Inaugural Post

So, I decided to randomly start a blog. I think I'll just put the stuff I'm thinking about on it.

Right now I'm reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in several years. The thing that I'm noticing the most this time through is its wistful quality and its bittersweetness. So much of the book revolves around the idea that there must always be suffering to gain something worthwhile. Much is made of preserving innocence. For example, Aragorn says (speaking of the hobbits), "If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so." Aragorn fights for them to stay simple, but I think that Tolkien leads the reader to the conclusion that it is better to have care and fear if that is the only way one can see the beauties of the world. More on this later, though, because I think the development of the four hobbits, and especially of Sam, is important here. I want to reread the whole book before I begin blathering.

This theme is also found in Paradise Lost. There is bittersweetness at the end of Paradies Lost, for even if Adam and Eve are leaving the Eden, they are walking hand in hand into the greatest story of all: the story of Redemption. (Tolkien would call it the ultimate, and most beautiful myth--the true myth.) Anyway, Milton says he wants to justify the ways of God to man. How does he do this? My most recent thought on the matter is that Milton's justification is Paradise Lost itself--he can write this poem only because of the fall.

When I was a little girl, I worried about Heaven. Did I really want to go there if there could be no books? I love books and reading, but there is always sin in them, for without evil there can be no real conflict or satisfying resolution. I worried about this for so long. But the answer was always right there if I could only have seen it. A song we used to sing in Sunday School was "I love to tell the story," the refrain of which runs, "I love to tell the story, 'twill be my theme in glory: to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love." Of course there will be stories in Heaven, for we all will have our personal stories of Jesus' love and then the "old, old story" of his death on the cross. And of course there will be sin in them, for it is the sin itself that makes the story possible.

And that is how Milton uses his poem as a justification: without the fall, there would be no Paradise Lost, and no redemption.

It seems as if this is the most simple answer to the question of evil. Evil is obviously a tool for God's glory, for it is an opportunity for God to manifest his love and mercy. Yet it is such a simplistic answer, that I must be missing something.

Did I just go from LotR to the problem of evil? I wonder if Tolkien had that in mind? I see it there, though...among many other things. The other things will have to wait because I want to read more!