There is much that I am bothered by with this rendering of The Hobbit in three films. As a Tolkien fan, however, I like all the back story and extraneous mythology that Peter Jackson is putting into the movie (although, it is certainly motivated by the very real desire to make more money). I was watching the first installment of these films again the other day, and another scene struck me as rather poignant. After their ordeal in the goblins' lair in the mountain, when the Dwarfs reemerge without their Hobbit companion, Thorin assumes that Bilbo has abandoned them for the comforts of his home back in the Shire. However, he is wrong.
Bilbo rejoined the company, and he gives a striking reason why. He has no personal stake in the Dwarfs' mission, really. He is there because Gandalf did what he usually does. Hobbits are home-bodies, and happily so. The reason that Bilbo gives, however, indicates that he has come to understand something remarkable - and it is very Christian.
Bilbo recognizes that the world does not revolve around him, and there are other folks who have problems and struggles in the world. He chooses to join his destiny with theirs out of his natural goodness and concern for those whom he has come to consider friends. Bilbo's reasoning expresses the ideal that we call "solidarity."
Solidarity means that we are connected to others in their joys and struggles because of our shared experience of humanity. We cannot simply turn a deaf ear to cries for help or change the channel when difficult images remind us of others' suffering. Solidarity reminds us that we are our brother's and sister's keeper and that we do owe one another something.
It is exactly this attitude that God reveals in sending His only-begotten Son to us, so that He might share our condition, and through that sharing we are redeemed. We have benefited first from divine solidarity; and this is why we owe it to others, if we call ourselves Christian.
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