In The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, we learn of a powerful enchanted ring threatening the collective peoples of Middle Earth. After the ring’s discovery, representatives of various peoples eventually agree it must be destroyed by traversing torturous difficulties to cast it into the fiery depths of Mount Doom where it was forged. Amongst that great council, no one steps forward to undertake this arduous task. It is only when Frodo Baggins, perhaps the most unexpected figure among that great gathering, shatters the tense silence with his small voice that a plan begins to take shape: “‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’”[1]
As followers of Jesus, we may feel much like Frodo, where we do not know the way forward in this current time which is confusing, dark, and fraught with vast difficulty. If we are to embark on the journey of discipleship, we will need worthy guides to show us the way.
The good news is that such guides are available. Some of them are living and involved in our lives. I often remember the guidance offered to me by Tim, a leader in my high school student ministry group. When I was agonizing about what my next steps in life should be after high school, he asked me a very pertinent question: “Have you prayed about it?” My answer was revealing: “I didn’t know you could pray about those sort of things.” I was fairly new in my discipleship, and I suddenly realized that God did not only care about answering my prayers for wisdom as I read the Bible, guidance in sharing my faith, or power in leading others in songs. God cared about all of my life, including my direction. Tim served as a wise guide for me at that time of my life, simply by asking a good question. We all need people like that in our lives. People who serve as mentors in our faith. Some of them might feel uncomfortable with the word ‘mentor’, but we still need people with whom we could sit down to discuss critical questions or invite them to speak good (and sometimes hard) words into our lives.
Some of our guides are living, but others may great women and men in the faith from earlier times who have passed into the Lord’s presence. I sometimes like to say we need dead guides, too. These are people whose words and wisdom arises from weathering many years of walking with the Lord and stood the test of time. Though long dead, their voices speak with greater clarity and power than the thin voices of the living. C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation speaks to this very point:
Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old…. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.[2]
What is critical here for the follower of Jesus is to choose time-tested guides who will help set the direction of a contextually new and yet decidedly ancient approach to the faith. While I often reach out to many guides—both friends and authors, ancient and modern, and across diverse backgrounds—let me share two who have become significant in my own journey: St. Gregory the Great and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As a 6th century leader in the church, Gregory the Great shows me how to approach my calling with humility and total abandon. His book, Pastoral Care stands as one of the greatest guiding works for pastors even to this day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an early 20th century theologian and pastor, calls me into deep engagement with God through Scripture, bringing powerful implications for my life, church, and the surrounding social context. My first reading of Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship deepened my own apprenticeship to Jesus, but his work with pastors in community, as reflected in Life Together, has forever changed my approach to pastoral ministry.
Every Christian needs wise guides. Some may be living and others may have died. But we do need mentors whose faith is strong over the long haul, whose life and ministry speak powerfully into our own life and context.
[1] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), 284.
[2] C. S. Lewis in his preface to St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 10.
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