I offer some thoughts today, reflections on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I know there’s other writers and priests out there who have made an effort to look at it, but it’s an interest of mine and something that I think bears reflection.

The greatest trial surrounding the One Ring of Power in Tolkien’s novels was the actual temptation to use it. No one, even the evil character Sauron himself, seemed to think that they would do anything but good with the Ring. The character from Gondor thought that if he had the Ring, it would protect his city; the Ring was thought that it would bring order to the world when Saruman spoke about it. And though it was indeed occasionally used to escape from trolls or to get friends out of elfin prisons, every use of the Ring drew the Ring-bearer deeper into a shadow world of non-being. Tolkien certainly wrote his novels in a manner that would allow them to stand on their own: they were not written as allegories. Nevertheless, he embedded in them a wisdom that transcended the bounds of Middle Earth. Modernity, for us, acts as the One Ring of Power. I’ll explain that.

The birth of modernity, that is, the set of ideas that kind of govern and permeate our world as we live in it, which in this case I’ll think of as the forging of the Ring, took place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Plenty of things happened before that to lead up to it, but especially this was founded in around the late 18th and early 19th centuries, driven by the fascination with the principles of rational science. With greater use of those principles we have gained a lot of power over many aspects of nature and of our lives. We’ve gone so far as to unleash the power hidden in atoms themselves. This, of course, has been coupled with a kind of modern myth of democratic empowerment, such that every citizen believes that a wonderful ability to change and shape the world is something that everybody ought to have, and in that sense, in using Tolkien’s imagery, everyone in our world thinks he is a Ring-Lord.

Well, the strange, even paradoxical, temptation of the Modern Project is our temptation to do good. As it was with the Ring, nobody meant to do evil with it; everybody thought they were going to do good, and that simple temptation becomes an irrefutable argument for taking up the Ring of Power. I was sitting in a doctor’s office a while back, browsing through magazines. There was an article about a young singer who was touted as “using her voice to end gun violence.” I’m sure she meant well, but the hyperbole is just a perfectly modern idea. No one will ever “end” gun violence. We will not “end” stick-violence, for that matter, or knife-violence, or hand-balled-up-in-a-fist-violence, or any kind of violence. No doubt, many things could be done to lessen gun-violence, but it’s the nature of the Modern Project that we never seek to curb something: we want to cure it. She wants to end it.

This drive to cure (or “end”) is filled with a utopian assurance that has given rise to our many “wars.” We have a “war on drugs,” a “war on poverty,” a “war on terror,” and so on. The nature of modern war, though, is always “total.” When it is said that there is a “war” on something, there is an indication that no price is too high to pay for victory. That the war is long, or even unending, is beside the point, because it’s a war.

Though we can point to various changes brought about through the application of science, there’s a lot of things, and something in particular that we don’t see. What we don’t see is that the power to do good has not actually produced good people. Those who wield the most power are the most easily corrupted. In Middle Earth terms, we are governed by Ring-wraiths, those who have somehow or another lost the core of their being in their pursuit of power.

The logic of the Ring sounds compelling. How can wielding the power to do good not be a good thing? In the context of Tolkien’s mythology, we understand the dangers. However, our modern myths fail to take account of the effect exercising power over others has on those who do so. And though many of us might argue that we have very little such power, our minds don’t agree. We believe that we either do have that kind of power, or that we should have that kind of power. And our minds are rarely at rest within the context of our lives. We are all in danger of becoming Ring-wraiths, even if only from the anxiety of thinking about what should be done with all that power.

The New Testament presents the crucified Christ as the image of God’s power. God does not act like a Supreme Ring Lord. When he acts, he yields a loving cooperation to his creation. He does not compel or force us. Where all the time when something terrible happens, we get angry at God and say, “Where is he? Why doesn’t he do something?” We want him to be a Ring Lord, and we want him to use the Ring for us. But God does not compel or force us. His power lies in his willingness to lay his life down for us all. He tramples down death by death. Thank about that. The utter powerlessness of death is the very tool he uses to destroy and defeat death itself.

The mythology of modernity has created nicknames for those who would oppose its paradigm of power. Christians who choose the cross can oftentimes be labeled as “Quietists,” hinting that only Ring Lords are true Christians, that if you do not use your Christianity as a tool and a weapon to make a better world, then you’re somehow or other betraying the cross itself. But the truth is that it’s worth noting that the disciples more than once with Jesus wonder why he takes no action. They fail to see that his action is a singular commitment to the cross: He will not turn aside.

I have rarely encountered a Christian in the modern world who has renounced the Ring itself. The truth is that we don’t believe that our “empowerment” has corrupted us. We imagine that the right people, with the right power, exercised in the right manner will solve the problems of the world. We labor and work that we’ll elect them this time around, or keep the bad ones from getting elected. We fail to see that none of us wielding power would be safer or more effective than the other one.

The road to repentance begins with renunciation of the world. The elfin Lady Galadriel, for instance refused the temptation of the Ring when it was offered to her. She said:

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely? In place of the Dark Lord you would set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

It’s a frightful scene, both as it’s portrayed in the movie, and as it’s portrayed in the original books.

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light (we’re told) that illuminated her and left everything else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

“I pass the test,” she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.”

The path of diminishment is the way of the cross. For us as Christians, think of the diminishment on the lips of the Virgin Mary: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word.” She isn’t saying, “Oh boy! Now I get to be the Mother of God! I will be the most powerful woman in the world, and I’ll use my power for good!” What evil nonsense that would be. She passed the test. She allowed herself to become diminished, to become a handmaid of the Lord. And so, in time, God highly exalted her.

There is a “mind” of diminishment, described in Philippians 2:5-11. It’s a willingness to be small and insignificant. That passage speaks of Christ’s way of the cross, in which he emptied himself. God emptied himself and became obedient, even to death on the cross. I think that until we cultivate this mind within ourselves, we will continue to be enthralled, literally, to the lure and lore of modernity. We will continue to imagine ourselves as the soldiers of reforming and reshaping power, the bringers of good into the world.

• Do you think of yourself as part of a contingent that is saving and preserving your Church? I labored for years as a Protestant minister, as a conservative Anglican within a liberal denomination, imagining that somehow or other I was going to save the Church, that I would be part of a reform and make a difference. We didn’t, but I was, if you will, one of those little minor Ring-lords.
  
• Do you worry about political/social issues and whether the right side is gaining ground? Keep worrying. It’ll be the same throughout all your life. Maybe your party will be up, but then again it will later be down. These things go on and on and on. With all the various Ring-lords we elect, they do not do the thing we imagine should be done.
  
• Do you want to make a difference in the world? Is that something that drives your life? God is the one who makes a difference in the world, and he makes it by the way of the cross. He has not chosen us, called us, or commanded us to make a difference in the world; he has called us to make disciples. People say to me, “Yes, but if we make enough disciples, that will change the world,” and I’m telling you, if your focus is to change the world, you’ll lose your way. You don’t have to believe me; I’m just telling you like it is.
  
• Are you frequently provoked to anger by what you see around you? If you take up the Ring of power, the path of power, this modern mythological path—if you take that up, you will be an angry person, mostly because you’ll be frustrated. You’ll think you should do something, you’ll think that others should do something, and you will be angry that you will discover that, in fact, you’re pretty much powerless. The Ring doesn’t work very well.

These and many similar things are symptoms of a growing disease. They are mythic notions that draw us into a wraith-like existence, an existence that is just a shadow.

Refuse the Ring. It’s not ours to use or own. Just throw it away. Find a handy volcano and drop it in. And I’ll try to do the same.

I think about it: I can already hear many voices of protest—but, but, but: throw it away. Glory to God!