December 16, 2003

Re: Christianity
smack

First of all Bob Praz thank you for trying to prove me wrong, I sincerely hope you are right.
To Lannor, well first of all it must be said I do not have a particular religion, all though I believe in God and, and see truly Christian people as some of the kindest people in the world as long as they don’t preach about Christianity. But I also find it offending that they claim LOTR is a Christian book, but there is a big but. You mustn’t say that people who disagree in your opinion aren’t Tolkien fans. I do not claim you are wrong, but that after my understanding of the article you have misunderstood the message. They don’t say that Tolkien wrote the book with any kind of religious intentions. They simply say that if you interpret the morale of the book, has values of Christianity. If Tolkien wrote some of these values subconsciously, because he as a person find these values as great qualities I wont and can’t answer. Anyway the thing the Christians we are hearing about in the article means is, that some of the qualities Tolkien has given the “good” characters are similar to what qualities the bible is telling about. And he might have given them those, and the qualities they used to complete their quest because he as a Christian man also finds these qualities great, without intending to come with a religious message. A perfect example is the way Frodo forgives trust the treacherous Gollum, leads in the end to the destruction of the ring, along with Gollums greed doesn’t pay off and in the end he gets punished. So what they are saying in my opinion is true the most of it. These good qualities, which is familiar to the Christian qualities, and the forces of the good prevails, and the negative characteristics such as power, greed, possessiveness fails and get punished. So the hidden message from Tolkien subconsciously or consciously is that the identified qualities of the good characters always will guide you well.
But as you say it isn’t the main reason at all for Tolkiens writing.