There is a strange contradiction that emerges whenever a large scale survey sets out to discover what book tops the list of the all-time best.
The Lord of the Rings frequently emerges as the most popular read. And yet, there are few women, no feminism and no sex. It is about as counter cultural as one could imagine. So how is it possible that this book has snuck underneath the vast weight of social conditioning to reach into the hearts of so many readers with such impact?
Part of the answer must lie in the nature of myth and story. We love well told stories; but above all, we love well told stories that embody profound truth.
The average reader is often surprised to discover that JRR Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and that what he wrote and how he wrote was intricately bound up with his Catholicism. He wrote to a Jesuit friend, Robert Murray:
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”
Tolkien maintained elsewhere: “Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world.”
In this pre-Christian, pre-history narrative forged in the fire of his imagination, a natural theology embedded in an assumed monotheism was played out in the language of myth. What use myth? asked CS Lewis.
“Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality … The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which had been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’”
Why the Catholic underpinning matters we will come to shortly, but for the moment there is fresh interest in The Lord of the Rings because Amazon has created a prequel. So in the next few months the media will be full of Tolkienesque action and drama. But will they reflect the worldview that Tolkien wove into his characters and text, or will they simply pirate the names and categories of Middle Earth and build them round a very different philosophy and theology?
We won’t know until the series is released shortly, but as we struggle to share the faith with a new generation it can only help us to remind ourselves of how the popularity of the Lord of the Rings’ myth is inextricably linked to authenticity of the Catholic Faith.
The central ideological struggle of our times is expressed by the choice between compassion and power.
Consider the two iterations of Marxism. Marxism 1.0 looked to the explosive power of political revolution and Marxism 2.0 uses the softer but equally effective method of the redistribution of power.
Christianity, in opposition, insists that human beings are made in the image of God and God is holy compassion. Jesus warned that the lure of power would carry us away from God, not towards him.
The great attraction of The Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien presents the combat between heroism, humility, courage and compassion on the one hand and the crushing ambition of force, control and power on the other, in a way that speaks as much to the subconscious as to the soul of the reader.
Sauron may attract those who are in awe of his all-seeing eye, and are impressed and frightened by the scope of his power. But there is something in the human heart that resonates with the humility of the hobbit, unseen because humility, faithfulness and sacrifice are not recognised as valuable currency by the powerful.
Unrecognised and unseen, the hobbits creep to the edge of Mount Doom against the odds; and even there only the mercy shown towards treachery allows the addiction to power to be overcome. It is only because Frodo shows mercy to Gollum that Gollum is free to play his part in the consummation of Frodo’s courage, carrying the ring into the flames in spite of Frodo’s frailties.
We have seen this myth before, played out between Judas and Jesus. Judas’s treachery and betrayal, raw in horror and threat, becomes the means God uses to defeat humanity’s addiction to power, and the stain on the soul of the moral corruption that it leaves in its wake.
If the script writers of the new Amazon rewrite of the Tolkien prequel opt for raw magic, the lure of power and the mist of moral ambiguity, no borrowing of any name or character will have the capacity to connect with the human heart as Tolkien did or, as Tolkien knew, as Jesus does.
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