008: The Unseen Realm & LOTR

What if The Lord of the Rings could help us contextualize the unseen realm more clearly?We talk about: Tolkien, Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm, the divine council, spiritual hierarchy, evil, corruption and stewardship. This episode is basically Zach taking five business days to make one point because he is thinking out loud and trying to organize a Tolkien thought, a theology thought, and a fatherhood thought in real time.But the point is worth getting to:Evil cannot create. It can only corrupt what God has already made.Tolkien was not writing a theology textbook, but his world gives us a picture of something Scripture says over and over again. God creates order, beauty, and life. Evil introduces dissonance, deception, despair, and corruption. And when people fail to guard what they have been given, evil takes ground.We also talk about how easy it is to live with a flannelgraph version of reality. Clean. Flat. Safe. Simple.But Scripture gives us a bigger and stranger picture than that. There is a real spiritual realm. There are powers and principalities. There is order and hierarchy. There is rebellion and corruption. And above all of it, there is the Most High God who is sovereign over every creature, every kingdom, and every unseen power.Commission: Pick one area of your life where you have been called to be a faithful steward. Then ask a simple question: am I guarding what God has given me?Chapters:00:00 Nerdy Setup and Sauron’s Deception02:09 Sauna and Tolkien’s Creation Story07:12 Divine Council, Elohim, and The Unseen Realm17:19 Modern Church Blind Spots and Angel Hierarchy30:21 Dwarves and Divine Mercy33:28 Genesis 6 and Orc Origins39:19 Stewardship, Borders, and Despair52:46 True Myth and the Next Episode