Why? And Gandalf says, such
questions cannot be answered. But be sure that there is a reason. It doesn't happen by chance. There's no chance in
The Lord of the Rings. It takes place in pagan
times but the pagan category that's not there is chance. When Christianity came into the world, it added a lot of
categories to human thought. A personal creator god,
absolute good and evil, incarnation, trinity, many categories unknown to pagan thought, but
it subtracted one, chance. All pagans thought things
happened by chance. The Greeks thought that fate, or moira, another word for chance,
ruled even the gods. But not in Christianity, nothing happens without God's will somehow. So these bad things like
the ring coming to Frodo, Gandalf, who is sort of the prophet, the spokesman of Tolkien himself, reminds Frodo: this
didn't happen by chance. Bilbo got the ring, and you
inherited it from Bilbo, because there's more than one
power at work, says Gandalf. There's the power of the ring itself, which is trying to get back to its master. And there's the power
of Sauron, who's trying to get the ring back, and
there's the will of Gollum, and the will of Bilbo,
and the will of Frodo. But there's another power at
work that doesn't have a name, and of course, that's divine power. It's the anonymous magic. In Christianity, God
deliberately allows evil for the sake of a greater good. He could have put up a
sign in the Garden of Eden, no snake in the grass, please. Didn't do it. What's the worse thing that ever happened in the whole history of the world? What's the most horrendous
evil ever perpetrated? The deliberate torture and
murder of Almighty God. And we Christians
celebrate that by a feast that we call Good Friday. That's our hope of salvation. So the worst thing ever turned out to be the best thing ever. What's the worst event,
the most shocking event, the most sinful event,
the most egregious failure in the whole plot of
The Lord of the Rings? Surely, it comes near the
end, when Frodo, the hero, the only one who's got enough integrity not to be corrupted by the Ring, finally arrives at the Crack of Doom, and the first time you read this, you must have been deeply shocked. Frodo's words are, "I came to do this deed but I will not do it, I
claim the ring for myself. The ring is mine." And he puts on the ring
and becomes the new Sauron. Frodo rants at the end. Tolkien says he loves
to read the old epics, except for one thing, and this one thing was corrected in The Lord of the Rings. When you read the old epics, you're reading epic struggles
between good and evil. Because that's the plot of every story. Someone said there's just 12 basic plots, someone said there's seven,
someone said there's three, I say there's just one. Every story worth telling is a story of some sort of a
warfare between some sort of a good and some sort of an evil. That's what makes life interesting. All right? When you read the epics, you identify with the good guys, of
course, with the heroes. And the heroes win,
good triumphs over evil. So how do you feel, oh
what a good boy I am. I identified with the
right people; I'm good. You become, the temptation
anyways is to become a Pharisee. After you read these
stories, you don't want to identify with the evil guys, you have to identify with somebody. And you identify with the good guys, but the good guys always win. So you're gonna always win. And you're flattered, you're proud. So, Tolkien made Frodo a rat at the end. So that the real hero is not Frodo. It's not even Sam, who's even
more innocent than Frodo. Nobody can overcome that temptation. So who actually destroys the ring? Gollum....Gollum? He's thoroughly corrupted, there's almost no hope for him, right? So Gollum's the hero? No, I didn't say that, I said
Gollum completes the task, but the task is
strategized, not by Gollum, and not by Frodo, and not even by Gandalf. It's strategized by God. The god behind this invisible
magic of divine providence is the real hero of The Lord of the Rings. But he's an anonymous
god, he's a humble god. He's a Christ-like God;
he's not like Zeus or Thor. There are three main Christ figures in The Lord of the Rings, corresponding to the three divinely instituted offices in the Old Testament,
prophet, priest and king. Gandalf, of course, is the prophet. And Frodo is the priest,
and Aragorn in the king. It's amazing how often our great epics, even our secular epics, have
these three figures in them. Think of Star Trek; here's James T. Kirk, who's the king, or
captain; here's Mr. Spock, who's the prophet, the
intellectual, the scientist, here's Bones McCoy, who
patches people together, he's kind of priestly. Think of the Brothers Karamozov, probably the greatest novel ever written. Who are the three brothers? Well, there's Ivan, who is a philosopher, and an intellectual;
and then there's Dmitry, who is willful, he's a natural ruler, but he puts his foot in
his mouth all the time. And then Alyosha, he's the humble, Frodo-like priestly character. Think of in the Gospels,
Peter, James and John. The most intimate of the Disciples that Jesus takes with
him on special missions like up the Mount of Transfiguration and into the Garden of Gethsemane. They correspond to these
same three specialties, so to speak. If you read John's gospel, you see that it's much more mystical and
philosophical than the others. Peter is the leader, the rock, he's also got foot-in-mouth disease. Not a very good leader at
first, then he becomes a rock. And James is the practical moralist. Because these three things correspond to the three distinctively
human powers of the soul. The three things we can
do that animals can't. On the one hand, we have an intellect. We can reason, and in the
second place, we have a will. We can make free choices
between good and evil, and we can lead; and in the third place, we have a creative imagination, we are creators, we can do art. Almost every psychologist in human history has some version of those
three powers of the soul. For Plato, it's the intellect, the spirited part, and the desires. For Freud, it's the super
ego, the ego and the id. So, without directly thinking about it, if you're writing an epic,
you're gonna have three heroes. Now, this is a Christian epic, so the three heroes are Christ figures. They're, in some sense,
saviors of Middle Earth. Gandalf is obviously a Christ figure, not only is he a prophet, not only does he give wisdom from
on high, but he dies. That falling into the crack
in the Mines of Moria, that's a real death,
and then he resurrects. He comes back again. Aragorn also dies, how? He goes through the paths of the Dead. Down into the earth, nobody
else can endure that. And how does Frodo die? Well, the ring kills him, his spirit dies. In fact, he's so dead that he
can't stay in Middle Earth. He has to leave. He's young, his body's healthy,
his spirit is so worn out by that ring, that there's a kind of death of the soul inside him. All three of these guys save Middle Earth by dying, like Christ. They're not Christ, but
they're Christ figures. They're symbols. Now, Tolkien, sure,
didn't sit down and say, I'm gonna write a long story with three Christ figures,
who shall I make the prophet, who shall I make the priest,
who shall I make the king? All this came bubbling up
from his own inner resources. That's what makes it so impressive. That's what makes the story so Christian. He doesn't have to go
on about it in words. It's not so much on the
facade of the building. It's the very foundation. The foundation is more important than the facade, but you don't see it. The three most important
things in the world that we can do, the three
most important virtues, the three glues that can glue us to God, and that tie us to the work
of Christ in this world are, according to the Bible,
faith, hope and charity. Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 13. Three things you need. You find these three virtues
the most important virtues in The Lord of the Rings. First of all, faith:
faith means, first of all, not simply belief, that's the
intellectual dimension of it. It means trust; it's a
personal relationship. You entrust yourself and your destiny and your happiness to somebody else. Well, the bad guys don't do that. And the good guys do. The first volume is called
The Fellowship of the Ring. What's fellowship? Friendship. Even old pagan Aristotle
was wise enough to know that friendship was the
highest value in human life. And no society can hold
together without it. He says a wise ruler cares
of course for justice, but even more for friendship. Now, evil people don't understand that. Suppose you're fighting a
war, and you're the good guys, and you're friends, and
you're loyal to each other, and you'd die for each other. And the bad guys are hitting
each other and spitting and rivaling each other,
and jealous of each other. What should they fear the most? What's the weapon that
they should fear the most? Friendship. They're gonna listen to that, I mean, if you call out on the battlefield, surrender, because we have
more friends than you do! [audience laughter] That's not gonna cut it. Surrender, we have more nuclear weapons than you do, but friendship
is even more powerful force than nuclear weapons. Because nuclear weapons work by fission, but friendship works by fusion. The two times when it
seems that the mission of the Fellowship is gonna crack, the two most apparently hopeless times are the times when the
Fellowship breaks up. First of all, when
Boromir, the noble warrior turns turncoat and tries to
get the ring out of Frodo. That splits up the Fellowship,
that almost destroyed them. And secondly, of course, there's Gollum, who was once a hobbit,
and is now an ex-hobbit. Like somebody in hell, although
he's still alive on earth. Hell is not for human beings,
it's for what was once a human being, and is
now an ex-human being. Something that's lost that center of the self, that integrity. Well, Gollum tags along with them, and they need Gollum to show the way. But he's a constant threat. And if they didn't have Gollum, they could just march into Mordor, and not worry about
having the ring stolen. So he seems to be the worst
thing that's happening. The traitor, he's the
Judas Iscariot figure. And yet, he's the one that
completes the task in the end. But if he's not surrounded by fellowship, and friendship, his betrayal
would make no sense. Just as Judas Iscariot's
betrayal makes sense only within the surrounding context of the apostolic fellowship. So faith, personal trust, that counts for more than anything else. At the Council of Elrond, when
they're trying to figure out who's gonna go on this perilous quest, Gandalf speaks up for carrying
along Merry and Pippin. Two apparently worthless
and trouble-making hobbits, who are not great warriors or great intellectuals, or anything. And he says to Elrond, the Elf King there, I think we should trust a
fellowship and friendship more than wisdom or power. Well, that's what God did in Christ. That's what Christ asked
for, he didn't ask mainly for force, and for power, and
for wisdom, and for success. He asked for trust. The second great virtue,
hope, is a necessity. Hope is not just optimism. It's not just a feeling, oh
everything will be all right. Hope is faith directed at the future. If they had no hope at
all, they couldn't go on. They almost have no hope,
they say they have no hope. They say it's hopeless,
especially after Gandalf dies. And yet they go on, which
means they have hope. How much hope do you
think Jesus's apostles had when they saw him crucified? Almost none, yet they went on. Hope is very different than comfort, or optimism, or everything's
going to be all right. Hope will go through the darkness. With the confidence that somehow or other, in ways that nobody can see,
you emerge on the other side. And that's what motivates the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings, it's
really a hope of salvation. But the single most important virtue in The Lord of the Rings is love. And like faith and hope,
love is not a feeling. We are feeling fondlers,
we modern Americans. We reduce everything to a
feeling, which is ridiculous, because if love is a feeling, then Jesus is a very bad psychologist, he's saying, I command you to have sweet, compassionate feelings. I command you to take your finger and find the button in your soul that governs feelings and press it. Now, what is love? Love is a choice; it's
a choice to give what? Yourself, how can you give yourself? How can you give yourself away? I don't know, that's very mysterious, that's very paradoxical. But if I give, Paul says,
even my body to buried, if I give away my body, if
I let myself be a martyr, and I have not loved, that means nothing. The terrorist bombers in
9/11 gave away their bodies, but there was no love
there, it meant nothing. So how do they give themselves away? They all do. They all, in some way, die. They die to themselves,
they give themselves away to something they don't fully understand. This task that comes to them from God, by divine providence, the
task to fight for good against evil, the task to be
in some way a Christ figure, the task that presupposes faith and hope, and it all culminates in love. Faith is like the roots of the plant, and hope is like the
growing stem of the plant, but it's love that's the fruit. And it works. It doesn't look like it has
any possibility of succeeding. But it's the one thing that
the devil cannot understand. And that's why Sauron is tricked. Sauran cannot understand love. Evil cannot understand good. The light cannot understand the darkness. The light has come, it
shown in the darkness, and the darkness has not
been able to comprehend it. That word in Greek means two things. Understand, that is comprehend mentally, and conquer, that is
comprehend physically. Because if you can't
understand your enemy, you can't conquer him. If you vastly underestimate your enemy, or if you vastly overestimate your enemy, in any kind of war, or
sports, you're gonna lose. Well, we are at war, life is a war story as well as a love story. And our enemies, according
to the Bible, are very real. They're principalities and powers. Our enemies are evil
spirits, and their own spies in our own lives and hearts, namely sins. So we have enemies, and
if we vastly overestimate our enemies, as many people
used to do in the past, or if we vastly underestimate our enemies, as many people do to today, through a kind of pop psychology, we will lose. That doesn't mean you have to have an accurate notion of your enemy. In The Lord of the Rings they don't. They don't really know
what Sauron's going to do. They don't have a spy in Mordor. He has spies outside of Mordor. But it's not knowledge or wisdom, and it's not power, but it's
love that conquers in the end. How that works is as mysterious
as how the universe works. But that's the love
that moves the universe. Dante knew that; that great last line of the Divine Comedy,
when Dante has a vision from a god's eye point of view, of why everything is the way
it is, including the cosmos. The line is, "and he saw the love that moves the sun and all the stars." Well, the love that moves the universe, and the love that moves the
plot of The Lord of the Rings, is the love that God is. It's the love ultimately
that justifies the trinity. The love between the Father and the Son, that eternally is the Holy Spirit. And even in this life,
and even more in the next, we are given the immense privilege of actually participating in
that trinitarian exchange, so that when we practice
faith and hope and love, what's going on there is not simply that something good is happening to us, and those that we influence here on Earth. What's happening is that
we are singing the song, or dancing the dance that
is Almighty God Himself. That's why we can never lose. Our response to that
has to be just wonder, and awe, and gratitude,
and that's the response that you get when you see
it in The Lord of the Rings. So, please the read
book, it's a great one. >> Narrator: We hope you
enjoyed this message. Biola University offers a variety of biblically-centered degree programs, ranging from business to ministry
to the arts and sciences. Learn more at biola.edu.
