A few weeks ago, my home church concluded a sermon series on the Old Testament Book of Esther. The Book of Esther tells the story of the Jewish people’s deliverance from almost certain destruction at the hands of their enemies during the reign (486-465 B,C,) of the Persian king Xerxes, thanks in part to the heroism of Xerxes’ Jewish wife, Queen Esther. According to the commentary on the book in the New International Version of the Bible:
One outstanding feature of this book—one that has given rise to considerable discussion—is the complete absence of any explicit reference to God, worship, prayer, or sacrifice. This “secularity” has produced many detractors who have judged the book to be of little religious value. However, it appears that the author has deliberately refrained from mentioning God or any religious activity as a literary device to heighten the fact that it is God who controls and directs all the seemingly insignificant coincidences…that make up the plot and issue in deliverance for the Jews. God’s sovereign rule is assumed at every point…, an assumption made all the more effective by the total absence of any reference to him. (page 771).
In thinking about this, I came to realize—strange as it may seem—that a similar device was employed in a literary work of more recent vintage—J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s tells of the magical Ring of Power, by which the evil Dark Lord Sauron seeks to dominate the imagined world of Middle Earth and how the forces of good try to prevent him from doing so by destroying the ring. It is fairly well known that Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Thus, it is not too surprising that in The Silmarillion, the “prequel” to The Lord of the Rings, we are told:
There was Eru, the One, who in Arda [Middle Earth] is called Iluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. (page 15)
This passage, with its echoes of the Book of Genesis, clearly shows that that Tolkien consciously modeled the creation story of his imagined world on the biblical story of creation—“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In short, Middle Earth is ultimately the domain of a supreme being very much like the God of the Bible. Moreover, Sauron has a predecessor, Melkor, who bears a resemblance to Satan. And yet, throughout The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is no direct reference to Eru/Iluvatar, or to the idea that he is ultimately in control of events. The closest the books ever come to suggesting that some higher power is at work in the course of events narrated in the story is when the hobbit Frodo asks why he has the ring and the wise wizard Gandalf replies that “you have been chosen” (by whom?)--words that remind us of Esther's cousin's Mordecai's words that perhaps Esther has become queen "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). It seems that Tolkien chose to employ a device similar to that chosen by the anonymous author of the Book of Esther to imply rather than directly express the presence of a benevolent supreme being.
What can we learn from this? Perhaps the lesson we can learn from both the Book of Esther and Tolkien’s trilogy is that even when God seems to be absent, He is still at work, and this is not only true in great historical events, but also in our seemingly ordinary everyday lives. May we have the wisdom to realize this when we are tempted to think otherwise!
Image: Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai, by Aert de Gelder, from commons.wikimedia.org