As a disclaimer, I’d already conceived of this article and title before Viggo Mortensen donned a Frodo/Sam ’24 t-shirt on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. My friend Brandon Knight, of William Carey University, can confirm that Aragorn stole my thunder, and not I his.
I began drafting this article on July 5th. A few weeks ago, after wrapping up what I thought were final edits, former President Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in Butler, PA. In light of that awful event, I’ve made a few revisions, but the substance of my argument is largely unchanged. Indeed, it is more applicable now, given the heightened tensions and political season ahead. Even before the attempt on the former president’s life, amongst Right and Left and Middle, there’s been a sense that something is very, very wrong. Deep down, we all know, or strongly suspect, that our current political trajectory does not bode well.
For Christians to breathe life into the nation’s political life, we need to remember what Christ requires of us—to love our enemies—and commit ourselves to doing it.
Please understand, I’m not making a partisan claim. I’m not saying, like many Democrats, that a Trump victory will result in the end of our democracy. Nor am I suggesting, like many Republicans, that another Democratic administration portends our country’s final decline. As was rightly pointed out in Butler’s immediate aftermath, rhetoric of that sort from both sides must stop if we’re to have any chance at lowering the political temperature.
I think an honest evaluation of the problem is both more sober, and more sobering, than prevailing partisan hyperbole. While such doomsday prognostications certainly play a massive role in intensifying political rancor, it’s my view that our nation’s problems run deeper than any one party, politician, or platform. And they cannot be fixed by any one party, politician, or platform. The sad truth is that the partisan vitriol will likely only be intensified, no matter who the next president is, because the cancer that afflicts our body politic is not exclusive to the Right or the Left. We the people, together, have fed it, in our pride and in our tendency toward idol worship. In Christian parlance, we’re all sinners, sick with (political) passion.
The outcome of the November election cannot fundamentally address this national spiritual condition. And because we nurse our spiritual affliction instead of treating it, political “victories” in contemporary America only reinforce and deepen partisan divides. Whichever political outcome comes to pass this fall, it’s very possible it will send the losers into self-righteous gesticulations that are even more polemical, more extreme, more apocalyptic. My prayer is that the events of a few weeks ago will in some way curtail these tendencies. I remain hopeful, but history shows us that the “better angels of our nature” are fickle. We do not forgive; we do not forget. This is because, most of the time, political struggle impassions the heart; it usually does not soften it.
Sometimes history does call for fervent political passion. There are righteous causes that can and must be addressed by political action. But given America’s current state, it’s my opinion that, as Christians, we need to face our political reality not by upping the political ante, but by recalling what seems to be a largely forgotten (or ignored) truth: Christians are to imitate Christ not by lionizing political power, but by exemplifying humility, meekness, long-suffering, selflessness, and mercy.
Such virtues are antithetical to modern American political life. Sadly, many Christians have eschewed them in favor of pride, boisterousness, impatience, selfishness, and cruelty. We’re too often self-righteous, power hungry, and quick to condemn our political foes. For Christians to breathe life into the nation’s political life, we need to remember what Christ requires of us—to love our enemies1—and commit ourselves to doing it. Importantly, we must cultivate such virtues without falling into political apathy. I’m not telling you to not vote, or to not care who wins in November. Christians are not (supposed to be) gnostic escapists who ignore the political realities around them. We should care about our national politics, but we should care differently.
What I suggest to you, and what Tolkien shows us in Lord of the Rings, is that true Christian witness—humility and mercy, in particular—are the precise means by which political realities are rescued and restored.
These virtues, put into practice by ordinary citizens in their unseen, daily lives, are actually (not incidentally) more important than which party or candidatedominates the news. They’re critical, in fact, to the teleological arc of history.
Our self-righteous certainty and trust in our own ability to discern truth and wield power has created the political Mordor in which we find ourselves.
Tolkien does something very profound in LoTR. In the characters of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, he demonstrates that it is precisely through humility and mercy that political destinies are determined. Middle Earth is saved not (primarily) by Aragorn’s honor, nor by Gandalf’s wisdom, nor by Gondor’s political machinations, but by the quiet faithfulness, the smallness, even, of two hobbits from the Shire. The other aforementioned characters/factors do play redemptive parts, it’s true, just as national politics do fall within God’s providential plan for nation states. All things work to the good for those who love God.2 But Middle Earth’s political future is secured, in the end, by Frodo’s and Sam’s humble willingness to suffer in love for what they know is right and good.
Compare the hobbits’ way to modern Americans’. The secular answer to our national political strife is to double down—to fight harder for one’s candidate, come hell or high water—because political power is the primary (if not sole) means to the American end: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. “Only by getting Trump reelected,” or “only by keeping the Democrats in power,” can we “avert the existential crisis before us.” Unfortunately, many American Christians have been led astray by such partisan gospels.
Frodo, conversely, has no access to political power, no capacity to shape world events. He doesn’t even have a vote. But by his open heart, by his answer to the Council of Elrond’s call—“I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way”—Sauron is ultimately defeated. If American Christians would adopt Frodo’s way, if we would recognize the power given to each of us, in Christ and by the Spirit, apower that works best in weakness,3 we’d spend less time worrying about political headlines, less energy on social media, and more on asking God to cultivate in us the capacity for mercy, for the willingness to suffer in love. That’s what Christ requires of us. That’s how we imitate Him. Not by the kind of political “courage” that shouts down the opposition, that seeks to “win” at any cost, that ignores Jesus’ command to love our enemies.
Loving our enemies is hard because it requires humility. In The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind Lord of the Rings, Peter Kreeft writes:
Grace is needed because evil is powerful. We are far too weak to have much hope without it. Frodo is wise because he knows this. The whole of Middle Earth—souls as well as bodies—depends on his mission, and he knows he is not strong enough to fulfill it. Yet, because of an implicit trust in grace, he volunteers. […] When we hear “I will take the Ring,” we may think we hear pride, but when we hear “though I do not know the way,” we know we hear humility. […] No one but an arrogant fool could do what Frodo did without throwing an anchor out into the deep of supernatural grace.4
American politics is ripe with “arrogant fools,” like me and you, who would deign to take the Ring, not in humility but in pride. Boromirs we are. Our self-righteous certainty and trust in our own ability to discern truth and wield power has created the political Mordor in which we find ourselves. Frodo saves Middle Earthby bearing the Ring’s burden, day-by-day, step-by-step, in humility and in pain, recognizing (and experiencing) the fact that evil is not just “out there,” but close at hand, even within his own heart. And he trusts implicitly, as did Tolkien, in the sovereign, good, and ultimately victorious grace of the unseen Hand.
As essential as humility is to Frodo’s mission, his most important virtue is mercy. Frodo’s mercy toward Gollum, specifically, is the deciding factor in Middle Earth’s fate. Kreeft, again, points out that, “It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.”5 Many LotR readers’ takeaway is that Frodo “fails” in his mission. At the cracks of Mount Doom, that is, he refuses to destroy the Ring, and it requires Gollum forcefully taking the Ring from Frodo, and accidentally falling into the fire, to complete the deed. But Tolkien’s friend C. S. Lewis pointed out that Frodo did not fail. In one of his letters, he wrote:
Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story […] “that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named.”6
Lewis is gesturing here to the fact that Frodo’s mercy was accounted for by Providence; it was seen by the Author who directs the tale to its proper end. In other words, although Frodo would inevitably “fail” in his task, for all fall short of the glory of God,7 Divine Mercy would see it done because Frodo had himself shown mercy. Those who are merciful will be shown mercy.8
In this way, Tolkien dispels the notion that humility and mercy are simply character traits incidental to the story (i.e., mere character development). Instead, he shows us that they are ultimately the deciding factors, not only of Middle Earth’s political fate, but of Frodo’s own soul. If Frodo had withheld mercy from Gollum earlier in the story, he would have negated the very instrument by which Divine Providence would act at the decisive moment. God conquers, in us and through us, by this sort of mercy. To the extent that we receive and reflect it we participate in His redeeming grace. Those who believe this are often called naive, even by some Christians. But if we extend mercy and grace to our political opponents, even (and especially) when the disagreements are irreconcilable, God will not just reward thatcourage, He will use it to usher in His Kingdom.
Lord of the Rings is mythopoesis: it looks back at Europe’s mythical past. But Tolkien’s sub-creation gives us a picture of courage that transcends and reorders the errors of the present American political discourse. He shows us that virtue actually does make a difference to a peoples’ political destiny, even when it is unseen, quiet, and long-suffering. If American political power brokers continue to fail in exemplifying these traits, walking as Frodo and Sam can help the rest of us abide political moments when, it seems, “all hope is lost.”
No matter how dire we perceive political realities to be, that is, we mustn’t sacrifice righteous means for what we think are righteous ends.
In recent years, in the face of seeming despair, I’ve heard Christians cite Jeremiah’s exhortation to the Israelites exiled in Babylon—to seek the good of that city—in order to forward a kind of overreaching political activism that sacrifices Christian virtue for political pragmatism. The problem with this interpretation, of course, is that it’s left to the denomination, or pastor, or congregant to decide which political action is “more Christian” than the alternatives.
Christians should indeed influence our nation’s public life, but faithfulness is not measured in terms of political fidelity. It is made manifest by teleological truth. Because God, in Jesus, has already secured and initiated the redemption and renewal of all things, we should be confident enough to remain steadfast in our witness, even when things get hard. No matter how dire we perceive political realities to be, that is, we mustn’t sacrifice righteous means for what we think are righteous ends. Many American Christians give lip service to the belief that God will make all things right in the fullness of time, but in their impatience and unbelief attempt to supplant God in that drama. They take matters into their own Republican or Democratic hands, crusading to save “us” from impending doom brought on by “them.”
The hard reality is that things in this country could get worse. We have no way of knowing, much less controlling, the arc of history. But whatever comes, as Christians, we’re called to endure by being more like Frodo. We can only do that, we can only be as hobbits, by remembering that our hope does not hinge on November. It was secured by a dying God-Man who looked on his (political) persecutors in humility and in mercy: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.9
Father, forgive us—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike—and instill in us faithful witness as we walk through this American political Mordor.
