In between pilgrimages to the various tombs of our Church’s holy saints (I write from Perugia, Italy), I have been reading The Lord of the Rings. I have just finished Part 1 – the fellowship of the ring. Frodo has just escaped from Boromir’s mad attempt to steal the ring, and has stolen away across the river with Sam. They will travel to Mordor in an attempt to destroy the Ring of Power.
Corrupting Power
I wonder about power. The ring tempts men with its power to defeat Sauron, who seems like the source of all evil. Yet we are told that those who might wield the ring to defeat Sauron would become another Sauron – those who use the power of the ring to defeat evil would become evil themselves. All the wisest characters in LoTR refuse to take the ring. They refuse to embrace the temptations of power.
But I want to explore Boromir’s understanding, or madness. Why should power be evil? What is wrong with using power with a pure heart and a noble cause? Why should the ring not be used to defeat evil? Why must power corrupt, and absolute power corrupt absolutely?
If absolute power corrupts, then an all-powerful God would be all-corrupted. But God is all-good. So clearly power can be good, if it is rooted in God.
Two Powers
I can only conclude that there must be distinct forms of power – forms that are evil and forms that are good. There is the power of Sauron and the power of hobbits. Sauron’s power corrupts the spirits of those it touches. The hobbits’ power sustains the spirit of those it touches. Sauron’s power makes men mad and rash. The hobbit’s power turns men to reason and patience.
One power offers corruption.
One power offers immunity to corruption.
The Power of Evil
Sauron’s power is a plague afflicting the world, a plague that tempts men by afflicting them, by blackmailing them, by hurting them and caging them and killing them. But it does so for a deeper purpose. Evil is sly and deceitful. Evil seeks to destroy our bodies because it hopes that we will become evil in defense of our bodies. Evil seeks to threaten our existence so that we might become evil in our protection of that existence. Sauron’s evil will live as long as someone embraces that evil, as long as the Ring of Power is wielded. If Boromir or Gandalf or Aragorn or any other character uses the Ring to destroy Sauron, then they become Sauron, and evil laughs at its triumph.
Evil presents us a doomed-if-we-do/doomed-if-we-don’t scenario. It presents us a lie: “either you fight against Sauron without the Ring of Power and lose your war, or you fight against Sauron with the Ring of Power and lose your heart.” Either way, evil lives on and we die enslaved to it. But this scenario of doom is a lie, for it presents power in only one form.
There is another form of power that is good – as incarnated in the heart of the hobbits, as found in the bloodshed of Christ.
The Power of God
The hobbit’s power, Christ’s power, is immunity to evil. Frodo’s heart, up to this point, has resisted the power of the Ring precisely because of his weakness. He has no ability to abuse the power because he has little potential to wield its power. Frodo is weak, but in his weakness, he is strong. Frodo refuses to yield to temptations of evil. Frodo’s body is small and fragile, but underneath he wears armor that can stop the greatest darts of the enemy. His heart beats with goodness, with courage, with grace. He will bear the burden of sin upon his body, carrying it in order to destroy it.
God’s power is incorruptable goodness – a love that loves until the end, a love that cannot be perverted, a love that extends even to enemies. In my recent travels around Italy, I have seen this love tame the cruelest of enemies: St. Francis tamed the wolf, Sts. Peter and Paul tamed Rome. Far away in Jerusalem, upon Calvary, our Christ tamed the cross. Christ tamed death.
Frodo will carry his cross and be pierced by it, but in the end, he will defeat it not by the corrupting power of the ring, but by the incomprehensibly incorruptible power of merciful love.
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