Tolkien and Good and Evil in the Imagination
WITH GOD DAILY devotional app by Skye Jethani 5/19/20 “Six months ago, few of us could have imagined that we would be facing a global pandemic, unemployment would reach levels not seen since the Great Depression, and over 90,000 Americans would be dead. Covid-19 is the definition of a catastrophe—“a sudden and widespread disaster.” When catastrophes occur we are left stunned as our vision of the world is dismantled and our sense of control shattered. What remains are questions: Why did this happen? Will we recover? Where is God? Sometimes direct answers to these questions elude us and are to be found, instead, indirectly through art and literature. That was my experience while reading the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Best known for writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien was an Oxford professor, a Roman Catholic, and a close friend of C.S. Lewis who was instrumental in Lewis’ journey from atheism to faith in Christ. Unlike Lewis, however, Tolkien’s novels were n