This is a quote from a Tabletalk Magazine article titled "No Accounting".
"In recent years all the world has gone gaga over The Lord of the Rings, especially the movie adaptation... Tolkien has given us another land, a land filled both with bucolic villages and epic battles, with fidelity and treachery, maidens and a mysterious hero who is heir to the throne. It stirs the hearts not only of children, but of men.
"Which is why it is so puzzling that we, both within and without the church, are more enamored with the four books of Tolkien than the five books of Moses. What does Tolkien have that Moses has not? Here we find not a bucolic village, but better still, an edenic garden. Here we find betrayal on an immeasurable scale, and fidelity to the infinite degree. Here we have wicked tyrants who are brought down low, slavery and freedom, miracles and talking beasts and bushes, dragons and damsels, and in the shadows, the promise of an heir.
"The difference in our taste then isn’t in what Moses left out and Tolkien put in. Instead it is found in what Moses put in, and Tolkien left out. We turn up our noses at the Pentateuch not because of the adventure therein, but the Law... The problem with the Pentateuch to our postmodern ears isn’t the story, but the Law. Tolkien, to be sure, gave us characters who were driven by law, enemies that acted lawlessly. But for all his attention to detail in creating his “alternate universe,” for all the language, music and arcana, there is no law."
SEE THE PURITY AND PRECISION REVIEW OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE TWO TOWERS, AND THE RETURN OF THE KING
