Review: The Hobbit, Battle of the Five Armies

I will try my hardest to keep my posts short, if only so that I can post them before I run out of time (a guy's got to sleep, you know). I have three short points to make.

The Hobbit III: Battle of the Five Armies

Could have been called: Big Ideas As Displayed By Little People

Aesop's Fables meets World of Warcraft

 Synopsis: A self-obsessed Dwarf king and self-righteous Elven king almost completely lose sight of everything that's really important in life.

Observation One:

Thorin Oakenshield gets struck with what's figuratively referred to by the old dwarf as "Dragon Sickness," which is apparently a literary device of JRR Tolkien's to represent hubris (greed borne of pride). He becomes obsessed with his own greatness and riches, and begins to see everyone around him as an enemy, a threat. He singlemindedly pursues the 'heart of the mountain,' ignoring the welfare of needy refugees and foolishly attempting to fight off an army of Elves with only 13 people (is that term applicable to dwarves? I'm not that into the lore).

It serves, through Bilbo and Dwalin's perception of him, as a poignant (and almost awkwardly lengthy, in terms of screen time) reflection of how people around us -- or ourselves -- can become self-destructively prideful in pursuit of greatness, glory, power, autonomy -- whatever you see the Heart of the Mountain as representing.

But the best part was the way Thorin recovers. Many other movies have done poorly with portraying a character who's fallen into a ditch, typically showing a spontaneous and total conversion upon the sudden realization of a one-liner that another character conveniently spoke to them at just the right moment. Reality is nothing like that. What the Hobbit did better was to show the character's transformation as taking place within his own mind. Ultimately, other people can only support you, but repentance is something that happens on an individual level. Thorin is walking in the hall of the castle and multiple thoughts are shown going through his head. The cinematography represents the collective weight of these as guiding him to a realization and awareness of what he's done wrong, and as he feels sincere remorse over it, he is shown seeing himself sinking into a pit. The best thing the director did was to, without any dialogue, have Thorin grab his crown in disgust and throw it down.

That is the root truth. Repentance and restoration comes from dethroning ourselves as the kings of our own lives. Thorin Oakenshield fancied himself a great king now that he had a crown, but Dwalin said that "you have always been my king," and that now he had become something shameful. When Thorin's life had been about a greater purpose than himself (reclaiming his people's heritage), he had been a lightning rod for his friends to rally in support of. But when he thought that because he wore a crown, that he now had authority, and his purpose became to seek his own ends, then his friends were grieved.

The symbolism is apparent; we become restored as heirs to the kingdom when we cease trying to be king and put others before ourselves. At the end, Thorin sacrificed his life to fight the enemy, laying it down for the sake of his friends. That's not to equate the character with a Christ-figure. Tolkien, catholic though he was, differed from C S Lewis's more overt Christian themes and in his own stories attempted to bury them more deeply in the narrative. Being willing to give ourselves for others is a theme consistent with Biblical Christianity, without needing to pigeon-hole the characters in LOTR or the Hobbit as representing Jesus or Satan.

Observation Two:

When Thorin lies dying, he calls Bilbo his true friend. In context, Bilbo had found the heart of the mountain and hidden it from Thorin, and then sneaked out of the castle and given it to Thorin's arch rival, the Elf lord Thranduil. Bilbo's hope had been that when Thranduil would offer it to Thorin, the latter would be willing to give aid to the refugees and return the treasures belonging to Thranduil in return for that which he wanted so badly.

As it turns out, Thorin refused, showing that pride is always stronger than greed. The desire to have things is really an outgrowth of the desire to have power, which is an expression of the desire to be in charge, make the rules, be your own King... Only somebody who's willing to step off the throne can be reasoned with.

At the end, Thorin gratefully acknowledged Bilbo's trustworthy friendship. He had not been a 'yes man,' doing what would make Thorin happy, or doing what would evade his wrath. He had been willing to risk his hatred, or even death, to do the right thing. Whereas I suspect neither Tolkien nor Peter Jackson had this intent in mind, I saw this as easily representative of the fact that telling someone the truth -- i.e. the Gospel when they don't want to hear it -- is always the right thing to do, and if they are later converted, they will be grateful that you did the hard thing and stood against them and were not willing to compromise.

Observation Three:

The dynamic between elves and dwarves has served in the Lord of the Rings series to provide commentary on how people from different social classes, cultures or "races" could initially have animosity toward each other but eventually come to see each other as friends and respect each other despite coming from or going to very different places.

The fact of elves being functionally immortal (living tens of thousands of years if not prematurely killed in battle) made for interesting analysis of some things Thranduil said with respect to Kili and Tauriel's budding romance. At one point in particular, he told her it wouldn't be worth it for her to go after him to save him, because since he was mortal, he would die anyway, indicating that he thought her efforts were futile. A similar dialogue occurs regarding Galadriel and Aragorn in the LOTR movies. "They are mortal."

Again, it's not a perfect analogy, and I'm not trying to construct one. What I have been doing here has been to use themes in the movies to stimulate contemplation of similar themes in the nonfiction world. In this case, the comparison of dwarves, elves and men on the basis of mortality and disposition makes me think of the differences between the Gentiles, Jews and the Saints as described by Romans 9-11. In reality there is overlap. More similar to the movie, in reality we all interact, even though we note differences between each other.

Elves (saints) and humans (gentiles, incl. professing believers) are superficially similar, whereas dwarves (Jews) are obviously different from both, as well as withdrawn, stubborn and consumed with yearning for the return of their long-ago glories. Men and dwarves are both quite capable of forming romances with Elves, but because only the Elves are immortal, romances with non-elves are guaranteed to result in a long separation, and the knowledge of their mortality induces heartbreak even before their death occurs. Thranduil (compare to a Christian who has no compassion for the Lost) rightly discourages Tauriel from pursuing romance with a dwarf ("a house divided against itself cannot stand"), but he does it with no love in his voice. At the end of the film, it seems as if he has a bit of a wake-up call, a hint of temporal redemption for himself, when Tauriel says "why does it (love--or the loss of a loved one) hurt so much?" and he replies, "because it was real." Perhaps the lesson here is that even if a lifelong love -- marriage -- cannot be, that does not mean that those who are promised immortality should not love or show love to strangers, those who are outside their earthly or heavenly society.

If you as a Christian watch the movies again, and put yourself in the shoes of the often snotty and self-righteous, self-concerned Elves ("the elves are for the elves," to borrow from a twist on a C S Lewis' Narnia line) and imagine the dialogue between elves and dwarves, or elves and men, to be as dialogue between a saved Christian and unsaved of various stripes, then it might be uniquely convicting for you, or at least very thoughtful, in ways you may or may not have already perceived.

That's the thought I leave you with.

~ Rak Chazak

Ray Comfort's The Way of The Master, As Told By CS Lewis

 I’ve been reading a few chapters a night out of Mere Christianity, a seminal work by CS Lewis that I’d heard much about and even quoted from but never yet read, which [my friend] gave me. What I didn’t realize was that most of the chapters were initially broadcast pieces that Lewis gave during WWII in Britain, and was actually asked to give by the BBC. Different times, dear reader. With The Battle of Britain in mind, I offer this fascinating excerpt out of Book one, chapter 5, “We Have Cause To Be Uneasy,” fascinating by virtue of the strong similarity it has to Ray Comfort’s The Way of the Master evangelism method, Ken Ham’s argument for Creation as the foundation to understand the Bible, and to a video clip I saw of Paul Washer explaining that the most terrifying truth about God is that He is good. Without further ado:

“For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time, but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behavior, then He cannot be good.

            On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in.  If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

            Now my third point. When I chose to get to my real subject in this roundabout way, I was not trying to play any kind of trick on you. I had a different reason. My reason was that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. 

                   When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God. It is an old story and if you want to go into it you will no doubt consult people who have more authority to talk about it than I have. All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts—to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts.

            I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion.”

                        The doctor analogy is also one used frequently by Todd Friel, not highly surprising since he and Ray and Kirk Cameron are close friends on the theological stage. Todd’s response to a Rob Bell video parodied its introduction but then gave a parable followed by demonstrating the difference between the Bell/Friel approaches. Imagine four doctors. Doctor Woo tells everyone how cool and exciting the hospital is. Don’t you just want to check it out? Doctor Scare walks around telling everyone “yer gonna die!! yer gonna die!!” He lets people know they’re ill but doesn’t make them inclined to want to pursue a cure, if they even know how. Doctor Love wants everyone to know that the doctors love them, and come to the hospital so you can sleep on our nice comfortable beds, eat our great cafeteria food, and feel better about yourself. But Dr. Love doesn’t tell the people that all the while they’re carrying dangerous illnesses that will kill them if left untreated. Is that really love? I don’t recall if the fourth doctor was another example of a bad doctor or not, but the final example was I believe Doctor Reason. He treats people with dignity and respect, but tells them the truth that they have a deadly disease. But he doesn’t stop there—he tells the patient that he has a cure. When the patient knows he’s ill, he desires the cure, and receives it with gladness. All of these were metaphors for different approaches by different churches on how to preach the Gospel (or fail to) to the Lost of the world. Dr. Scare symbolizes hellfire preachers who fail to focus on anything but condemnation, leaving out love and grace and forgiveness. Dr. Love fails in the reverse way, not warning people about sin and judgment and failing to generate true converts as a result, just people who have a false sense of security. Dr. Woo represents celebrity preachers or preachers who use gimmicks and showiness to try to lure people in with flashy things that produce people who expect church to be entertaining for them. Dr. Reason represents the “Law-and-Gospel” approach promoted by Ray Comfort and all associated with him, that seeks to inform people of their NEED to be saved, before urging them to take the cure (repentance and faith), knowing that otherwise people simply won’t respond because the message doesn’t connect.

~ Rak Chazak

* Mere Christianity is published by HarperOne, a division of HarperCollins. The citation is taken from pages 30 through 32 of the copy that I have.

Journal Treatise: When Was I Saved?

Treatise: When Was I Saved?

Was it when I properly understood sound theology, or was it before that, when I acknowledged God as my Lord, if not yet understanding (though thinking I did) what it meant for Him to be my Savior? This is something that my mind comes around to thinking about every once in a while. It’s not a troubling thought, but it’s a difficult one to resolve. I may never be able to. But thankfully, it doesn’t matter if I do. And there may be a way around this question, which I’ll develop here in a little bit.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t believe in God – The Christian God. One of the earliest memories I have from Sweden was, I think, a television show where the young girl lead character was sitting with her mom/aunt/grand-mother, and maybe her little brother, and looking in a picture book. A page flips, and someone points at a figure in the middle of the image and says ‘this is God,’ (or else Jesus), and it’s possible ‘Jesus’ was a separate figure somewhere in the picture that was also pointed to. It was a dark image. It could have been set in outer space. I don’t know. For some reason, the middle character appeared to have a sort of “elf” get-up in which he was dressed. Green tights, hat, pointy shoes and frills around the neck..so from whenever that was, to about 8 years of age, maybe a little after, if I imagined “god” in my head, it would be that “Link to the Past”-esque character. No eyes, that area was dark. Reddish, medium-length hair. It’s a weird thing to remember but it’s the earliest memory I have that I know is an actual memory and not just knowledge which I can’t determine when I received. The simple point of this is, I was from an early age exposed to the concept of the Trinitarian God. There are a couple of children’s books in our house to this day, and one of them is where I have the image of a fish spewing out Jonah onto a beach implanted in my brain from.

I only have one other memory of my own thoughts, (have you noticed that memory is of two sorts? One of things you experienced, and the other of thoughts you had?) and that is of trying to explain to my brother how history was supposed to work. When I was little, I loved dinosaurs, and had memorized the geological layers in the beginning of one of my dinosaur books into a little song. I knew the ‘scientific’ timeline of the earth, and it put humans at the very tippy-top of the “Nutid” segment. So I said to my brother, time is like a “Y.” One branch represents the Bible’s history and the other represents ‘prehistory.’ It’s much longer than the other one. They’re different, that’s why they’re separate, but “at some point, they come together, and then they continue together from that point on.” Because both of the histories, though different, were both supposed to be the past end of a timeline ending in today’s reality, of which there was clearly only one of. Looking back c. 15-17 years later, it was intriguing to consider that I had invented “Gap Theory” all by myself as a kid. Apparently that was a satisfying conclusion to my young mind, because I don’t remember ever thinking about it again. The only other memory about religion I have from before we moved is seeing a video of me running around the pews at my brother’s baby-baptism (Sweden is mostly a Lutheran country, insofar as denominations are concerned).

I don’t remember when I learned that “Jesus=God,” but I must have understood it from the first moment, because I don’t ever recall having a misconception about Jesus’ identity, at least officially speaking. I do remember something dawning on me when I read an article on Answers in Genesis entitled something like “Christ the Creator?” which pointed out that Jesus, as God, was actively involved in creating the universe. It was not something that the Father did while the Son sat passively aside and did nothing. But while no one ever really “gets” the Trinity in full, the way He Himself understands Himself, I remember being aware of the concept since I was little. I don’t, however, remember when I was aware of Christ dying for us on the Cross. Maybe I always knew that, too, since I don’t remember ever learning it. But here’s the rub: it wasn’t until roughly winter 2010-2011 when I understood HOW the Cross accomplished salvation—through a substitutionary atonement, where He took our punishment and we undeservedly receive His reward for living the perfect life. My question is, if I didn’t understand salvation completely, was it then possible for me to have faith in it? The object of my faith never changed (unless my conception of God was an idol throughout my youth?), but my understanding changed over time. So the question is, would I have been saved when I believed in Jesus and my conscience had quickened me to obey the Law and ask for forgiveness for sins, even if my knowledge of substitutionary atonement and a complete understanding of Biblical repentance and a faith-based soteriology (not works) was lacking?

This is an open question. If you’re reading this, I want you to think about it. I don’t have the definitive answer to my question, yet. I do have some answers that I’ve reasoned my way to, but they may very well not be the final word on the situation. Therefore, think deeply about this and don’t let me tell you what’s right and true – think, and decide for yourself.

Here’s my resolution of the question: looking back through my life thus far, I can see the ‘hand of God,’ as it were, operating, guiding, and influencing my life at key moments and important ways. Now, being able to see the working of Providence is not the same as being saved, because God is omnipresent and does not only involve Himself in the affairs of the Saints. But it is nonetheless encouraging, because at the very least it means that at no point in my life was I completely alone, without God watching over me. Also, the important thing is ultimately not at what point I was saved, but whether I am saved now. It’s not where I was, but where I’m going that matters. It sounds cliché, but that’s just because it’s said so often. And it’s said often because it happens to be true – it’s more of a proverb than a cliché, then. And considering the verses that say “He chose you from before the foundation of the world…”, it would be fair to say that even in my youth, before my “awakening,” I was still destined to be saved. Salvation, being a one-time event, is something that doesn’t apply to parts of a person’s life, it’s something that applies to their whole life (you’re either saved or not saved), it’s just realized at a particular point in that life. (the italicization here is done just the way I would stress the words if I was speaking). And so, in a manner of speaking, it has always been the case that I would be saved, and so it’s really only my current saved state that matters. “When” it ‘officially’ happened is nearly totally irrelevant. The question is almost completely meaningless. Here’s the thing: if you’re unsure of whether you were saved before and just became more theologically passionate, or whether you were a nominal/false convert before and have now truly repented and become a true convert, then what do you do? Do you act as if you were saved, or do you act as if you weren’t? It’s not that hard, when you think about it. Here’s what I did: Martin Luther once said “all of a Christian’s life is one of repentance.” Repentance is something that you do initially in order to accept the free gift of grace that God offers you, but you don’t ever stop repenting. Do you ever stop sinning? No. So repentance is not something that, if you do it, it would somehow imply that your prior repentance wasn’t genuine. Repentance is a continual activity of shunning sin, asking forgiveness for your missteps, and pursuing righteousness. What I did one night was to go up on a hill, as I liked to do at night, and prayed simply for the sake of my conscience. If you ask for God to save you from your sins and you’re already saved, it’s not as if you can risk “undoing” it. I made the decision to ‘rededicate’ my life to pursuing Him. I probably will do so again in the future. I already have again since then. Like married couples rededicating themselves to their vows, you don’t reject the past by emphasizing it. And that’s why it doesn’t hurt to pray again “just to make sure,” and to get your heart and mind right. You do it for your own psychological benefit, so that you have no reason to doubt your salvation, and thus you deny Satan an opportunity to attack your faith and attempt to discourage you. I didn’t have a huge change in my morality from ‘before’ and ‘after’ my “reawakening.” (And that statement is worth explaining, at another time.) That contributed to second-guessing myself. Whatever the past circumstances, I’m now confident of my status before the Throne, and am at peace with that. Now I put the question to you: what would you have done if you were in my position? And even more importantly: what will you do now?

Feeling Bad in A Good Way

I recently fell into some sin that I'd avoided for a while; the details aren't important, so I won't go into them. But the point to stress here is the disappointment over falling down when you had seen positive indications that you'd finally moved past it, for many months. 

I have to confess, I love the feeling of ending a bout with sin and walking away from it. Getting away from whatever it was, and taking some alone time to pray to God and get back to living for Him instead of running away -- it's such a relief. I wrote about this in an earlier blog post.

Most people feel bad after doing something they know is wrong. But there's two different ways to feel bad about something. As a general rule, you can either pity yourself or you can be filled with sorrow over how what you did affected the person you did it against. There are such things as "victimless crimes," where something you do doesn't necessarily hurt another person. But there's no such thing as a "victimless sin," because all sin is ultimately against God. So the appropriate response to your feelings of guilt after doing something wrong is to be anguished over hurting your relationship with your Heavenly Father. The wrong way to react is to run away from God in shame, refusing to deal with Him. The wrong way to react is to make it all about you. 

Think about it: "I should be better than this." Really? You should be better than you are? You must think highly of yourself. Stop and realize--this sort of thought is actually PRIDE at its core. You suppose that you have it in yourself to be good. That is why you fail to reconcile with God; you run from Him because in your mind you truly think you can fix your mistakes without His help. It's monumentally arrogant! When you no longer say to yourself, "that's not who I really am--that's not me," and instead admit that you are as rotten as the things you do, then you're ready to accept the fact that only God can help you get out of the hole you've dug for yourself. That's why when you've done something wrong, the right thing to do is not to run away from God, but to run toward Him. He's not our enemy. We're our own worst enemy. He's our friend. 

So as soon as you've admitted to yourself that you have sinned, run to God. Find Him in prayer and have the assurance of your salvation restored to you; thank Him for His forgiveness and ask for His help to strengthen you to avoid sin in the future.

That's what I did. And I was really excited when I found this video of R W Glenn saying essentially the same thing that I'd come to recognize on my own:



His illustration with Peter and Judas explains the difference between 'feeling bad in a good way,' and 'feeling bad in a bad way,' as I referenced in the title.

It seems counter-intuitive at first, but I hope you learn to make the habit of running back to God when you stumble into sin, instead of hiding in shame like Adam and Eve did. Forgiveness is a great thing, and it's freely given. You can't earn it, and thanks to God, we don't need to. 

~ Rak Chazak