The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 22, Small Hands Moving the Wheels of the World

The Council of Elrond finally decides that the Ring must be destroyed. Elrond sets out the task before them:

"The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength or wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."

Here is one of the great Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings, how this victory over evil will be achieved by "the weak" and those with "small hands." The saving of Middle Earth comes through its smallest, weakest, most unheroic inhabitants, the hobbits of the Shire.

It's a clear echo of 1 Corinthians:

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are.

A contrast could be made between Tolkien's very Christian story in The Lord of the Rings with the imagination we find ascendant in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To be sure, there are Christian themes in Marvel--I'm looking at you Iron Man in the final moments of the battle with Thanos in Endgame--but the imagination of Marvel is Powerful People (aka, superheros) using power virtuously. Virtuous superheros are the saviors of the world.

In Tolkien's world, by contrast, the saviors are the weakest people who refuse to use superpowers and who destroy superpowers.