The Promise of Joy

When God Talks Back, psychological anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann sets out to explain how sensible people believe in an immaterial God. One aspect of evangelical Christianity that she finds particularly compelling is its promise of joy, and Luhrmann talks about the theme of ultimate joy found in the stories of Tolkien and Lewis. She cites from an essay of Tolkien’s:

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending…a sudden and miraculous grace ... it does not deny the existence…of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it…