Good Intentions

 

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were more than contemporaries and acquaintances.  They both belonged to a group they called the Inklings and thus supposedly read and commented on each others works while in progress.  J.R.R. Tolkien is the author who created The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and whose estate has authorized the Amazon series The Rings of Power.  C.S. Lewis is perhaps best known today for his Narnia series which contained  The Lion, the  Witch, and the Wardrobe.  But he is also the author of That Hideous Strength, the last volume of his Perelandra trilogy.

Both men lived through, and were deeply affected by, the hellish evils of WWI and WWII and the rise of fascism. Their works reflect this.  J.R.R. Tolkien also appears to be a strong believer in the monarchy, if not a Jacobite, who also believed in the battle of ultimate good and ultimate evil. He set his tale in a completely imaginary world.  C.S. Lewis appeared to be less of a monarchist, who appeared to believe that people were neither inherently good nor evil, but could be deceived to unknowingly support what later tuned out to be fascism. He also set his story as much as possible in the “real” world.  The “science” in the Perelandra trilogies is woefully out of date, and the theology is, being positive, at least imaginative.  But the lessons about having good intentions, but unknowingly supporting the evils of fascism, are unfortunately all too pertinent today.