Wisdom from Lord of the Rings – Some things are worth fighting for

Yesterday we made our way through the Lord of the Rings  once more and I was fascinated by how much more I got from the movies this time around.

Probably the moment that touched me the most was towards the end of The Two Towers when Sam has one of the longest pieces of dialogue in the whole trilogy.

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.

I am enjoying the wrestle of trying to finally finish my book, Kingdom Cells. In many ways it is my wrestle to name what I believe is worth fighting for.

I received another endorsement for the book today, from Tania Bright, the Deputy Director for Research and Development for the Salvation Army. I found it interesting to read the endorsement with the Lord of the Rings still running through my mind:

We all need to hear it again fresh …… you know, the clarion call.  Pick up the thesaurus, thumb through, ah yes, there it is ‘Clarion call’: 1. a direct public request for people to take action.  Matt Garvin has enabled me to hear the call again and issued with it direct requests for action.  This is not for the passive but for those who are itching to live-out something radical and rich.  It’s a call to live a lifestyle of faith with Christ and others, messy and entwined yet potent. May we hear the clarion call together and start planning!

A fight is a scary thing, but some things are worth fighting for.

French sociologist, Jaques Ellul said:

Now the situation of the Christian in the world is a revolutionary situation. His share of the preservation of the world is to be an inexhaustible revolutionary force in the world…. The fact that Christians, as human beings, at certain periods in history lose sight of the revolutionary character of their religion, does not mean that the Holy Spirit has ceased to work, and that the position of the Christian, to the extent in which he confesses his faith in the world, has ceased to be revolutionary. In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world the Christian finds himself, by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution.

Sometimes people won’t be so excited about the revolution, that doesn’t mean its not worth fighting. John Howard Yoder in his essay The Kingdom as a Social Ethic said:

A minority group with no immediate chance of contributing to the way things go may still by its dissent maintain the wider community’s awareness of some issues in such a way that ideas which are unrealistic for the present come to be credible later…. The acceptance of the role of the prophetic minority means to reject majority status and acceptance and is, at the same time, the key to the community’s ultimate political impact…. Another way a minority can be the conscience of society is to continue to voice the claims of unrepresented Peoples and causes, when they do not yet have the ear or the heart of the majority. A minority can do for a society what the conscience does for an individual.

Martin Luther King Jr. said:

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the actions of a conforming majority but from the creative maladjustment of a transformed minority.

It’s not much fun to be in the minority. It’s not much fun to be on the outside. Its not much fun to be in a fight. Watching the movies, I really found myself identifying with Frodo on the occasions when it all seemed too much and giving up seemed so easy.

It would be nice if “Seeking first the Kingdom” meant life could be easy. It really doesn’t.

I think that’s why I had such a deep resonance when Sam said, “Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

I know I am called not to give in to the darkness but to hang on to hope.

Some things are worth fighting for.