The Virtues of a Hobbit and other Worthy Folk

For many people the terms faith, hope and charity are such old, hackneyed, abused terms that they are hardly worthy of notice but if one takes the time to remove the barnacles of time and desecration one can discover the great beauty buried deep within these wonderful visionary words. J.R.R. Tolkien lived his life with a heightened awareness of the glory of the human experience when it was lived fully – not just tapping the potential to be a great person – but allowing oneself to be transformed by circumstances and the power of God from merely “human being” to “super natura lbeing”. He knew that the heart of God beats inside the soul which wishes to know Him forever. This is the basis for every true virtue – that wish, that hope, that striving, that yearning to become more than what we were potentially born with but to arc over the top of human experience and enter into the supernatural realm of God’s Eternal world. In The Lord of the Rings the main characters of Frodo, Sam, Pippen and Merrry, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Eowyn, Galadriel and Treebeard were the folks who had to face and bear the realities of their own weaknesses and then turn to something greater – something bigger than their fault lines and histories to lead them through the terrifying troubles of a dangerous, even deadly world. In the book The Road Goes Ever On A Christian Journey Through the Lord of the Rings I explore these characters and examine their transformations as they move from mere “beings” to “heroic beings” from ordinary to extra ordinary characters and they do so through the power of the virtues of faith, hope and charity and through the gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, understanding,counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. We can do nothing truly great without His transforming help.
Now I want to focus a little – (A whole new book could be written just about The Hobbit and how Bilbo was changed from a frightened little Hobbit into a new person) and I just want to cover a couple points in this little blog.
One is that Bilbo did not have any idea of what he was getting into when he accepted the role he took to assist the dwarfs on their little quest. Now becoming an official burglar to steal back a treasure from a dangerous dragon hardly seems the fit vehicle for a transformation story – but you know how it is – God works with what we give Him. God can take any person anywhere and make a transformation experience happen IF we are willing to do as Bilbo did. And what did Bilbo do exactly that kept the whole situation from becoming a complete disaster?
Number one – he always remembered who he was – just a little hobbit with no great claims. Humility frees a person to become something more. When we are puffed up with pride and the certainty of our own greatness, our vision of our selves, we tend to close and lock the doors in God’s face to all the strange little lessons, opportunities and experiences that we would have if only were willing to let things go a different way from what we had planned. Humility allows God to be God in our lives and allows us to follow His lead. Bilbo had no idea what he was doing, where he was going or how he was going to achieve his (or rather the dwarfs’) goals but he knew he didn’t know and that made it possible for God to work through him.
And so it is with us. Often we think we have our lives well in hand. We have plans – good plans – and then something goes awry – some times complete disasters unravel our lives before our bewildered eyes but that is the kind of situation God seems to love best when he is remaking people- when he is calling forth the noble spirit within us to something we had previously never though of. It is in the undoing of all our plans that His plans get to come into the light of day. And it is in our willingness to be humble, patient with ourselves and with God, that we allow something wonderful to happen.
There is so much more that can be said here but humility (even a Hobbit’s humility) is big enough for now – it is the perfect beginning for any story – it is the humus from which springs the life of God in the human heart.


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