Being overstimulated is such a weird thing to explain to people. Like “hey sorry, I’m not mad at you and this is nobody’s fault and I’m not blaming anyone for it happening, I am aware this is a part of regular everyday life but I am mentally crumbling because There Have Been Things Happening nonstop for 5 hours straight back to back with no breaks, and I really need to sit down in complete silence for like 15-25 minutes, after which I will be completely fine and can proceed as normal. But if I’m not allowed to have that, I will resort to violence.”
The Christian message in Lord of the Rings touched me in
ways that the Christian message in Narnia didn’t and couldn’t, and it wasn’t
just because its subtlety and complexity, it was because of its humanity.
Narnia says – a huge divine lion that is Jesus will sacrifice itself for you.
Lord of the Rings says – ordinary people will be called on to sacrifice
themselves for one another, ordinary people who are no better or worse than
you, in fact you might be the one who is called. Aslan walks to his death, but
he’s superhuman, he’s above suffering. Meanwhile Frodo’s suffering is visceral
and human and small and sad and increasingly uncomfortable to watch, which makes
him a much better Christ figure. (And of course he isn’t exactly meant
to be a Christ figure, he’s the everyman, he’s your neighbour, he’s a WW1 soldier,
he’s just a little guy who has to take on unthinkable suffering to save the
world, which probably brings us back around to Christ, but a very human version
of Christ.)
In Narnia, divine providence and intervention tends to come in the form of a
huge divine Jesus lion. In Lord of the Rings, providence manifests as a
new-found ability, within you, to make the right choice or to shoulder the
difficult task. It manifests as a fortunate coincidence that is nevertheless
built on your own, and other people’s, previous actions. And when you are
entirely lost, providence manifests as another small and fallible human being
physically picking you up. Yes, there are eagles, but the eagles come after
salvation, not before.
And then there are C.S. Lewis’ attitudes to death. He may have changed his mind
in his later writings, I don’t know, but I read The Last Battle as a teen, and
remained blazingly angry about its attitude to death for about a decade, until
I read Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, put two and two together, and from that
point, I just felt hollow. On some
level, Lewis genuinely believed it is good for a good person to die, even to
die young, because then there’s no more risk of them doing a sin and becoming
bad. I simply cannot accept a worldview where three young people dying in a
train crash is actually good because they are going to heaven.
Whereas
Tolkien’s capable of acknowledging that death and grief and loss are painful,
and he makes the point that we should accept mortality not because it’s good,
but because the futile struggle against death will cost us all the valuable
things we could have been doing with our lives. The Silmarillion and other
posthumously published writings (Atrabeth) really engage with themes of
mortality and immortality, and how immortal elves are led astray by their wish
to avoid change just like mortal men are led astray by their wish to avoid
death. And nowhere in his writings does Tolkien resolve the Fate of Men by
saying that of course they go to heaven when they die. There is no
answer, no easy solution, no faith offering perfect solace, nothing to defang
the moral and spiritual quandary. Mortal Men in Tolkien’s world have to live
good, noble lives, and have to die good, noble deaths without any certainty of
what happens after death. Tolkien has faith in God, but Tolkien’s characters
have to make their choices without threat of divine punishment or hope of
divine reward, which is the only way to write coherently about morality. Or
people. Or anything.
When someone tells us they don’t love Jesus Christ (Jordan Petersen, Ren Gill, Bill Maher, Elon Musk etc) we are to take them at their word and neither praise their public oratory nor give much room for their words in our minds. The enemy of (our enemies) Woke culture, Liberalism, Drag Queens indoctrinating children, transgenderism, CRT is not our friend. That’s Islamic nonsense. Jesus said those who are not for us are against us. I’m sticking with that.
I’m seeing far too many Christians praising atheist professors, inventors, celebrities and progressives just because they happen to have problems with some of the same ungodly and tyrannical things we’re also against. That doesn’t make them our friends. They hate us too and have in the past and will in the future denigrate our Lord, slander His Church and spend time and money to wage war against Christendom.
i learned that the top (summit) of Mt Everest is grey limestone, complete with embedded marine invertebrate fossils (e.g. trilobites). This means that the rock that makes up the top Mt Everest was once underwater (x)
Anna never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.Luke 2:37
Today let’s look at the interesting character, Anna from the Bible. Married for only seven years, she spent the long years of her widowhood fasting and praying in the temple. A prophetess, she was one of the first to bear witness to Jesus.
As a young widow, she would have been the most vulnerable in the society. Perhaps she was lonely, I wonder whether she even had a child or a family to go back to. But all her devotion to her God paid a rich dividend when she saw the King Himself, as He was brought to the temple. All those years of waiting ended in her meeting the Messiah face to face. Are we devoted like Anna? Are we in anticipation of meeting our Saviour one day?
“But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately. And He said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.””
— Luke 8
Her relationship with Jesus, even when man cannot seem to help.
