Uprooting Evil

If there is one book that is knit into my very being, it is The Lord of the Rings. No other work of fiction, in my humble opinion, unifies the True, the Good, and the Beautiful to the extent that Tolkien’s trilogy does. I have no doubt that it is the equal of epics like The Iliad or The Divine Comedy, and will someday be recognized as such (at least once certain academics and critics overcome their snobbishness).

One day, I’ll write a post about my very favorite quote from the trilogy. But that will necessarily be a very personal post, and one I am not quite ready to write. So for today, I offer a bit of wisdom from the one and only Gandalf, and a reflection on confronting evil in a world that increasingly feels as if it is on the brink of destruction.

In The Return of the King, Gandalf is consulting with various leaders after the city of Gondor has narrowly escaped destruction by siege. Gandalf points out that, while they have (barely) withstood this first challenge of Sauron, the Dark Lord, more is yet to come. They lack the military might to defeat Sauron, and their only hope is for Sauron’s ring to be destroyed, so that he will lose his power. And then, Gandalf offers an aside that encapsulates the thread of simultaneous despair, and hope, that runs through the entire trilogy:

Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

First, I beg you, read this quote aloud. Tolkien, who loved the alliterative verse of epic poems like Beowulf, is as sensitive to the sounds of words as he is to their meaning. Hear the rhythm created by the series of sibilant sounds in the first line (for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary), or the punch packed by the two repeated “wh” sounds at the end of the quote (what weather). Revel in the imagery elicited by his metaphors.

Gandalf begins his aside with a rather demoralizing bit of truth: even if Sauron is defeated, evil will return. Sauron is a “servant" or “emissary” of Evil itself. He is a sign or a symptom of the wound at the heart of our universe, a wound that even an embodied angel (which is what Gandalf essentially is) allied with the greatest of men cannot defeat.

This, of course, begs the question: if every defeat of Evil is only temporary, what is the point of fighting? It is this question that Gandalf proceeds to answer. First, he reminds the assembled lords of men that “it is not our part to master all the tides of the world.” On the surface, this may seem easy enough to accept. In reality, it can be very very difficult. Despite different religious and political creeds, the vast majority of people recognize that Something is Not Right with the world we inhabit. And those of us who haven’t given in to utter despair, or utter selfishness, want to try and go after that Something. The temptation is to assume that with the right amount of money, time, legislation, education, or technology we can vanquish the Something that is Not Right once and for all.

Gandalf knows otherwise. We are not God. We are not gods. We are not even angels. We cannot “master” the festering wound from which all Evil proceeds. Its ultimate defeat will come at the hands of He who is goodness itself: God. In Tolkien’s other works, this is made explicit. In the main trilogy, the power of divine providence is only hinted at, such as when Gandalf tells Frodo, after revealing that Frodo possesses Sauron’s ring, “there are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.” Realizing that these “other forces” are at work, and will overcome Evil in the end, can be very freeing. If you’re anything like me, the sheer amount of ills that plague our beleaguered world is overwhelming. It is easy to feel paralyzed by fear when we read the headlines or watch the news. So much is wrong: poverty, prejudice, war, mass shootings, environmental disaster, refugee crises, drug addiction, child abuse within the church itself. So little seems to be going right. Even trying to address just one issue pits us against a behemoth beyond our power to overcome. Accepting the wisdom of Gandalf, that we are not called to save the whole world, is necessary pragmatism. Believing that someday Somebody will come who can save the world is (in my opinion) a necessary hope.

Pragmatism and hope are not, of course, excuses to kick back, relax, and let Evil have its way until the end times. Gandalf explicitly states that, though we cannot “master all the tides of the world,” we must still “do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set.” In other words, we have been placed, or “set,” in a specific time within our world’s history. Our purpose is to discern how to make the time in which we live less dark, less grim, less hopeless than it might have been had we not existed. Within our time, we must commit to, “uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after us may have clean earth to till.” Everyone, no matter how humble their situation, is given a field to till. In our hunger for righteousness, or our desire for glory, we may seek the rankest and weediest fields to till. However, as Mother Theresa said, it is often (but of course not always) the case that we are called to “stay where [we] are.” We need not travel far to find “the sick, the suffering, and the lonely.” Calcutta (or Mordor) is “all over the world.”¹

It is a great (and prideful) mistake to believe that only the rich, the powerful, the educated, in other words the “privileged,” can act to “uproot” evil in society. The privileged may have a “larger” field in which to operate, and therefore greater responsibility to act. In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf’s "wealth,” his wisdom and his magical powers, both allows and compels him to commit great deeds without which Sauron’s evil would have remained “rooted.” But it was not Gandalf, the wizard, or Aragorn, the King, who ultimately “uproots” Sauron. It is two small hobbits, Sam and Frodo, who ensure that Sauron’s ring makes it to Mount Doom. And it is providence, turning Gollum’s lust for the ring to good purpose, that allows the ring to be destroyed in the fiery mountain, when Frodo lacked the strength to cast it into the fire himself.

As Tolkien makes clear when Frodo and Sam return to the idyllic Shire, only to find it under the control of Sauron’s former ally, Saruman, there is no person on this earth who is free from contact with pain or suffering. There is no person on this earth who is free from the tangled web of injustices that binds us all together. Therefore, there is no person on earth incapable of uprooting evil “in the fields that [they] know” in some capacity; even if their deeds remain hidden from the wider world. It is a thought both sobering and empowering. At our most broken, our most hurt, we are asked to give. At our most broken, our most hurt, we can give. We need not remain helpless victims. We need not look on the ones we aid in “the fields that we know” with a paternalistic and superior gaze that robs them of their dignity.

As a parent, Gandalf’s wisdom is especially applicable (and challenging). We hope that, by the sweat of our brow, our children “who [will] live after us” have “clean earth to till.” By our love, our care, and our guidance, we seek to give our children a firm foundation of rich soil in which they can plant the seeds of their future lives. And yet. We cannot ultimately control what seeds they choose to plant, though we hope they will let us help in the selection. We have even less (read no) control over the “weather” in which their seeds will grow. As Gandalf points out, it is “not ours to rule.” There will be illnesses, and heartbreaks, and job losses, and natural disasters, and other tragedies we never saw coming, and could not have saved them from even if we had. We cannot be our children’s savior. We cannot “master” the “tides” of their lives anymore than we can “master all the tides of the world.” Ultimately, we must place them, ourselves, and our world, in the hands of He who is the creator of all. And, until He comes to fight the final battle, we are called to live the life of self-sacrificing love He lived when walked the earth as one of us.

1. https://www.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit-blog/live-like-mother-teresa-finding-your-own-calcutta/