Tools for your foundation in Faith

There are ways in which I am not that different from most Christians. I was raised in a home with loving parents, attended Sunday school and church services while young. Now while I was not raised in an environment that had extremely strong evangelical background, I did develop what I would call a structure to my faith. As I went through my teenage and college years like many do, my attendance at church could be described as inconsistent, at best, non-existent in most cases. There were many times when I would be questioned by others about my faith and religion in general. My answer was always the same, “My relationship with God does not need a building or others to be complete.” In some ways I was right but in others I was way off base. Yes my relationship with Jesus Christ and God do not need a building because when I let them into my life to guide me they became part of who I am and what I do. However it is the relationship with others who have accepted Christ into their lives that is a vital part of my life that was missing.

I returned to active church attendance about 4 years ago. At that time my wife was looking for a church home with one goal in mind. That goal was to find a church home for our children, who my wife felt needed to have both some religious education, as well as another place to assist us in raising our children with a strong moral,ethical, and Christain foundation. As she was bouncing from church to church on Sundays she would come home and discuss what she had found. Most of the time she walked away with concerns about that church or simply knowing that this was not the place for us. As she was reaching the breaking point, she challenged me to find a church, “that I would be willing to join”

Well the gauntlet was laid down and I took her up on it. Suffice it to say I was successful in finding a church home for my family and am a proud and active member of that church family. That being said, as I became more active in the church, I found that my foundation in faith was woefully thin. It was not thin because of a lack of belief but thin because of a lack of education. This revelation had brought me to the current situation I have before me. Being an avid reader, if I can find something that peaks my curiosity then I will devour every thing on that topic. So I set out to find some literature on which I could expand and strengthen my foundation.

I have read many Christian books, including the Left Behind Series; however one thing that struck me was the fact that many of these books were as much about preaching as they were about teaching. Frustrated I started digging through the religion section of every bookstore I frequent, looking for the right text, the right story, the right communication. Then one day I found Sarah Arthur’s devotionals Walking with Bilbo, Walking with Frodo, Walking Through The Wardrobe. Now I have not read the first title, but the other two I have read and they are just the ticket for me. Here is an example of what I am talking about

Fantasy literature is suddenly cool, thanks to The Lord of the Rings. And we’re not talking about the fluffy stuff, either (in which Benji the Brave raises the Horn of Ippydoo to call forth the god Mork during the Age before People Knew How to Tell Time). No, we want the good stuff. We want cosmic battles between the forces of light and darkness, battles in which all the peace-loving people of the earth must band together or be lost to oblivion. We want interesting characters who face the threat of annihilation bravely—and die well. We want suspense, action, romance, and hard-won happy endings.

If we’re honest, we want life itself to be that way. Deep down we suspect that it is. But on the surface, it looks … well... fluffy. For example, those are not Orcs approaching us in the cafeteria, telling us we’re sitting at their table. They’re just big guys in jerseys whose grandmothers probably love them dearly and wish they would brush their teeth more often. Those are not Wizards teaching our advanced algebra classes. They’re just middle-aged folks in street clothes whose biggest battle with the forces of darkness is trying to get us to memorize the quadratic formula. We ourselves are not Elves, or Dwarves, or even Hobbits (although some of us are still growing into our feet). We’re just ordinary people who want life to be more than just homework and dating and going somewhere warm for spring break.

But don’t be fooled. Life is more than fluff. Underneath the crust of our existence is a battle between the forces of good and evil, a battle that began at the dawn of time and will continue to the last age of the world...

…As Gandalf said to Pippin, "If you have walked all these days with closed ears and mind asleep, wake up now!"* Frodo is leaving the front door of Bag End. Will you walk with him

Sarah has found a way to take something that I both know and love,Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and help me learn more both about myself and about the teachings in the Bible. The greatest irony of all of this is the fact that in high school I wrote my senior term paper on the Christian foundations of Tolkien’s LOTR.

In Walking with Frodo, Sarah takes 9 different pairs (nice LOTR parallel) and builds a compelling picture of how and where each of the characters from LOTR fits into the Christian foundation that Tolkien had built through his own faith. Sarah, takes opposite pairs and gives you the foundation from which you can make the decision as she puts it “'So each of us, like Frodo, is faced with a choice: to humbly persevere in the tasks our Savior-King has chosen for us to do, or to slowly succumb to the darkness.' "Included after the base discussion is a message for reflection and several bible verses which reinforce the theme.

For example the first pair of devotionals is about Choosing Darkness or Choosing Light. The characters that are the example set are the Balrog that the fellowship faces in Moria, and Gandalf himself. Sarah discusses the fact that despite knowing that he will most likely fall Gandalf makes the decision to step into the light and make the ultimate sacrifice

One online review comments

The book explores positive and negative choices like pride vs. humility and despair vs. hope and offers Bible verses and study questions. The writing is approachable; the lessons are backed with examples from Tolkien’s world,

Over all this book and Walking through the Wardrobe are fantastic books for someone who like myself, is either a late to life Christian or someone who is looking for some sort of way to expand upon his/her foundation of faith.