By Steve Weatherbe

GROWING UP in Finland, Petri Tikka was more interested in Star Wars than in The Lord of the Rings – because he had judged J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork as insufficiently  “grounded in reality.”

Then a Lutheran pastor’s son who was gradually replacing his Christian faith with an eclectic mish-mash of New Age notions, Tikka is now a Master of Divinity, seeking his first parish. He is also a leading expert on Quenya, the language Tolkien created for the elves who figure so prominently in his fantasy trilogy.

This summer, he has been taking the message of ‘God in Tolkien’ to churches and Tolkien lovers in Victoria and Vancouver, while visiting fellow fans of the novelist on the Island.

At 14, Tikka was lured into the books by a cover illustration created by Tolkien himself – which suggested to him that the books were rooted in Norse sagas, and possessed spiritual depth.

These impressions both turned out to be true. Tolkien was a professor of old English, and an expert on the premier Anglo Saxon epic, Beowulf – which was set in Scandinavia.

He had also invented several languages, plus an extraordinarily complex mythology, before starting in on The Lord of the Rings.

But what really took Petri Tikka by surprise was something quite different, he told BCCN. It was “the depth of Tolkien’s faith.”

Already familiar with C.S. Lewis, whose  Narnia tales his mother had read to him and his brother at bedtime, he learned that Tolkien was not only a close friend of Lewis, but had helped lead his fellow author to Christianity.

Better yet, the stories themselves were the best sort of “true myth” – using fiction to reveal truths about humanity and God.

“They are about grace and forgiveness,” said Petri – and they gradually brought him back to the theology of Martin Luther, which abounds with both characteristics.

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To underline his point, Petri pointed out how the climax of The Lord of the Rings departs strikingly from the classic quest  tradition of both ancient sagas and modern Hollywood. This is most evident in the portrayal of the story’s hero.  

“Frodo fails at the end,” said Tikka. “He gives in to temptation – and decides to keep the ring.” It is his sinister half-human companion Gollum who destroys the embodiment of evil. “Gollum is only there to do it because Frodo [had] mercy on Gollum,” said Petri. But Frodo is forgiven too, he added.

Tikka is in Victoria as the guest of a fellow Tolkien fan, Peggy Pedersen, whose job co-editing the provincial Hansard with husband Erik leaves her plenty of spare time in the summer. Last summer, she decided to learn a language.

Quenya, because it had a vocabulary of only 2,500 words, seemed a good prospect; and a YouTube video linked her with someone who could actually speak it: one Petri Tikka.

“I mentioned to him,” she recalled, “that Quenya’s vocabulary was so noble that it made me want the qualities required to speak it – but I had never felt I measured up.

“He responded that this was something we all felt as sinners, but that Jesus was the friend of sinners – and that as children of God, we had already been forgiven. I did not have to strive for what was already a gift to me.”

A lapsed Christian practicing Hinduism at that time, Pedersen quickly experienced a great lifting of her spirit – and almost as quickly, visited the nearest Lutheran church.

“I haven’t left,” she said.

Pedersen said she has also found that, just as she met Tikka on the internet, she has made many more Christian friends on Facebook – which she had never used before.

Some are fellow practitioners of Quenya, and some are not.

“I have so many friends now – really good friends from all over the world, who all pray for each other.”

September 2010