In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien offers a penetrating description of one of the principal lies the enemy uses to seduce us. In the second chapter of The Fellowship of Rings Gandalf explains to Frodo how Gollum came to love the darkness. Gollum, corrupted by the Rings power and by the invisibility it offered, shook his fist at the sun and retreated into the roots of the mountains where he believed “there must be great secrets buried which have not been discovered since the beginning.”
Our culture has often made a similar promise about the darkness. Modernity celebrates all that is to be discovered by shaking off the restraints of morality and bravely exploring every kind of immorality and perversion. The attraction of the darkness can be especially powerful for young people raised in Christian homes. Rebelling against the light can give a teenager a sense of identity. Discovering all the secret pleasures of evil at first seems exciting.
Pop culture and Hollywood have made money off this lie. Songs about sex, drugs, and rebellion permeated the rock and roll culture. When my college students talk about partying over the weekend, they do not mean cake and party hats. They almost always mean alcohol, drugs, and maybe recreational sex. Fun without transgression has become unimaginable.
However, the story of Gollum does not go well. Gandalf explains, “All the ‘great secrets’ under the mountains had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out: nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering.” This has been the story of some of my students—most of whom are just out of high school. Sadly, some have already discovered that drugs and promiscuity offered nothing.
In Oregon, which is largely unchurched, I have had some students whose parents crawled into the darkness of drug addiction and promiscuity. One student told me he was a “rebel” and the “black sheep” of his family because he was sober, married, and went to church. He wasn’t welcome at family parties.
I am old enough (seventy) to have seen both the unchurched and churched discover the bitter truth Gollum discovers: there are no exciting secrets in the darkness. Hollywood has lied. In the darkness there is only “empty night”. The light is resented because it illumines our shame and challenges the lies we have trusted.
The kindness of Frodo is the only thing in The Lord of Rings that comes close to curing Gollum and recovering his true identity as Smeagol. Tolkien has not written a Christian allegory but has written a book with Christian themes. Certainly, we can see in Frodo the spiritual truth that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance and out of the darkness.The Gollums in our lives do not need any self-righteous I-told you so’s. They only need love and kindness as we gently lead them to Jesus: the Light that burns away all our shame.
