the long defeat

Reflection for Thursday in the First Week of Lent

Matthew 7:7–12

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

My wife and I had a conversation the other day about karma. She was struggling with the fact that it seems like so many people who do bad things end up rewarded despite - or even because of - their misdeeds. Meanwhile, good people doing their best in the world struggle to get by, come up short, see any hope they have quietly snuffed out. She’s observed them in our politics, but also in our personal lives, amongst people we know.

I shouldn’t put that observation totally on her. I feel that at times too. In the moment, I answered her with words about horizons of vision, about how success and achievement today don’t make up for the hollowness of a person who has outsourced their humanity to wealth and power. I mentioned one of my favorite ideas articulated by Tolkien, of the “Long Defeat”, the idea - articulated in Lord of the Rings most beautifully by Galadriel - that history is a long series of defeats for the forces of good, that the only victory we are assured of is the final one, and we hold on hopefully to that one tiny point of light.

“For the Lord of the Galadhrim is accounted the wisest of the Elves of Middle-Earth, and a giver of gifts beyond the power of kings. He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted, for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”

Those words probably didn’t help her or I. We still have to watch lies and deceit propel others into opportunities and acclaim. We turn on the news to see the very worst of humanity - those who have made lies, hate, and arrogance into an art form - leading the nation, getting richer, stepping on the vast, teeming masses of regular people. Hope is a hard thing to hold on to in this world.

Doubt is, for me, a key element of my Christian journey. I’ve always doubted the existence of God, the necessity of things like prayer, the ultimate victory of goodness in the end. I doubt Jesus’ words here in Matthew 7. I see a lot of people in need, in abject suffering and poverty, asking and searching and knocking, and receiving nothing but a kick in the teeth. Where is the justice for the large mass of people living in poverty, yesterday, today, and inevitably tomorrow? Why are those who follow that Golden Rule Jesus lays out in the final verse so often found on the bottom of things? Why is there so much for so few, and so little for so many?

This is the Long Defeat. Lent is a time that encourages us to lean into our contemplation of it. We know, deep down, Easter is around the corner. But, in the depths, it is hard to believe it. To draw again on images from Tolkien, we live now in the time before the final triumph over evil, before the Ring has been cast away, while the kingdoms of the world continue to wield power, and the darkness of Mordor begins to blanket the sky and roll west over Gondor and Rohan. Our hope rests on something small against insurmountable odds.

And yet, like the heroes of that tale, it is our task to stand against that darkness, no matter whether or not we can see a path to victory, no matter whether or not we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. It is in the labor that meaning is found. It is in the joy of living that victory is won, a victory those ensnared in the games of power and deceit will never know. As in almost all cases, we should heed the words of Gandalf:

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 succour 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.