And while our society may laud the heroic displays of courage in a film, they laugh at them in reality. In "real life," we're more apt to, as my mother put it, laud the cowards. We celebrate the people who claw their way to the top, pushing past women and children, motivated by greed and self-interest. These are the self-made men, our popular personages.
Cowardice unspools its thread through human history all the way back to the Garden when man broke God's rules and then hid like cowards from responsibility.
And then cowardice died in the face of the greatest act of courage this sin-spattered earth has ever seen: the cross. God Himself stood up and came to the defense of His desperate, weak creation. When we were trembling from cowardice, God was strong. The Shepherd died for His flock.
For the Christian, we are called to be courageous. As God commanded Joshua so many years ago, we are called to abandon the lethargy of fear and irresponsibility and be brave. That means standing up for the weak. It means telling the world about that almost unfathomable courage of the God-Man. It means not remaining silent in the face of evil, whether that be the murder of children or the injustice of racism. It means being true to the Word of God above all else, at any cost. Courage means being faithful to our courageous King.
The Hobbit displays a mere fictional fragment of the beauty of courage. Yet it awakens in us a desire to fight for our fellow man, to rage against the march of evil. And as Christians we are called to this on a deeper level. We are called to be courageous for the King.