Column: Image to Image: Musings on Faith, Media, and Story
September entry: “My Foolishness and God’s Wisdom” (September 2024)
Column Description: Image to Image: Musings on Faith, Media, and Story is a monthly column that illuminates old and new ideas about media ecology from a Christian perspective. Dr. Mitchell will explore what it means to bear God’s image and Christian witness in a mediated world, with a particular focus on the relationships between theology, media, and orthopraxy across different Christian traditions.
By Chase Mitchell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Media and Communication, East Tennessee State University
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September 2024
My Foolishness and God’s Wisdom
J.R.R. Tolkien never did systematic theology, per se. But his literary opus, The Lord of the Rings, as well as the larger Middle Earth legendarium, is chock full of theological insights. Tolkien masterfully, and subtly, “does theology” through the words and deeds of his fictional characters.
Lately I’ve been rereading the books, and was struck by words that Tolkien puts in the hobbit Merry Brandybuck’s mouth in The Return of the King:
“It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little.”
The first time I read The Lord of the Rings I was in high school. I’m sure the wisdom of this passage, and many others like it, didn’t resonate so deeply as they do now. Time and experience have tilled the soil of my heart and mind such that Merry’s words, as I read them today, are more deeply impressed.
What I take from Merry, and from Tolkien, is an uncommon humility. And with it, deep Christian wisdom.
As “intellectuals,” many of us fancy ourselves wise, or at least on the way to being wise, and we’re generally pleased with ourselves for it. After all, our knowledge is hard won and (hopefully) contributes something of value to our communities. But the danger of being learned is conflating knowledge with wisdom. Knowledgeable people are not always wise. And sometimes wise persons have very limited knowledge, in the word’s narrowest sense.
As a hobbit who loves frequent meals, pipeweed, and a cozy armchair by the fire, Merry isn’t naturally predisposed to seek out the high and lofty Mysteries. He knows about them “a little,” and is wise enough to realize they are important. He genuinely loves the things he is “fitted to love,” but also recognizes that the simplicity and security of the Shire is only made possible because “things deeper and higher” are there to ground, direct, and protect it.
Contrast Merry with the typical academic. Many think—in their educated hubris—that they may dispel, by mere intellectualism, the gods’ claims on humans. There are no Mysteries beyond our reach, they say, only mysteries to be studied, understood, and used. Further, they are quick to judge the bourgeois masses for their simple pleasures. Perched atop self-aggrandizing castles, thinking persons can be smug in their dismissal of life’s “lesser” pursuits.
It’s me. I’m party to the “they.” Sometimes I get bored, impatient, even angry, with other folks’ “common” interests. Whether football or fashion or politics or Pontiacs, I’m pleased with myself for seeing through their vapidity. How silly, at best, or ignorant, at worst, they are for investing so much time, energy, and love in worldly things. So I say. I’m especially quick to assign blame to my Christian brothers and sisters for not identifying and—as I would have it—abandoning such plebeian interests.
What a fool I can be.
Tolkien’s wisdom in Merry shames me. The hobbit knows, as I also do but often forget, that in His merciful humility, God fits each soul according to His purposes, in due time. All loves, when properly ordered in Christ, serve to build up the believer in faith. It’s true that many times our loves are disordered, and that football or fashion can become idols. But it’s also true that Love abides all things—politics and Pontiacs included—in order to transfigure them, and us, by the light of grace.
Who am I to judge God’s temporal “fitting” of my neighbors’ loves, loves that God may be using for His eternal purposes? All it takes is a second of reflection, a moment off my high horse, to see that despite my snobbery and self-righteousness, Love haunts even those arenas where idolatrous love runs rampant. The Big Game, for all the devilry that surrounds it, also presents opportunities for God’s truth to be revealed: in an act of humble sportsmanship, in concern over an injured competitor, or in a spotlight on a player’s faith.
Even in cases where idolatry is full blown, where God has been pushed totally aside, He can use the resulting (and inevitable) disappointment to redirect hearts to Himself. At one time, I too put inordinate hope in things like sports, and sex, and career success. Eventually, I discovered that such cracked cisterns don’t hold water. But I wonder if I would’ve arrived at that conclusion, and redirected my attention to Christ, without having first tried to quench my thirst from those tainted wells? Probably not.
I think this is why Paul tells the Romans not to scorn the company of ordinary people (Romans 12:16). He’s not being patronizing or suggesting that all loves, all tastes, all pursuits are equal. Rather, it’s a nod to the fact that God alone fits us to the life best suited for Love to take root. As I would have it, when I’m frustrated or impatient, Christians would cast their “lesser” loves into the fire. In my pride, in my vain sophistication, I would deign to limit the ways that God Loves us, Loves me, into being.
As Christians who happen to think for a living, we can be spartan in pursuit of truth. If it’s not obviously and directly serving God, toss it out. There are cases in which that is the correct posture. But more often we should cultivate patience, abiding our neighbors’—and especially our Christian neighbors’—“simple” loves. Where we might think we see arrested development, God could be working out His plans, imperceivably, precisely through them.
The moral of the story is: If you think you’re extraordinary, you’re probably not. If you actually are extraordinary (and only God can say so), it’s only because you were once ordinary, and Christ loved you into higher things.
* The views of any CCSN columnists are their own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the CCSN. We invite and embrace a wide range of views and critiques on important communication and cultural issues from a Christian perspective. The CCSN is a community of Jesus followers who study communication. We do not support or promote a particular social, political, or denominational agenda.