[littlemanpoet]

davem: how much freedom do we actually have? Eru will step in to manipulate events & even individuals.

din: Again, we have freedom to choose again and again. Bilbo could have chosen to keep the Ring (Frodo did). Gollum could have chosen to forgive Frodo. (He didn’t.) There are lots of choices along the way that could have changed the outcome of the Ring in that year. It may be that God/Eru has “stacked the deck”—if so, I say, “Thank you!” because I can relax in the knowledge that all will be well.

LMP: Sorry, but I must take exception to God "stacking the deck". By giving us free will, that is rendered impossible. Every creature born with free will is one more creature who limits God's omnipotence, and it appears that that's the way God wants it. Now, just in case it occurred to anyone, to posit that God actually retains God's omnipotence by making the chooser choose what the chooser chooses, flouts free will, not to mention good sense, rendering human life a farce, and pain and suffering reason enough to commit suicide; which is no solution, because if one's spirit continues after physical death in a universe constructed like that, we're all doomed in an existence governed by a God worse than Melkor. So it can't possibly be that way. I can't believe in that kind of God, certainly not to try and save some piece of dearly loved traditional doctrine!

>din: The fact that there is pain does not negate this for me, because I am
>now empowered w/the knowledge that though pain is inevitable, suffering
>is optional. It’s all a matter of perspective, aka choice! You can
>either blame God/Eru for what seems to be wrong on earth/ME, or you can
>be grateful for everything just as it is. [Din bows to Buddha]
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LMP: Maybe this is just a matter of semantics, but it appears that you're saying that suffering is a choice based on the perspective of the one experiencing pain. Buddhist or not, it seems to me that such thinking confounds good sense (apologies to all Buddhists). Example: Christ suffered on the cross. To use this thinking, all he had to do was get the right perspective and it wouldn't have hurt so bad? A mother suffering the pains of childbirth: just put her mind in the right frame and she won't suffer from the pain of ripped muscle? An abused spouse or starved child - all they have to do is think about it the right way? Need I go further with the examples? Buddhism doesn't seem to touch suffering in a satisfactory manner. Experiencing pain is passive while suffering is active? Sorry, it just sounds offensive. I see a clear distinction between suffering real agony and the next step of having a bad attitude about it. It's true that the early Christians actually sang praises to God while they were being tortured to death, but they considered it an honor because of their faith; they were being tortured precisely because of their faith, which had been promised to them by Christ as a kind of sacrifice of praise they could offer to God. Yes, it sounds weird to us moderns, but I can see the how and why of that a lot better than a beaten wife who never chose that her husband should beat her. She suffers, no matter what her attitude about it is.

>davem: Is he actually 'healed' in the sense of having what was wrong with him put right, or do his wounds remain forever, but he himself is made different by having had them inflicted on him, suffering them?
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din: Is there really a preferable difference (what is healing if it is not a transformation?), or is all this actually about not liking the way we perceive that God/Eru does things?

LMP: I really think that this is not about not liking the way God does things; rather, it's about trying to figure out a way to explain suffering such that we can abide living in a universe that such a God created. I think davem is asking the right kind of question here. "Made different" seems to imply: transformed in such a way that the pain suffered no longer has power over Frodo - or me.

>LMP: Completeness seems like the only possible conclusion to suffering, and it seems to be what Tolkien is suggesting not only for Frodo, but for Sam and the rest of the Fellowship as well.
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din: Exactly. And for us, too. Suffering leads to transformation (when Love is chosen over fear); transformation leads to completeness; completeness = wholeness; wholeness = atonement (at-one-ment) = as one w/God = Heaven.

LMP: love chosen over fear. Quite so. It's fear, not hate, that is love's true opposite. Hate and anger are just masks to hide fear.

>davem: I suppose part of the problem is that LotR ends before we see Frodo's final state.
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din: I am reminded of Christ’s words to Thomas—“Must you see to believe?” If we could know by somehow seeing what has been “unseeable” does that not nullify free will?

LMP: No, I think enhanced perception enables free will, which is too often enslaved by fear. I am saying that there are many times when we don't have free will because our wills are overcome by fear and its masks, hate and anger. Boromir is about as good an example of this, in Lorien, as anyone.

din: If I can know the answer to all my questions through my senses & mind (which is informed & shaped by the senses), then . . .think about it.

LMP: There's a difference between knowing answers to ALL my questions, and knowing answers to the MOST PRESSING questions that confound living, such as what to do with unjust suffering; by whatever means of enhanced perception.

>din: Is there a difference between God outside and God inside? Do we not see ourselves in others and others in ourselves?
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LMP: I don't think it's avoidable. If we love ourselves, we view others as full of love. If we fear ourselves, we view others in fear. If we see God in others, they see God in us. Sure, we see others generally as they are, but we always carry a bit of ourselves into them. Don't you think?

>davem: Has Frodo anything to repent of?
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din: Yes, in the sense of atonement, for believing that there is a separation between self & God and choosing self instead of God as evidenced when he claimed the Ring at Doom, thus necessitating the suffering for his transformation.

LMP: But isn't there a difference between believing there's a separation, and causing one? Maybe I'm understanding the word "separation" differently than you, din. Am I right in understanding that you're re not talking about mere separateness, but a dis-integration that should not be there? How did it get into Frodo? Was it there from the start? Or did it occur from the incessant power of the Ring?

>Fordim: “I do not choose now” and “I will not.” This would seem to open the door to the idea that Frodo’s will has been overmastered by the Ring, and that he is not in control anymore. He is “not choosing” for his “will [is] not” his own anymore.
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din: As Tolkien has said, Frodo was overmatched, and thus doomed (as are we all when going mano a mano w/pure evil). However, he made the choices leading to that point. These choices were made of good & noble stuff at first (choosing others/Love), then slowly changed as he came nearer to Mt. Doom—he was choosing personal self, which resulted in the ultimate & inevitable abandonment of Higher Self (self in the world vs. Self in God). This is, IMO, the nature of Frodo’s wound/suffering.

LMP: But you're still saying that he was at fault for something he couldn't avoid because he was no match for it in the first place. So his "sin", as it were, was to volunteer to do something that everyone knew he couldn't. This choice was made at the Council fo Elrond, and the Elves, Gandalf, and everybody but Boromir, were impressed with Frodo's selflessness. Thus his "sin" is actually self-sacrifice. Since when does one need to repent of self-sacrifice, or am I being perverse?