Mae govannen! It’s a beautiful Tolkien Reading Day, and if you know anything about me, you know I am a slightly rabid Tolkien geek. Just slightly. I only read the Silmarillion twelve times, it’s no big deal.

I would love to discuss elvish naming traditions and explore Elrond’s family tree. Maybe someday I will make a site dedicated to Tolkien lore, but it is not this day! Instead, I want to talk about something most of the fantasy world has ignored while gleefully adopting elves and dwarves. I want to talk about humility.

Humility is defined as freedom from pride or arrogance and therefore goes against our fallen nature. After all, we were kicked out of paradise for wanting to be like God. In fact, Fëanor (arguably Tolkien’s most notorious character) has a similar story.

Fëanor was an elf from the First Age, thousands of years before hobbits even existed. Elves are already strong and beautiful and amazing, but Fëanor was everything times one hundred. He made fancy tech like the Palantíri, as well as some of the first armor and weapons in elven history. He invented an alphabet and had seven sons (an unusually high number for an elf). Most famously of all, he made three beautiful jewels called the Silmarils.

But Fëanor was the worst in a lot of ways. He was arrogant and paranoid. He hated his stepfamily. He disrespected anyone he perceived as a threat, and practically worshiped the Silmarils. Eventually he led his people to war, committed a lot of murder, and (it could be argued) is indirectly responsible for every bad thing from the Silmarillion to Lord of the Rings.

So, yeah, Fëanor’s an awful role model and the farthest thing from a Samwise Gamgee. But he’s probably a lot more relatable than Sam. It’s hard enough bearing one another’s burdens; we aren’t going to carry our half-dead employers up a volcano. Meanwhile, if a sibling makes us mad or it feels like everyone’s ganging up on us, well . . . let those that cursed our names curse us still! Needless baggage on the road they have proved to be. Let the ships burn!

Hopefully you stick to yelling fights instead of swordfights, though I suspect Yeshua sees no difference between the two. But if violence is your first instinct when your pride is wounded, who’s to say it won’t escalate? Fëanor started out passive-aggressive and ended up pulling a sword on his half-brother. Yes, it’s dramatic, but so were the slapping fights we had as kids.

Fëanor didn’t do this himself either. He was manipulated by Morgoth (Sauron’s boss, basically Satan), who played on Fëanor’s fears of being robbed and replaced. Tolkien’s works may not be allegorical (most of the time—Leaf by Niggle, cough, cough), but his worldview runs strongly through them. It is not at all wrong to see an anti-salvation story working here. Fëanor dwells in fear and bitterness. Morgoth leans into those feelings and leads Fëanor to think they’re more valid than they actually are. And soon our friendly neighborhood craftsman is pulling out the torches.

How many of our worries and pet peeves are actually real? What are we dwelling on that leads us to marinate in our problems?

If we want to be like Sam Gamgee or Yeshua HaMashiach, we need a servant mindset. Heroism is shown in hobbits who don’t want adventures. It’s Galadriel saying no to the power she craves. It’s Faramir who fights not for the sake of fighting but to defend. It’s Éowyn realizing her worth isn’t based on her legacy. Sauron and Fëanor and other villainous, tragic characters are larger-than-life but fall to pride.

Tolkien says humility is heroism, which goes with what Yeshua says in Matthew 23:11: “The greatest among you shall be your servant.” This is countercultural. I suspect a lot of modern fantasy would have the hobbits hating their adventureless lives and Galadriel becoming a powerful queen. Our instinct is to be like Fëanor. But that didn’t turn out for him, and it won’t turn out for us even if we don’t strand our family in the Arctic.

Humility doesn’t look the same in everyone. For me, I want everyone to think I’m a great writer. So I seek an impossible level of perfection in my writing and talk bad about it when I share it. Humility, therefore, means sharing my work without worrying what people think of me. I know this article isn’t perfect, but here I am posting it to the internet.

What are some ways you can stop caring about yourself and what people think of you? Discuss it in the comments, and have a happy Tolkien Reading Day!

Namárië!