Carry the Burden: The Heart of the Gospel of Love

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

“I’m glad you’re here with me, Samwise Gamgee. Here at the end of all things.” 

I’m always in such a fit of tears after Frodo says this line. After his and Samwise’s toilsome and exhausting journey of setbacks, hunger, thirst, capture, betrayal, danger, abandonment, and homesickness, they lie on the side of the Crack of Doom, in the blistering heat, and with only a shred of strength left to… die. 

But then, of course, we get the classic deus ex machina of Lord of the Rings; Sir Ian Mckellan, the great Gandalf the White, soaring on eagles above, spots the pair of brothers lying alongside the mountain, the lava rushing down only feet from them, and scoops them up.

Then we get a montage of seventeen different slow endings, of which I love each equally and find all necessary. 

Lord of the Rings in particular, more than most other stories let alone fictional fantasy tales, is a great example of how to “carry each other’s burdens.” Whether you examine the dynamic of Frodo and Sam, or Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, or even Merry and Pippin, there is a profound theme of relying on one another to fight through to another day. The circumstances are so dire, in fact, that to not rely on each other would most certainly bring doom to the whole fellowship. To toil together is assumed, not hoped for or yearned for or something to work towards. We survive together or we die alone. 

This is, however, not the American ideal of how to be. Nor is it often the ideal of how to be a Christian in the west. 

Although the book aisle of self-help continues to creep into other more neglected sections of bookstores, more and more folks are becoming more and more isolated. One study, published by the global health service company Cigna, found that 46 percent of U.S. adults report sometimes or always feeling lonely and 47 percent report feeling left out. Cigna calls those "epidemic levels."

The question one begs, then, is why are people becoming more and more lonely? What is causing people to feel left out? What is it about connecting with the brothers and sisters around you that is so vital to life, even for the introvert’s introvert writing this piece? 

It is because we are not made to deal with the chaos of life alone. And yet, that is exactly what we are taught to do. 

When looking at other mental health statistics, stories, and trends, I am horrified at some of the dis-compassionate and frankly uneducated responses of some religious experts. Whether it be a more classic approach of withdrawing from others and figuring things out on one’s own before re-entering normal life, or, worse, specifically in church circles, that those in leadership who experience mental health phenomena like anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts, ought to step down from their posts because they do not fit base requirements of spiritual leadership. This is ludicrous, to put it mildly. If the biggest role models in a given church context can never reveal their struggles or issues, in particular, to their congregation, why in the world would the congregants do so to one another?

Not only do these approaches completely ignore all scientific analysis of how to combat mental illness, they are entirely antithetical to Scripture. The Bible is chock full of accounts of people enduring anxiety, depression, and/or suicidal thoughts. Here’s a list of characters off the top of my head, without researching very deeply: Abraham and Sarah, Moses, David, Saul, Solomon, Elijah, Hannah, and Jesus. 

These are all primary characters, with the last one being the main character in the history of humanity. 

And yet, how often do we persist in patterns of mental strain and struggle while keeping it hidden? What mental pathways do we rationalize to keep our deepest and darkest issues undiscoverable by others? And how do we convince ourselves, so often, that we are the only one dealing with these sorts of crises? 

We live in an individualistic society, for starters. The needs of me trump the needs of others. What I want, what I desire, what I think I need matters more than what others want or desire or think they need. With this go-getting climbing the corporate ladder posture, we ignore or even contribute to the issues of others while also exacerbating our own. Ignoring, too, that a society is composed of a group of people. There are no known societies with a population of one (at least that I know of, maybe at the current White House).

Second, piggy-backing on the first point, with this me-first competitive outlook on life, we ignore one of the primary components of being human; giving and receiving love from others. Where in an individualistic, self-centered perspective of life can we experience love? What kind of meaning can one derive if they only spend mental, physical, and vocational energy on themselves? What is the point of life if the only one who matters in life is myself? 

Lastly, we isolate when struggling because of the traumas we have all endured after sharing our weakness with others and after they were not received well, or, worse, even mocked. Whether you come from a healthy family or not, had a good education experience or not, or have a healthy and thriving life or not, we all came into this world innocent, blameless, and pure, but then become tainted, often by things outside of our control, and then later by things we can control. And then, whether intentional or not, when we share these hurts with others, who also endured their own hurts, we do not receive what we hope for. 

It is harrowing to imagine the last thoughts of those who end their own lives. Obviously, something was not working optimally inside of them to believe life was no longer worth it. It is not simply that they chose to give up; it is that they decided there was no hope for them to overcome their present despair. No one was there to help them escape.

But I have been there. More than a few times.

Yet what brought me out each time wasn’t a Bible verse.

It wasn’t a deep song lyric.

It wasn’t a profound podcast.

As good as all of these are, none of them have faces. None of them have hearts. None of them have voices I know, recognize, and love. 

It was my friends and family who saved me, it was my brothers and sisters enacting the command to bear one another’s burdens. Though they were not inside of my head, they did not know my thoughts, and they did not understand the pain I was experiencing, they lived out the commands of the Bible. They sang the deepest sort of songs. And said words far richer than I will ever hear on a podcast. 

And I have done this for others in these dark places as well. When after you have been saved from the brink of darkness, you then become a guide to others when they enter into theirs. For it is only a matter of time before we all enter into times of despair.

Rewinding the Frodo and Sam story is a scene on the side of the mountain, with thirty more minutes max of trekking before arriving inside the volcano. Fresh out of water, and openly hallucinating due to exhaustion, Frodo collapses to the hard, rocky ground. Samwise, probably the greatest fictional character ever created, tends to his friend and reminds him of all the comforts and homeyness of the Shire. Completely sapped of any life force as he monologues to Sam, Frodo begins to hallucinate the enemy, Sauron, staring deeply at him. And taking away his willpower and therefore, his life.

Samwise, tired and infuriated at the power and hold this ring and the enemy has over his friend, gives the greatest overly sentimental yet wholly earned line in movie history. 

“Then let us be rid of it, once and for all. I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you. Come on!” 

What would it look like for us to be Frodo in this scene? We watch this moment and behold the amazing strength and courage of Sam as he tends to the overwhelming needs of his closest friend. But what of Frodo? There in that moment, he admits that he can go no further. That the energy to persist, the capacity to put one Hobbit foot out in front of the other, is too much for him to bear. 

And we all know we want to be Sam, but what was it about him that convinced Frodo he could admit to such a moment of failure? What qualities had Sam shown, over and over and over again to Frodo, that compelled him to share his frailty, his weakness, his darkness? 

We need far less self-sufficiency and far more other-centeredness. We ought to share our vulnerabilities and become, therefore, each other’s strength. We need to carry each other into the fire, for though we can’t we take anyone’s burdens away, we can carry our brothers and sisters through their burdens and through the flames. 

There is no greater love than this; that one might lay down their lives for their friends. Often I see this as solely Jesus alluding to His actual dying on the behalf of those He loves and those He has called. But what if laying down our lives, for us and our context, is synonymous with carrying the burdens of others? 

There is a wisdom here, however, in not overextending ourselves. We do, in fact, pick and choose whose burdens we can carry and whose burdens are not ours to carry. And yet, the assumption does remain that we are commanded to carry one another’s burdens. No one can survive on an emotional island. 

I have a long way to go with this. I often feel much more like Frodo than Sam in my life. I carry my heart on my sleeve and have still to learn how to conceal what I am feeling from most people. Sometimes, keeping things in and contained would be a welcome change.

And yet, I wonder if my being Frodo has enabled the Sams in my life to know that they can be Frodo too. That they, too, can come to me when they have lost all willpower, when life has become entirely overwhelming, and when the ring whispers, when Sauron threatens, when the layoffs come, when the cancer is diagnosed, when the failed marriage ends, or when the voices inside their head tell them to end everything, I can then tell them to be rid of it, once and for all.

I can’t carry their rings for them, but I can carry them.

You are not alone. You are never alone. God hears all of your cries. And, oftentimes, He dons the voice, the heart, and the mind of our brothers and sisters to reveal the truth to the lies remaining within us.

Therefore, let us carry the burdens of one another. And by doing so, we will fulfill the law of Christ.

(Ps, landing this plane was so stinking hard. So much more I could say about it.)