In the final film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pippin dejectedly turns to Gandalf during a brief moment of quiet and asks, “Was there ever any hope Gandalf, for Frodo and Sam?” Gandalf smiles grimly and sighs. “There never was much hope. Just a fool’s hope.” Hope seems to be a major part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in the books especially. This focus on hope and looking for good in all things seems to stem from the fact that the future continually looks bleak despite all the victories that our heroes win. Tolkien’s Christianity no doubt influenced this theme of hope, since Christians have the most hope in the future. Even so, everyone struggles with fear of the future. It is our uncertainty that drives us to take rash actions in the hope that we can secure a future for ourselves. Perhaps it is our natural desire to be God and know the future that creates that fear of the unknown in us. Those of us who look beyond the moment often realize how uncertain and utterly uncontrollable the future is, as do Tolkien’s characters.

In The Two Towers, Treebeard briefly reflects on how uncertain the future looks regarding the Ents and how he fears they will soon disappear from Middle Earth. He gives evidence of this trend to Pippin and Merry, telling them of the loss of the Entwives and the lack of little Entlings. This undoubtedly grim outlook at first makes Treebeard refuse to attack Isengard. After all, he reasons, if the Ents are dying out anyway, why speed their death along? Eventually, however, Treebeard decides to help the hobbits. Eventually, Aragorn agrees to attack Mordor, despite the grim consequences of failure. And eventually, Frodo decides to continue on to Mordor, despite the dark appearance of the future. I believe Tolkien’s Christian outlook on life allowed him to give these characters hope. While a secular author may have given the story a grim and evil ending to reflect the look of the future for his characters, Tolkien obviously did not. In fact, when we examine how bleak the future looked at the start of the trilogy and how happy the ending is, we cannot but ask what changed, and what happened?

All Christians who feel doubt, fear or uncertainty about the future must ultimately come to terms with two things. The first is that the future will always be uncertain and that no matter how much we do or try to control it, no matter how much we try to manipulate our own destinies, ultimately we are not God. The second thing is that God is not limited to the human perception of time. All of time is laid out before God, and God does not change. In the end we must trust in the unchanging, ever-loving God to guide our steps. It is this knowledge that drives Frodo to go on and prompts Treebeard to recant--that no matter how dark the future looks, all that we as mortals can do is live our lives for good, the way God (or Illuvatar) wants us to live, and we must trust that everything will turn out alright in the end. Treebeard realizes that, no matter whether the Ents live or die, in the end history will remember the Ents not for their long life spans, but for their kind, noble deeds. Frodo realizes that, live or die, the Ring must be destroyed in order to ensure the destruction of evil. And Gandalf, watching out over the Pelenor fields as darkness enshrouds the kingdom, knows that to dwell on and worry about the future will turn us all into little insane Denethors, all too willing to kill ourselves because of the dark shadows in our future. God, like Illuvitar in The Lord of the Rings, doesn’t want us to live our lives trying to decipher our future, which is part of the reason he forbids such things as palm-reading and why Ouija boards are evil--they take away our trust in God. Just as Frodo and Treebeard and Gandalf must trust that in the end good will triumph, so we must trust that “God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the word of the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” As Christians, Hobbits, or Ents we must trust that He who knows the future will work everything out for good, and in the meantime, “All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you.”

All quotes taken from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, New Line Cinema, 2004