Pretty Colors?

One of my favorite books is Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a brilliant man, and his stories are so rich with symbolism and nuggets of poetic thought. One scene in particular is when Gandalf goes to Saruman (I’ll never understand why Tolkien named this wizard a name so similar to the Dark Lord Sauron—it’s confusing) after being summoned, only to discover the white wizard had turned. Gandalf relates his encounter:

“For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!”
I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.
“I liked white better,” I said.
“White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white pages can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.”
“In which case it is no longer white,” said I. “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

My conclusion is that it’s easy to be enticed by the likes of Pleasantville, to try and rationalize our desire for the delectable flavor of sin. It’s more glamorous to believe in our own inner light, our own path, our own paradise that we create with fantasies of absolute comfort. It’s the draw of the drug-induced, tie-dye hallucinations that pull us away from rigid rules of black and white morality. There’s less friction with perfume lubed “love” than with the stark white righteousness that makes us uncomfortably aware our stench of evil. If we must believe in a God, let’s reduce Him to our level. A God who is superior to us requires an amount of humility and surrender that most are unwilling to give. For inherent in surrender is submission and repentance, two words that our pride inhibits us from digesting.