The way of imagination

  JER. 2.4 – 4.2: ISRAEL/JUDAH: WHO IS THE WAYWARD WIFE?   “God’s message came to me.   It went like this: ‘Get out in the streets and call to Jerusalem [1] : God’s Message!” (Jer. 2.1, The Message ).      Beginning in Jer. 2.4, the prophecies are directed to the house of “Israel”; starting in 4.3, the prophet addresses “Judah and Jerusalem” (this series of oracles ends at 6.30).   There are a few different ways to interpret the fact that Jeremiah seems to be addressing first the Northern Kingdom in chapters 2—3 and then the Kingdom of Judah in chapters 4—6:      1 - Though the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell about a century earlier (722 B.C.), in 2.4—4.2, Jeremiah is evoking the entire history of the people of God since the Exodus.   Indeed, when Jeremiah addresses “Jerusalem”, he is actually addressing the totality of the people of God, situated at the time in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. [2]   Seen in thi...

  J.R.R. Tolkien dreamed up Middle-earth during the Great War (1914—1918) and wrote most of The Lord of the Rings during World War II (1939—1945). [1]   There can be no doubt as to “the bellicose environment” of the story – it is a tale both about a war and was itself forged in the fires of two world wars – the author having fought in the first and two of his sons bearing arms in the second [2] while their father put pen to paper.      Is war ever a legitimate response to “evil”?   Does The Lord of the Rings offer an answer to this question?   Propaganda [3] has always been a prominent feature of wars, both to encourage enlistment and to assure anxious populations that their country’s cause is just [4] and that their sacrifices are worthwhile.   From medieval Crusades [5] to “liberate” the Holy Land to modern “crusades” against “the axis of evil” [6] , conflicts have often been couched in cosmic terms as struggles between “good” and “...