A Christian Perspective

Rating: 9/10 (4 February 2010)

I think that the movie is great. Before watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time, I remember being afraid of the intense battles and the ugly orc that fought against the fellowship. That was about nine years ago. After watching it when I became a bit older, I realized how much meaning there is to the movie. J.R.R. Tolkien was a Christian, because of knowing that I can see a lot of different Christian ethics and morals that come from the movie. I do not necessarily think that all these morals require one to be a Christian to believe in them, but I think that a lot of these morals are based on Christian ethics and the Bible. A lot of our heritage deals with the church, therefore, morals taught to our ancestors are now taught to us. On the other hand I think that some of the things brought out by the movie requires one to be a Christian, or have knowledge of the Bible to understand them. I wanted to bring attention to some of these specific Christian ethics brought out by the movie.
In the opening scene of the movie "great rings" were given to the leaders of middle earth in order to help them govern their races. The Races and number of rings given to each race are the following: Nine men , seven to the dwarf lords, and three to the elves. At the same time that these rings were given to help make middle earth a better place, the dark lord Sauron created another ring to trick the leaders of middle earth. The men who were given the rings fell directly into this trap and became the ring wraiths. They were once men who were kings, and rulers of their people. Now they are clothed in black, and slaves to the evil ruler; wrapped in the darkness that he entails.
In the beginning of the Bible God created Adam and then Eve to rule over his creation. At the same time that God created Adam, Satan's pride caused him to rebel against God. Satan tempted Eve and tricked her into eating from the tree that God told them not to eat from. She then tricked Adam into eating the fruit as well. In my point of view the two situations are a little different, but they are very much connected. Just like the races of middle earth were tricked with the rings, Adam and Eve were tricked to eat the fruit. The nine men fell into the imprisonment of the dark lord; and Adam and Eve fell into sin, imprisoning human beings to it.
Frodo, is a hobbit that is chosen during a secret counsel to destroy the ring. The very thing that has caused a lot of horror and evil to come to pass is put on the shoulders of one being to destroy this evil. If they do not destroy this ring, then everything good that they know will be lost and middle earth will fall to the power of this ring. The people will be overcome with the treacherous armies of lord Sauron. In one part of the film while Frodo looked into a pool of water called "The Mirror", he saw a vision of what will come to pass if he did not succeed in destroying the ring. In the vision, Sam is in a line of slaves being loaded onto a vehicle of sorts for transportation. The land is desolate and dead. If there ever was a picture of hell on earth it would look like what Frodo saw.
After sin entered into the world, their needed to be something to reconcile for our sins and save us from eternal damnation in hell. I think that Frodo and Christ are very similar coming from a Christian perspective. Christ is sent to us in order to save us from eternal damnation, and from slavery to sin. Without Christ's death on the cross there would be no hope. Without Frodo, everyone in middle earth have no hope either. Everyone would end up like Frodo's vision, in slavery to the dark lord for the rest of their lives. Just Like Christ was sent to Earth to save us from sin, Frodo is sent in order to save middle earth.
The two comparisons to the Bible and to the movie are not infallible, they are just speculations that I have made. There are a lot of other critiques and speculations that can be made about the movie concerning Christian ethics, but I do not want to bite off more than I can chew. I think that there is a devotional made from the movies, but I am not sure what the name of that is or where to purchase that. Write back and let me know what you think. Can you see the Christian perspectives in the movie? Or do you feel like they are just a plot line that has no interlining story with the Bible?