BY JEB SMITH

“Lord of the Rings is a tale of redemption in which the main characters overcome cowardly self-preservation to model heroic self-sacrifice. Their bravery mirrors the greatest heroic rescue of all time (Phil 2:8).” — Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings (Salt River, 2001)

Tolkien held to the Christian concept of free will. We are not just self-determined chemicals, but humans bearing the image of God, able to choose. Tolkien would disagree with Richard Dawkins that free will is an illusion. Free will is a choice between good and evil, and the effects these choices bear on events is a central theme in all of Tolkien’s writings regarding Middle-earth.

In Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey Through Lord of the Rings, Sarah Arthur presents the many choices in which the characters must choose between the path for good or the path for evil. She references and uses biblical examples and lessons. There are chapters on darkness and light, pride and humility, corruption or integrity, betrayal and loyalty, deceit or honesty, control of others or servanthood, bondage or freedom, despair or hope. She concludes, “J. R. R. Tolkien was a believer in Christ who wove his faith into his writings.”

Therefore, when an inhabitant of Middle-earth is faced with a decision, the correct choice is often the narrow way, the path for good, the biblical path shown to us by Jesus who sacrificed himself to hold the narrow way, the only way that leads to life (Mt 7:13–14; Jn 14:6).The choice to do good or evil, harm or benefit, for themselves or others, impacts the world around them. Aragorn told Éomer, “Open war lies before you, with Sauron or against him. None may now live as they have lived.” There is indeed a war going on, and we all must choose a side. Jesus said we are either for or against him. There is no more neutrality, and your choice has consequences. C.S. Lewis tells us:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else, he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Harper One, 1952)

The elf Gildor tells the hobbits, “The wide world is all about you. You can fence yourself in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”One cannot simply ignore evil, thinking we will escape and not be affected by its actions. We must choose how we react to the evils of our day. As Tolkien shows, the choice for good often requires self-sacrifice. Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Love and friendship discouraged selfish actions among the free peoples. Merry tells Frodo, “You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin-to the bitter end…but you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone…we are your friends, Frodo.” Merry willingly faced danger due to his friendship with Frodo; likewise, Frodo endured his travels because of his love for the Shire, stating, “I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.”

In a scene from Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers, Frodo and Sam are beginning to close in on Mordor. Frodo feels the weight of the ring increase and he begins to despair and lose hope. Frodo begins to doubt that he can accomplish his mission and wishes the task had never been given to him in the first place. Sam has this conversation with Frodo:

SAM. It’s all wrong. By rights, we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

FRODO. What are we holding on to, Sam?

SAM. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

This selfless, self-sacrificial attitude runs through the free peoples. In 1 John 3:16, we are told “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” And John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Thus, Tolkien’s heroes were willing (chose) to risk their own lives to defend what they love and to prevent its loss and enslavement to Sauron.

Gandalf the Grey sacrificed himself to save the ring bearer and the fellowship at the bridge of Khazad-dum in Moria. He said to them, “Fly, this is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way.” Frodo told Galadriel and Celeborn in Lothlórien, “When our escape seemed beyond hope, he saved us.”Both the companions in the fellowship and we today must travel the only way that leads to life, the only bridge to life that we cannot cross of our own power. We must trust others who can make the ultimate sacrifice by dying that we might live—Gandalf in Moria, Jesus in our world. Our sin is so great we need grace to bring us to paradise. Even the great elf Queen Galadriel, desiring to reach paradise, the West, across the seas says, “What ship would come to me? What ship would bear me back ever back across so wide a sea?” So to Christians, who could bear us across such a broad gap of our sins, who can deliver us to heaven, or in Middle-earth, as Galadriel asked, Valinor across the sea?

When Gandalf the White (Gandalf after his death and resurrection) described what must be done to defeat Sauron—march against the Black Gate of Mordor, hopelessly outnumbered with no chance of victory—many would have thought it madness. But Gandalf said, “We must walk open-eyed into the trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves…we ourselves shall perish utterly…we shall not live to see a new age, but this, I deem, is our duty.”

Instead of enjoying glory and victory, resting on their laurels after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, or holding back and waiting for Sauron’s next move, Aragorn and the Captains of the West, along with thousands of soldiers, marched into seemingly inevitable doom, willing to sacrifice themselves to give Frodo the only chance possible to save Middle-earth.

Throughout the War of the Ring, the soldiers of Rohan and Gondor never had great confidence in military victory, yet they continued the struggle. The Rohirrim rode to the aid of Gondor even though they received messages that their own lands, in northeastern Rohan, were once again under attack. They sacrificed their own for others.

At times, Peter Jackson was able to capture Tolkien’s writings concisely. One such scene from the films that captured the mindset of the riders of Rohan occurs when Gamling, captain of Rohan, after realizing they would not have enough troops to win the battle at Minas Tirith, said to King Théoden, “Too few have come. We cannot defeat the armies of Mordor.” King Théoden responded, “No, we cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless.”

These courageous men did not base their choice of action on the care for their safety or chances of victory. They were going to self-sacrifice for a cause they knew to be just, win or lose, live or die;[1] they would fight for those who could not defend themselves against evil. The American slogans “Give me liberty or give me death” and “Live free or die”would fit the men of Rohan well.

So does the famous Chivalric Poem of Roland; Roland says that “a man ought to be willing to suffer pain and loss for his lord.” Roland is a vassal of Charlemagne just as Théoden is allied to the lord of Minas Tirith, yet despite being vastly outnumbered and facing certain death, Roland declared, “I would rather die than dishonor myself. The more we act like warriors, the more the emperor loves us.”

In their acts of self-sacrifice performed for the good of Middle-earth, Tolkien’s heroic characters often chose the more dangerous road. Elrond said, “The westward road seems easiest; therefore, it must be shunned. We must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope if hope it be. To walk into peril—to Mordor.”

We saw elves, men, dwarves, and hobbits choosing the hard path  over personal desires and comforts for the good of Middle-earth. They were willing to do everything necessary to defend and protect that which is free and fair. Tolkien wrote, “Frodo undertook his quest out of love—to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense.”Frodo was terrified to go to Mordor and carry on the mission; he wanted to be in his beloved and quiet Shire. In Rivendell, before telling the council he would take the ring, Frodo had “an overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell,” but he knew in his heart that he must perform the task at hand.

Frodo chose to go alone to Mordor when he realized the ring was corrupting the company. Before breaking from the fellowship, Frodo said to Boromir, “For I know what I should do, but I am afraid of doing it.”Boromir tried to convince Frodo to go to Minas Tirith or give the ring to him and avoid the dangers and fears he faces. He gives Frodo a chance to leave the quest, give up his mission, by telling the others that Boromir overpowered him and “took it by force.” But Frodo would not, going “against the way that seems easier.” He said to Sam, “When things are in danger, someone has to give them up, lose them so that others may keep them.”

We see Frodo’s resolve and commitment when, in Ithilien, he says to Boromir’s brother, Faramir, “I am weary and full of grief, and afraid. But I have a deed to do, or to attempt; before I too am slain.” He was willing to sacrifice for others and walk the more difficult and dangerous path, a course of action that he knew would likely lead to his own death.Tolkien tells us “there is a seed of courage hidden [often deeply this is true] in the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.”

The hobbits accepted the difficult path. Merry and Pippin said to Frodo in Buckland, “We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid, but we are coming with you.” While still in the Shire, Frodo asked Sam if he still wishes to follow him on the dangerous quest wherever it might lead and when “most likely neither of us will come back.”

After the Council in Rivendell, as Elrond is deciding who would be the fellowship’s two final companions, Pippin speaks up and insists that he and Merry be added to the company. They desire to go and refuse to be left behind. Elrond planned to send Merry and Pippin back to the Shire to warn the hobbits of events in the outside world. He bluntly tells them they desire to go because they cannot comprehend what lies ahead. Gandalf speaks up for them saying, “If these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go, but they would still wish to go. After listening to Gandalf’s advice and seeing the fervent desire of Frodo’s friends, Elrond relents and names the two hobbits as the final companions. They were trusting in friendship, as Gandalf said, rather than the strength of arms.

Bilbo was petrified by fear as he traveled down the tunnel under the mountain that led to the dragon Smaug’s lair. Tolkien tells us that “going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did…he fought the real battle in that tunnel” before even seeing the dragon. For his friends he overcame his fear and continued on.

On his adventure with the dwarves, Bilbo Baggins often wished he was back home in his hobbit hole. When he faced hunger, he wished he were at Bag End eating eggs and bacon, listening to his tea kettle singing. When he was cold and wet, he wished he was by his fireside smoking a pipe. Bilbo gave up his beloved comforts and risked many dangers. He was instrumental in keeping the quest alive, saving his friends the dwarves, rescuing them from giant spiders in Mirkwood and from captivity by the Elves of Mirkwood.

After finding the ring and escaping the dreadful, dark, dreary orc-filled caverns under the Misty Mountains, Bilbo was going to return to look for the dwarves and Gandalf. Bilbo could have thought only of himself and used his ring, on multiple occasions, to creep back to the Shire as he desired, but he would not abandon his companions. Without the help of the hobbit, the dwarves would have failed in their quest.

While in Lothlórien, Galadriel read Sam’s desire to return to the Shire and have a garden of his own. While looking into the mirror of Galadriel, Sam saw glimpses of the scourging of the Shire and saw the destroyed gardens and trees. Due to the destruction, Sam desired to return home to the Shire, yet he sacrificed his desires and chose to stand by Frodo and his word till the end. Sam was always putting the needs and safety of his master above his own, taking risks, endangering his life, and enduring hunger, fear, and discomfort to save Frodo or ease his suffering.

Treebeard, expecting to be killed as the Ents marched on Isengard, declared, “The last march of the ents…we may help other peoples before we pass away.” Faramir told Frodo and Sam of their desperate situation. “It is long since we had any hope.” The strength of Mordor and its allies continued to grow while Gondor waned, yet the men of Gondor continued to fight on.

While searching for the lost hobbits Merry and Pippin, Aragorn refused to abandon them even if it meant his death. Gimli said they would starve if they went into Fangorn to search for them. The chance of starvation did not affect Aragorn’s stance. Aragorn wished to stay in both Rivendell and Lothlórien rather than go to war. As he leaves the army of Rohan to enter the dangerous paths of the dead, he tells Éowyn that he goes because he must. “I do not choose paths of peril, Éowyn. Were I to go where my heart dwells, far in the North, I would now be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell.”

From the First Age to the War of the Ring, the elves had been fading yet still fighting against the Shadow in what Galadriel called “the long defeat.” Elrond said, “I have seen three ages in the west of the world, and many defeats and many fruitless victories.” As a Christian, this was surely how Tolkien felt when he said, “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat.” Tolkien told his son Christopher they were part of an “ever defeated never altogether subdued side.

In the First Age, until aided by the Valar, the elves failed to defeat Morgoth’s armies and lost many of their kin. During the Second Age, Sauron nearly overran those that remained in Middle-earth. Finally, in the Third Age, they saw the resurgence of Sauron, and at the same

time, more and more elves fled to the west, leaving Middle-earth altogether. Yet those elves who remained steadfastly continued to defy the evils of Sauron and his minions.

At the council of Elrond, Master Elrond advised Glóin, who was concerned about an attack on Erebor and Dale, “There is naught that you can do, other than resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world.”The free peoples resisted tyranny and fought to preserve peace, liberty, and happiness. The Rangers, led by Strider, stood guard on the Shire’s borders, protecting it and thus allowing their simple, agricultural, and libertarian life to be maintained. Aragorn said to Boromir, “Peace and freedom…the North would have known them little but for us [Rangers]…what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep.”The Rangers did so even though the hobbits and the men of Bree were totally unaware the Rangers were protecting them. They offered them no gratitude, and viewed them with suspicion and distrust. Yet Aragorn said, “We would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be.”

Doing nothing, not self-sacrificing, and not risking their lives to oppose evil, as the Rangers did, would allow moral decay and the extension of evil into the Shire (2 Cor 6:14 1 Cor 15:33). There must be those willing to defend against evil to prevent it from spreading and corrupting what is good. We need such knights and warriors today to protect that which is good.

When Aragorn and many of the Rangers had to travel south to engage in the war with Sauron, Bree and the Shire were left vulnerable to the Shadow, and moral and social decay resulted. The scourging of the Shire would never have taken place had the Rangers been able to remain and protect the area. Butterbur, the owner of the Prancing Pony in Bree, lamented that people had to lock up their doors at night and go in early because of fear and thieving. For the first time there was murder in Bree, because, as Butterbur said, “The Rangers have all gone away.” Likewise, Fangorn Forest was slowly withering away. Trees were being destroyed by Saruman to feed the fires of Orthanc. Treebeard admitted, “I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop!” If the Ents had not acted, their land would have been burned for the benefit of Saruman’s lust for power.

If no one was willing to fight or withstand the Shadow, it would have consumed all that is good. Innocence and the right were worth preserving. Places like the Shire, “respectable country inhabited by decent folk,” produced individuals like Frodo, Sam, and Bilbo that Eru could call upon to defeat evil (“you were meant to find the ring”). In the Elder Days when the Noldor killed innocent elves for the first time in history, Mandos warned, “For blood ye shall render blood,” reflecting Genesis 9:6 that “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed.” Thus, murder was to be resisted, not accepted. Justice flows from the character of God.

“Proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.’” — Exodus 34:6–7

Today, we Christians do the opposite. We mix with the culture in our attempts to evangelize modern pagan and atheist America. We go to school to learn their atheistic philosophy; we watch TV shows and newscasts, read materials of a secular humanistic bent, listen to their politicians, and become surprised when so few hold to the truth. Modern schools teach anti-God philosophy, and we fund it. The early Christians did not send their kids to Caesar to be trained in pagan ways; they lived independently by their own ways and customs and discipled the young until they were fully educated and equipped. They were then sent out to the world to testify to the truth and defend it; in this way, they converted the pagan world. Thus, in the first few centuries, the major works of Christians were apologetics related, defending the truth of Christianity and showing why competing philosophies were false.

Today, the pagan world has converted us because we no longer, like Aragorn and the Rangers, defend a Christian world. We give up, and give in to a secular society; now we are like the world, except we play religion on Sunday mornings. The church has become tame and compliant and has retreated into the four walls of the church for an hour or two on Sundays, preaching nothing but John 3:16 and offering no resistance to the growing shadow. We have become just what a secular society demands of us; the Shadow has won.

During the medieval period, lords and knights thought it was their duty to defend God and resist evil. They refused to allow it to grow, and they were willing to die to prevent it. As it was in medieval Europe, Tolkien’s heroes protect and defend what is just and good, defending truth and defeating falsehood. King Edmund said; “I do not desire nor wish that I alone survive after my beloved thegns have been fiercely slain by these pirates in their beds, along with their children and wives. I never was the sort to take flight, and I would rather, if necessary, die for my own nation. God almighty knows that I will never falter from his service, nor from loving his truth. If I die, I live.”

The chivalrous knight was the meekest and most gentle, yet, in battle, the bravest and most willing to give his life for others. He was a protector of outcasts. Chivalry was the medieval code of Christian warriors and warfare, and the free peoples of Middle-earth exemplify this code. Chivalry required knights to be courteous, generous, self-sacrificial, putting others above themselves. They were often but not always noble aristocrats.

A chivalrous knight defended what is right not for himself or for glory in war but to preserve what is good. Numbers 21:21–24 was often used during the medieval period to justify defensive wars. Throughout Catholic Church history, the church has overwhelmingly supported “just war” as a necessary evil in a fallen world. Augustine’s The City of God, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, prominent works on this subject, influenced Tolkien. In Humprey Carpenters book The Inklings he quotes from a discussion about WWII at an Inklings meeting, C. S. Lewis agreed with Tolkien when he said that the “sermon on the mount…does not prohibit war, but revenge.” Leon Gautier’s book Chivalry: The Everyday Life of the Medieval Knight shows how the Church has hated war throughout history but has been willing to defend just war. He cites Church fathers and Church councils in support of his argument.

In AD 793, a letter from Alcuin of York to Higbald revealed that “the pagans had desecrated God’s sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of the saints like dung in the street.” He prayed to God to deliver them “lest the heathen say, ‘Where is the God of the Christians?’” Alcuin pleaded, “You who survive, stand like men, fight bravely and defend the camp of God. Remember how Judas Maccabaeus cleansed the Temple and freed the people from a foreign yoke.”

When the wall of Jerusalem was being rebuilt, enemies of God’s people gathered, mocking the Israelites and readying themselves for an attack. The Prophet Nehemiah told the Israelites, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.” In Esther, the queen risked her life by seeing the king of Persia uninvited when he could have had her killed for doing so. Esther had heard of a plot to destroy the Jews so, despite the danger to her own life, she approached the king, saying,“If I must die, I must die.” By her brave action, the plot was revealed and the Jewish people were saved from extermination. Esther had no armor and no horse, but she was a chivalrous knight.

War in itself was not a good thing, only what was being defended by war. Faramir (whom Tolkien said was most like himself minus the courage) said of the decay of Gondor, “We now love war and valor as things good in themselves, both as sport and an end.”He also stated that war was at best a necessary evil: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all: but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness: nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” And, “I do not slay men or beasts needlessly, and do not gladly even when it is needed.”

In the Elder Days, Manwë, king of the Valar, met Melkor’s force with force only with reluctance. War was not good. It was not a sport or to be desired. Even victory in war, the defeat of evil, was not as glorious or satisfying as anticipated. After the battle of the five armies, Bilbo discovered “victory…seems a very gloomy business.”

A statement by Éowyn, who sought and found glory on the battlefield, gives us the contrasting views of war held by Tolkien, which I believe to be a Christian viewpoint. Éowyn is in Minas Tirith recovering from wounds she received during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. She enters into a discussion with a warden of Gondor who says to her, “The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.” Éowyn responds, “It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two. And those who have not swords can still die upon them.” In other words, war only brings hurt and misery, but there is evil in this world that should be resisted and, if left unchecked, would cause even greater suffering. Therefore, warfare in the correct context is prevention against suffering. Warfare is the domain of those who love peace.

Tolkien himself, who served in WWI, said of his training that learning “the art of killing” was not at all enjoyable. He thought aerial warfare immoral and said to his son, who served in WWII, that “wars are always lost” because “we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring.” Tolkien said the development of the atomic bomb was the “utter folly of these lunatic physicists.” In Bilbo’s Journey, Joseph Pearce quotes Tolkien, who, in 1945 while talking about WWII said, “Well, the first war of the machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter—leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant; the machines. As the servants of the machines are becoming a privileged class, the machines are going to be enormously more powerful.”

War or military victory by force was not, in the end, to bring about desired results. It was only a last resort to be used to prevent evil from corrupting your realm. Treebeard expressed this sentiment when he said, “We ents don’t like being roused, and we are never roused unless it is clear to us that our trees and our lives are in great danger.”

If the free peoples had not defended themselves, all would have been lost. However, warfare was not a substitute savior, or the greatest weapon. Victory by the free peoples would not and could not be achieved solely by military force, as Gandalf said at the last debate, “Victory cannot be achieved by arms.” “Power and force like the Ring,” said Gandalf, “were Sauron’s great hope and our great fear.” Outmaneuvering, outsmarting, wisdom and self-control to destroy the Ring instead of using it, coupled with Frodo and Sam’s love for the Shire, their courage and willingness to self-sacrifice with a touch of divine help, brought about the destruction of Sauron. Most of all, it was looking to the West for aid.

This article is adapted from The Road Goes Ever On and On: A New Perspective on J. R. R. Tolkien and Middle-earth by Jeb Smith.

Footnotes

[1] There are similarities between King Théoden’s death and that of the Germanic Visogth king Theodric. In the 5th century, Atilla The Hun led a coalition of armies from the East. He led this enormous and seemingly unbeatable force into Gaul. The Romans called upon the Germanic barbarians of the North for aid, much like Gondor called upon Rohan. The Huns were pushing back the Romans and their allies until the Visigoths, led by Theodric, flanked the opposition. During the attack, Theodric was displaced from his horse and perhaps trampled to death. Similar to Théoden’s son Éomer, Theoric’s son continued the battle, leading a cavalry charge of elite warriors that helped ensure victory.