Joy beyond the walls of the world

The world of fantasy literature is usually regarded as the domain of children, but, as Jesus tells us, “whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15). British author J.R.R. Tolkien is famous for The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1965), both later made into blockbuster movies.

Middle Earth is the land of Tolkien’s fantasy and, although it is a land of strange creatures and unfamiliar names, it is a land much like our own with sunshine and storms, love and hate. Middle Earth is no Great Good Place, a fairy land of ethereal existence where evil is non-existent. Rather, it is a world inhabited by people (and hobbits), smells and seasons, fears and laughter, much like our own.

The story of Middle Earth I cannot relate here. I could not do it justice. Briefly, it concerns a journey taken by a fellowship of friends (hobbits) to the land of Mordor – a land of fear and terror, of powers so overwhelming that only complete fools would attempt such a journey. And though the members of the fellowship possess their measure of foolishness, fools they are not. They go on their journey because they have a mission to destroy the one Ring, the Ring that the evil Lord of Mordor needs to complete his total power that will lead ultimately to the destruction of Middle Earth. The journey is hazardous and terrible but, in the end, we rejoice when the Ring is destroyed. We understand when Frodo says, “It must often be so . . . when things are in danger someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

Sudden & mysterious

Tolkien’s world is fantastic yet it has an inner truth experienced by even cynical 20th- and 21st- century readers. The key to understanding the power of this inner truth is Joy, that joy that we feel when, in the midst of a hopeless and catastrophic situation, there comes consolation and hope. It is not a fugitive or escapist joy for it does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure. It is rather that Joy experienced within the reality of living when, through a turn of sudden and mysterious grace, we can deny universal, final defeat and catch a glimpse of a “Joy beyond the walls of the world.” With those words from Tolkien, it becomes clear that the Christian narrative contains a fairy-story that embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. It begins with the joy of Creation and ends with the joy of Resurrection. And though it is filled with the terrors of sin and suffering, it provides, in Christ’s birth, the eucatastrophe of his death, and his joyous resurrection the joyous “turn” in human history. Thus, Christian joy is supreme, it is true, it is the Lantern of Light that aids us as we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. God is the Lord of angels and humans – and of hobbits and elves. Fantastic!