We "see only the tip of the full story here—and only the seeds of the rich, biblical themes sown into the saga by Tolkien"
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
“Tolkien’s classic quest is interpreted through the wider lens of his full Middle-Earth works.”
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I don’t know why people keep trying to push the idea that Tolkien’s works have a biblical message. Tolkien himself wrote that he hated allegories, and his stories were just that… stories. Not only that, but his stories are full of sorcery and magic, and scary creatures. His books pretty much started the whole Fantasy genre, which, if one merely takes a look at, is full of monsters, and demons, and occult subjects.
I concur with much of your observation with respect to the surprising praise it has received from Christian quarters as being something more than it is, particularly with claims if Biblical values somehow to be discovered if we look close enough. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series as a young adult and found what you described, a fantasy without deliberate types intended to be translated in the mind of the reader with a Biblical grid.
A good example of this is from John Piper who at his Desiring God website in an article about “how to watch the hobbit” claims that the story intends a ” profound spiritual experience”. Wow, and he is not kidding. UGH.
This just goes to show how much evangelical Christianity has changes within my lifetime. (And I am only 32 years old.) When I was growing up, my parents would have never allowed me to watch movies like the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or read books with occult themes. But now, for some reason, it has become trendy among popular evangelical teachers, to push the idea that we can somehow find biblical messages in almost any movie or book, no matter how evil it is.
This sounds to me like the serpent’s lie… “when you eat of the fruit , then you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
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