The Response to Evil. Part 1. Tolkien.
- Jul 16, 2018
- 3 min read
It's kind of a big question, right? The reality of darkness, suffering, and evil is something we will have to deal with and anyone who says differently is selling something. I found (as usual) that The Lord of the Rings eloquently illustrated to me the categories of options we have when faced with evil, what each of them looks like, and what each leads to.
Option 1: Stay out of it - most of the Hobbits
And it's understandable, the rumor of the Shadow in the East seems far too distant to be real to most of them, so they ignore it. It even works for a while - usually they don't get bothered by the outside world. But eventually they do and when they do, they're essentially helpless: Saruman shows up and takes control of them with very little effort. To ignore the reality of evil and try to find a safe place away from it may seem to work for a while, but you can't hide forever, and when evil does show up, you will be defenseless.
Option 2: Take on all of it - Saruman and Denethor
This option might be the most dangerous, because it looks like the virtuous, noble option. Saruman and Denethor were both powerful forces for good, actively opposing Mordor. They both possessed palantir, seeing stones, which allowed them to see the power that Sauron was amassing (and which Sauron was also capable of manipulating). The word "palantir" literally translated means "far seeing", which, if you know your Greek, is the identical translation of television. Which I take not as a caution against technology in general, but an illustration of the danger of the news. At the click of a button we can see everything that's going wrong across the planet (without really any comparable reports on the good that rises up to meet it). That's not automatically a bad thing, but it is an extremely dangerous thing - there is no way for any individual to fix all the problems in the world (only God can do that), and the temptation to despair is strong. That's what happened to both Saruman and Denethor, their heightened awareness of how much power the darkness had led both of them to despair. The despair of one led him to actively join forces with the Enemy, the despair of the other to actively keep the strongest force for good (Minas Tirith) from doing anything. To think that the solving all of the world's problems is up to you, will eventually lead to despair, and despair can make you do awful things.
But we are supposed to fight for what is good, so what's left?
Option 3: Do the Thing In Front of you, the thing that is both too big and too small - basically all of the heroic characters
Frodo's decision to take the Ring to Mordor
Boromir's decision to protect Merry and Pippin at all costs
Theoden's decision to ride to the aid of Gondor
Eowyn's decision to stand between the Witch King and Theoden
Gandalf's decision to light the beacons
Aragorn's decision to distract Sauron by attacking Mordor
the list goes on...
(There's so much I want to say about how powerful and beautiful each of these examples are, but I think I'll let them speak for themselves.)
When faced with the overwhelming enormity of evil, over and over again, the characters who actually make a difference for good are the ones who take up the task that is set before them. Usually this task seems too big for them to accomplish but also too small to make any difference against their Enemy. But it is these heroic actions, small and great, that are woven together and eventually do actually defeat the impossible darkness.
When we do the thing that is in front of us, the thing that is both too big and too small, and trust the Great Storyteller to take care of the big picture, that's when we actually make a difference.
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