All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

"And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer." Doctrine and Covenants 101:54 

One of my favorite scenes in the film The Return of the King is when the warning beacons of Gondor are lit. As the camera pans out and moves (if I recall correctly how it goes) and we see the beacons on the tops of the mountains being lit each in turn, I was in awe. Part of it was that I like mountains, snow, and fire, and putting them together in a scene is really nice, but also what was happening as the distress call was being made from Minas Tirith. So many miles being spanned so quickly, and all might have been lost without those fires. 

But what if those fires had been ignored by Rohan? It would not have mattered that they were lit, then. In the same way it does not matter if God guides us, whether through scriptures, living prophets, or personal revelation, if we do not listen to His guidance. 

"Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor." D&C 88:81

We can stretch the idea a little bit more, however, in a way that we cannot with the typical "man in a watchtower" analogy that is used by many Latter-Day Saints to describe the role of living prophets and apostles. The prophets are in a position to receive revelation and counsel for the entire world, and so they are akin to a man in a high tower who can see what we cannot and warn us of dangers of which we may not be aware. However, not every person hears the watchman's cry- not that they fail to take it to heart, but that they literally never heard it. Nor is every invasion is one which the watchman is placed to see- an apostle cannot be in every neighborhood and family at once, and typically does not offer counsel for each local situation. 

Instead we find ourselves in the position of needing to light a warning fire ourselves when we see the prophet light his, and also of needing to light a warning fire should we be the first to see the problem, without waiting for someone else to do it. Let us not fall prey to the bystander effect when lives and souls are on the line. We must, all of us, be ever on the watch for danger both to ourselves and others. We're all in this together. 

Your turn: How can we be better beacon-wardens for each other? 

Not who you think it is

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Isaiah 53:3

When I think of The Lord of the Rings and notice a Christ figure, who do I imagine?

Not Gandalf, who can come to mind so easily because of his fall at Moria and his transition from Gandalf the Gray to Gandalf the White.

Not Frodo, who sacrifices so much in order to dispose of the One Ring, which is Sin in this view.

The One Ring is sin, yes, but of the many characters who so imperfectly represent Christ there is another that comes more prominently to mind: Gollum.

Certainly "there is no beauty that we should desire him," but it goes a little past that. When it comes down to it, Frodo cannot do the deed. He stands at the edge of the Crack of Doom, having traveled so far to rid himself (and the world) of sin, but at the last he cannot do it. There are sins of ours that we are disgusted by, but there are yet others that are, ah, precious to us. Pet sins, so to say. When I am angry, for example, it is not rare for me to like that feeling, to have to step outside of myself and give a reminder that yes, it may feel good to be angry at someone, but it still isn't right.

We don't have to worry much about sins that we don't like. The ones that we're warned of all of the time are the sins that we enjoy, and because we enjoy them it is so hard for us to get rid of them. And sometimes even if we hate that particular sin it is still difficult to be rid of it. I am sure that many recovering addicts will agree with me on this. Ultimately we cannot get rid of everything on our own.

Luckily for us, and for Middle-Earth, Gollum-Jesus is available. Yes, it is painful for Frodo-Everyman when his finger is bitten off, but is this pain not infinitely less than the alternative that would have come? Frodo has lost the Ring through the action of his intercessor, that painful benefactor that led him to this place to start with, and he can return to his home at last.

As a final note, Frodo could not have stood at Mount Doom without traveling through Mordor (with eagles or without them, still would have had to cross the territory). Without the Atonement of Christ we cannot be rid of sin, but even with it we cannot only say "Jesus is awesome" and then sit on the couch. As C. S. Lewis says we cannot call ourselves Christians if we fail to take "the slightest slightest notice of what he [Jesus] says," and what He says is "Come, follow me" and "Come unto me." If He has traveled through Mordor and stands at Mount Doom, then, we cannot stand at the Shire and think ourselves about to dispose of the One Ring forever.