[Originally published April 21, 2015]
Great fiction writers have taught me that there may not be such a thing as fiction at all. Great fiction – the stories that transcend generations – are just a new way of telling a true story – the story of the human condition.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, with its make-believe hobbits, wizards, dwarves, hellish orcs, and celestial elves, is just such a story. In the very real battle of good versus evil that each of us fight every day, here are just a few lessons we learn from this fantastical battle of good versus evil:
Evil never sleeps – not ever. If it looks like it’s been defeated, it just goes underground to build its strength back up, restructure, and resurface to fight again.
The war between good and evil is waged on two fronts: it seems to be perpetually moving over broad, sweeping landscapes with legions of soldiers; but it always starts deep inside one individual heart at a time.
The good who fight evil are in many cases not the “most likely to’s”. And yet, when you see the task at hand – what must be done to battle evil this time, the small, the weak, the “least of these” end up being not only the only choice, but very often, the inevitable, and best choice.
When it comes right down to it, good would rather not fight at all. Those who are good look desperately for anyone else – ANYONE ELSE – to fight evil for them. Or, when the battle du jour is won, forgetting the reality of Lesson Number One – that evil never sleeps - they just want to go home. Like the hobbits that so sweetly portray the truly good in this world, those who are good mostly just want to stay home, visit with friends, bask in the sweetness of the shire, and, of course, have lunch…since it’s been clear since elevensies since anyone has eaten.
The person in history who really got me thinking about this was George Washington – the most anti-hobbit-built military hero ever to mount a horse. Tall, handsome, disciplined – the man looked, sounded, and acted like a man who was born to be followed into battle. But underneath his Aragorn exterior, beat the heart of a Frodo Baggins.
Washington continued to find himself at just the right place at the right time – or the wrong place, at the wrong time – depending on how you want to look at it. Because of his extraordinarily high character, he continued to be needed at critical moments of the beginnings of the new nation of the United States.
But…he didn’t want the ring! After the French and Indian War, he just wanted to go home. After the Revolutionary War, he just wanted to go home. After the Constitutional Convention, he just wanted to go home. And finally, after serving two terms as president, he just…wanted…to go…home.
With all his years of public service, away from home, there was no place Washington wanted to be more than Mount Vernon. It was most definitely his shire. And in spite of his lifelong yearning to be there, he responded to the call to serve – every single time.
Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said this:
"’To do good’ is the business of life. ‘To enjoy rest’ is the happiness of heaven. We pluck premature for forbidden fruit when we grasp at rest on this side of the grave.”
Tolkien’s stories hold a beautiful analogy that affirms that reality about life: the shire is an almost Eden-like memory, and the beauty of Rivendell is a mere hint of a more heavenly future existence.
George Washington possessed a nobility of character that instinctively seemed to know this. He said:
“How, in the end, will we be able to live with ourselves when we weren’t our highest self and didn’t do the right thing in the first place?”
Tolkien created 6-toed hobbits…but our country’s beginnings depended on a living, breathing, 6-foot tall hobbit. Both teach me that the fight isn’t over in this life, and call for something higher in me to step up and out…of my shire.
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