Gollum

We watched the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy this past week, and I have been haunted by Gollum ever since. Something about him looks vaguely familiar to me. I realized where my sympathy came from after reading this passage from _The Pursuit of God_ by A.W. Tozer.

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

There it is. (The Ring was made by a force of evil and not of good, so that is a difference. But still.) He is a pitiful and frightening example of a soul given up to lust.