A Myth That Tells Us the Truth
This week sees the release of the film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a truthful adaptation on the C. S. Lewis classic children novel that tells a mythological version of the Christian Gospel story. Can I please encourage all Christians to support the film by taking their children and grandchildren to experience it. If we do it will send a strong message to Hollywood that they need to be making more wholesome films that uplift our children, rather than most of the rubbish today that is screened in cinemas.
However I would like to now talk about a film that opened on Boxing Day last year. Like C. S. Lewis’ classic, The Return of the King, the final film in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, had a wonderful message inspired by Christian beliefs.
One cast member added a powerful perspective of his own this week. He talked about how the crises and challenges depicted in Tolkien’s mythical world might help us cope with those we confront in our world today. John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli the dwarf, said: “the older I get, the more certain I am of the presence of evil in the world.”
He said that Tolkien was “basically saying that there are times when a generation may be challenged. And if that generation does not rise to meet that challenge, you could lose an entire civilization.”
According to Rhys-Davies, this message has a “huge resonance for today.” For someone who, as he put it, believes in “Judeo-Greek-Christian-Western civilization, recent developments, especially in Europe, are a catastrophe. The civilisation that has given us democracy, the equality of women, the abolition of slavery and the right to true intellectual dissent is under assault specifically by radical Islam.”
Instead of resisting that assault, parts of Europe are committing cultural suicide. Rhys-Davies pointed to demographic trends in Europe where, in some places, the majority of children being born are the children of Muslim immigrants. It is politically incorrect to notice this fact, but it is folly to ignore it.
These are strong, but necessary words.
Our culture is hesitant to use the word evil, refusing even to recognize what’s at stake in places like Iraq. But that price must be paid. As the trailer for The Return of the King tells us, “there is no freedom without sacrifice.” Tolkien understood that, and so does the man who brought his heroic dwarf to life.
Tolkien’s ring cycle is classic myth — a story that reveals a deeper and hidden truth. Rhys-Davies is interpreting one of the deeper, hidden truths. The author, J. R. R. Tolkien, was a committed Christian, a close friend of C.S.Lewis, and he was determined to reach a new generation by allowing them to discover the truth for themselves underneath the myth of his story.
As Christians we like Mr Tolkien should not be afraid to call a spade a spade, in the knowledge that the truth will show us the way to freedom, and a better future for our children. This, I am convinced, is preferable to cowardly wearing the blinkers of political correctness and shying away from identifying and confronting evil.
GORDON MOYES
