Lewis, Tolkien, & Friendship | John Hendrix

Hi, I'm Anna and I'm a student at Brown University. I love Veritas because it's an opportunity to ask deep questions and learn from others about our faith. I hope that this episode helps you love Veritas too. Thanks for listening. Artists often get told when they're young that you need to be careful of other artists, they'll steal your ideas or they'll pollute your ideas so that they're not as good. Right? And that is a false liturgy. Our work always gets better in community. Not sometimes, always. And so retreating from community makes you and your work less. On today's episode, our speakers discuss the topic of friendship, what it looks like on a practical level and why it's so important in our culture today. You'll hear from John Hendrix, an author, illustrator, and art professor at Washington University in St. Louis. This forum focuses on John's new graphic novel titled "The Myth Makers," which tells the story of the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Louis. In this conversation moderated by Pepperdine Professor April Marshall, they explore how Louis and Tolkien's friendship fueled their greatest works and the importance of community in our daily lives. This forum was held at Pepperdine in April 2025. Thank you to the student planning team for making this event possible. As it heads up, there are a few visual aids in today's episode that rely on John's illustrations from his novel. To see them, you can find the link to the YouTube video on our episode page, linked in the podcast description. This is the Veritas Forum podcast, a place for generous dialogue about the ideas that shape our lives. I'm your host, Seth Ballinger, and I'm the media producer for the Veritas Forum. We're gonna start with a brief introduction a little bit and also just an exercise in thinking about friendship. So I'm gonna talk about a word or an image that sort of symbolizes friendship for me to start. I'd love for you to think about that for yourself, a word or an image, a single word, an image that means friendship for you. I'm asking John to do the same. I'll share a little bit about my word and then I'll pass the dialogue to John. He's gonna share about his word or image and then I also want John to introduce himself via this question. What about the relationship between Lewis and Tolkien inspired you? You see the novel, Mythmakers Here. And I wanted to talk about that relationship and how friendship came to be meaningful to him by studying those two figures and their relationship. So I'll give you just a second to think about that word or image for yourself for friendship. And for me, the word is witness. Obviously I had a heads up on the homework to think about the word. The word is witness. And I say witness in so many ways. I'll just give a brief explanation and let John talk about his word or image. Witness in the sense of, I think in a true friendship, you're bearing witness to each other's lives. And all that means, right? You see one another, you walk with one another, you feel what the other feels. You are witness to their life in every way. And at the same time, they're witness to your life. You know that someone is seeing you, hearing you, walking with you, and will bear witness to you with others as well. So witness would be the word that I use. - Yeah, this is a really tough question to boil it down into one word, right? I think probably the first thing you're thinking is like, how is this person qualified to talk about friendship? I am not a therapist. I, guys, I'm a fraud, okay? I'm an artist. I like making comics. I like drawing. That's where I access all of the things that I like to think about. And I like to read about us through images. And so a lot of the last five years, I have spent thinking about friendship. And especially the word fellowship. And when we say fellowship in the context of Tolkien and Lewis, we tend to think of a particular fellowship and the things that they brought together in their journey and what that meant. So my word, I think, is steadfastness or long-suffering maybe. And maybe that sounds kind of like a bummer of a word for friendship. But the things I learned from Tolkien and Lewis was you may not know the sort of history of their story. This is a graphic novel, okay? I sort of live in fear that there might be a real Tolkien or Lewis scholar in the audience. But I've read just like maybe five more books about them than you have, okay? But if you don't know the story, you know they wrote Narnian Lord of the Rings. But they were not just friends. They were really like bros together. For like 25 years, they were the closest person in each other's life. And I think that really tells something about how their art was made and why their friends are so important. In fact, I think we would not have Narnia or Middle Earth without their friendship. I think that's how important friendship was. And to me, that all came down to their steadfastness and their in some ways long suffering with each other. With when you've had a friend a long time, you know exactly what that means. So let's get started with some big questions, all right? We're going to focus on three of those tonight. Here's the first one. Does being a Christian make you a better friend? Yes, moving on. Yes, I think we can all think of times when our faith has bolstered those difficult moments in your life, right? And we can also think of times when maybe there is a hard moment and as Christians maybe we're a little too quick to suggest a Bible verse that would make it all better or we're a little too fast to code it in the sovereignty of God and we don't just sit and lament with one another. I think actually one of the things that just reflecting about Tolkien and Lewis' friendship was really amazing about them is when they met, they had this incredible shared history. They both were in the trenches of World War I. I mean, really they should not have escaped World War I together. This is the very first page of the book. It's a cold open of just about how they met and it was at a faculty meeting. Lewis had had, you know, he was just a dawn. He was not a professor but Tolkien was a professor. And when they meet, we know that this was an important meeting to them because Lewis recorded it in his diary and he said, met Professor Tolkien today, pale, fluent chap. No harm in him only needs a smack or so. That basically summarizes their entire friendship. But okay, when they met the equivalent of if you went into a meeting and somebody was wearing like a Wolverine t-shirt and you love Wolverine and you walk over to them and you're like, oh my gosh, like let's talk about Wolverine. That's what they did in this meeting. They talked about Norse mythology and they basically just geeked out about Norse mythology because of course Tolkien had a reading club where called the Colbiders where they read Norse mythology in Icelandic together and he invited Lewis to join. Now the key to this is that at this point in his life, Lewis was, his heart was really bitter. He had gone through the war, he was an atheist. He had seen the worst that humanity had to offer the world. But he had this weird tension in his heart. The things he loved the most in the world were imaginary. And so in his mind, he could not come up with any solution to the problem that anything that is real in the world is grim and meaningless. Anything that I love like fairy stories, like the Norse myths is imaginary. But Tolkien was a Catholic and gave him a lens to see the world in the right way. scholar Alan Jacob says, Tolkien did not convert Lewis. He allowed him to read the story the right way. And to me that is what a Christian friendship can do. We give each other the ability to not just see Christianity as a collection of position papers, you know, like what do you think about whatever? To fill in the culture war issue, right? But rather what is the story? Because we are a story. And this is why Lewis loved the fairy tales. John, would you repeat that quote again? The lens quote about the story the right way? Will you talk? Will you say it quote again? Yes, he said he learned to read the human story the right way. So thinking about that idea of witness, right? The way that can be interpreted through the Christian lens and the witness to the story of Christ, of who we are as human beings, of what we're supposed to be to one another. I think that's a witness in the friendship there, right? Thinking about this question still, does being a Christian make you a better friend? What other worldviews could we think about? Where else do we see the ideas of friendship, community unity? It's not just in Christian theology or Christian perspectives. Although the Bible, of course, gives us many examples about friendship, gives us many verses about friendship. We have proverbs, we have Galatians, right? Bear one another's burdens and Galatians. But we also have examples or antithetical examples, right? We have Job and his friends, right? Job might have needed some, you know, some more support. Maybe not the best example, right? But, right, that's the opposite, perhaps. But what do you think other traditions might be able to offer us, John, in terms of the way to be a good friend? I'm going to go around that and I'll get to it. So the problem is when I start talking about Tolkien and Lewis, it takes about two hours for me to get to any point. But one of the things I think the American church sometimes puts a lot of pressure on Christians to sort of turn every interaction into some kind of gospel message or like there's a pressure to do that or this feeling like well We've talked three times. I guess I should mention you know our Lord and Savior at some point and I tell my students this Like if you had a friend that you like really loved and you really loved hanging out with them But man every time you got with them like within five minutes the conversation always came back to like helicopters You would be like Dave's really nice, but it's just all about helicopters and helicopters are great But I think actually something we can look back to Lewis and Tolkien after they met Tolkien brought Lewis into his world and they just had fun together They enjoyed culture together They had a shared fandom and I think actually fandom or fan art is at the heart of what Narnian Middle-Earth are actually They're actually just tributes to these bigger stories these bigger ideas and so eventually Well like Lewis and Tolkien actually dressed up as polar bears once together They went to a it was not a fancy dress party. It was not a costume party. They just showed up in polar bear outfits Again, so right there their friendship was based on a shared love right a community Right and from that an extension of things that they made together right so those are two things that I think actually can Can come back to what we can take from any faith tradition is how important community is because what what religion is Is a way to have community outside of your blood family right and so I It's something I say to my I lead a graduate program and artists often get told when they're young that You need to be careful of other artists want they'll steal your ideas or They'll pollute your ideas so that they're not as good right and that is a false liturgy Our work always gets better in community not sometimes Always and so retreating from community makes you and your work less and So you have to let go of the idea that there is something that others will Corrupt or steal or pollute Especially inside the arts. I think it applies to almost anyone at your age But especially in the arts there can be a temptation to isolate and to become the Torture genius that our culture tells you that you have to be if you want to be a great artist student engineer whatever and To build off of that. I'll say I think you're absolutely Correct about community and unity which you mentioned unity is part of many faith traditions and friendship is Sort of our effort to create unity with others those like us and those not necessarily like us So I think that striving for unity and community is part of the Christian tradition but part of other traditions as well All right ready for big question number two. What do you think? Okay, thank you. Why not? What does it look like to be a responsible or a cannibal friend? We talk a lot about accountability. I hear that term a whole lot in a friendship. What does that mean? What what do we do? How do we embody accountability in a friendship John? I don't want to spoil this book for you, but the Amazing story about Lewis and Tolkien is that they had this rich fellowship for so many years where They had this reading group called the Inklings they would come together on well Let's they met twice a week. This is one thing that everyone should take away from friendship is you have to be intentional And you have to have things that you stick to and you plan and you don't like flake out on And so they met twice a week 11 a.m. on Tuesdays They met at the pub at equal and child so okay number one have beers at 11 a.m. apparently No, I'm sorry don't do that and then the second time they met was Thursday night at Modeling College in Lewis's quarters and that's where they read to one another right? This is where they really were vulnerable They would bring things in that were not finished and They would read them aloud and Warney Lewis which was CS Lewis's brother was also part of the Inklings said that to read before the Inklings Was to face a howitzer with a pea shooter because they were really honest like this was not the mutual Adlimeration society they really put your peets through the ringer and so I think a good friend when there is trust when there is safety can be honest and Can really when you have that connection when you have that trust with one another can say things that are sometimes difficult and In fact, that is one of the reasons why towards you know the end of their life after 25 years together Their friendship began to deteriorate it began to decay and Dim and Harsherly if they lost the ability to be honest with each other Lewis got married to Joy Davidman and did not even tell Tolkien that this was happening because he feared that maybe Tolkien would be mad about that because joy had been divorced from her husband who had been abusive and So they were not being honest with one another and so that accountability that friendship That is where the rift really came in and they're in their friendship and really they they died with without having that fully resolved and you You see it in Tolkien's letters that Lewis died, you know He was ill, but it was kind of a very sudden death and and Tolkien was gutted by it and he said in one of his final letters that Lewis's death had been an axe below to the roots of his life and he had he I think he died with many regrets about things He was never able to say to see us Lewis Do you want to talk about the image at all their job? Oh well, so in this book I picked these two characters at random a line and a wizard I just a totally random totally random now one of the Phenomenons of making a graphic novel which is what I do the inklings don't do anything They sit and talk mostly at the Eagle and Child and at Maudlin College. That's it There's really nothing that happens. Okay, so a 13 year old which these books are for middle grade I think my ideal audience is actually like a 13 year old who's been assigned bail wolf and hates it And I want to tell them that like no the bail wolf has everything to do with like the Avengers You just have to keep reading but yes Nobody's gonna read a graphic novel about the the well, I would but most people need a little more action So I invented these two protagonist line and wizard and they act as avatars in the book to help guide you through the story a little bit And then they get to do some of the things that Lewis and Tolkien are writing about so in this book We have these two parallel friendships that are running at the same time We have we're learning about Tolkien and Lewis's ups and downs and then we also have line and wizard who are kind of an odd couple I mean, you know ones kind of a bumbling marble mouth and then the other is this brash kind of and so they get on these adventures together And it's a way actually to bridge kind of the narrative gap of how you get someone to learn about both mythology and Tell their their biography at the same time Thank you. I'm gonna pop back to that big question number two And just to let you know I think big question number two is also related to big question number one and John mentioned trust and vulnerability in this accountability piece and I think that thinking about Being a Christian and a friendship. I think part of friendship is a sacredness Right that you're living with someone else right living alongside them living in their moments of highs and lows Their joys their sorrows and you have this vulnerability and you have this trust and you talked about shared things Whether they be joys or adventures like with the avatars you use in your book and you share those things because you trust the other person in this relationship and that trust is sacred and you talked about what that looks like when it's broken For Lewis and Tolkien and what that meant and regrets and I think accountability is a very important connected to this idea of sacredness right because you're holding something sacred for another person Well and to relate it one quick story from the reading groups There was one member of the group Hugo Dyson actually was very instrumental in Lewis coming to faith But he was also just a real kind of crank and he hated Lord of the Rings okay He's in this reading group for like I mean look Tolkien took 17 years to write Lord of the Rings so by the end of this Hugo Dyson cannot take it and so Toler's pulls out the manuscript. He's gonna read that night and he flops onto the couch and says oh god more elves And Tolkien was really really hurt like really hurt by it and was like no, I'm not gonna do this and Lewis stepped in and was like no No, no, no Hugo you're out of order Tolers you're going to read this right now and you know protected him from that embarrassment and said no we're all in this with you And in fact it's something I had to cut from the book for for time but even after Tolkien and Lewis were Dimming their friendship was dimming talking Basically went out of his way to make sure that Lewis could finally get his chair to be a full professor Because Oxford had looked over him for years mostly because he wrote popular books That was the number one sin of a scholar at the time you cannot be popular and Tolkien thought this right Rightfully was a real tragedy and helped Lewis get a chair at Cambridge We had modeling college in Cambridge So his last few years of teaching was really a chair that Tolkien had had been instrumental in providing John Maure on this question. Let's think about the big title we have for the talk which is what do you think we get wrong about friendship What do we get wrong about being responsible or accountable or trust because we get stuff wrong Right? We've all been. in friendships where it doesn't go the way we hope. We've all been in friendships where there's brokenness. There's we've all been in friendships when we feel like trust has been broken or someone hasn't seen us or heard us or like the moment you just described someone did see us and hear us and didn't honor us. Didn't feel like that was sacred enough, right? Judge us. What do we get wrong about friendship? Well, I think it's good to think about the paradigm of what you live in. We're all inside a particular moment. We live in a very individualistic society. Let's just imagine you told your parents you're moving across the country for a new job in New York City. What would they say? It would be like, wow, what a great choice. That's amazing. Congratulations. Now replace that conversation with I'm moving to New York City because I have some really good friends there that are really special to me and we have a deep fellowship and it's really important as a human being to have deep fellowship. They would think that's not a good idea, right? We do not normalize making choices to prioritize friendship. It's actually seen as a kind of bonus. It's not the real story and unfortunately the Bible just tells a very different story about that and that basically this is the reason why the church exists and in fact a previous book of mine, The Faithful Spy about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was obsessed with this idea of the other and that Christ is only present when there is another with you, right? And so that the church is the literal Christness in the world. And so his whole life, his whole ministry, his whole sacrifice was about otherness, right? And that that is where Christ is present. So I just think even in your mind saying that making choices to prioritize fellowship, especially if you have a group of friends that is special and I think we know when we're in those. I mean you guys may be in friendships right now that you will know for the rest of your life, right? And those are real gifts. And I think you you had a very important point earlier about being conscientious, making an effort, being sure to be present, but planning that, right? There's spontaneous moments in friendship as well, but that they held these meetings that they knew they were going to be together and engage with one another and had that to look forward to, had that to be accountable with and spent that time together. That time is is a huge element of friendship, I think. Well, and you're in the season right now in college where friendships are your family in many ways. And that's awesome. You have lots of time to spend together. And in some ways the challenge of friendship comes in your 30s and your 40s when you have children and demands of work and family and all these other things and still prioritizing friends. And not just as like let's go and hit 18, like let's sit down around a fire and really catch up and be intentionally in each other's lives of that takes a lot of discipline the older you get. Big question number three. Are we ready? What do you think? Let's do it. We're flying through this. I think we're going to be done early. We're on time, John. We're on time. I'm sorry. All right. All right. What is the connection between friendship and other kinds of relationships? For instance, romantic relationships. And you sort of started to lead us into this thinking about family and transitions in life. So how are ships, if you will, related? I just am imagining my children sitting in the audience thinking that I'm giving relationship advice so funny. So I met my wife in high school and right, it sounds so awesome. It was amazing from the moment we met, right? No, we broke up three times. I broke up with her on Christmas. Oh, I know. That's it, John. I know. I didn't plan it. You know, it's just one of those organic conversations. Anyway, okay. Oh, it was after we did the gift exchange and she said she knew later. She was like, I knew you're going to break out because the gift was so bad. But we've been married 25 years. So, okay, here's what I'm going to say. I have come to learn this lesson over and over. I'm no expert in relationships, but I am an expert in graphic novels. Graphic novels are a mess. Okay. They are a mess from beginning to end. Everyone asked me, what are you right first? The words are the pictures. And I'm like, yes, I don't know. I think I don't know how it happens. And every day I'm in the middle, like this project, myth makers was five years in the meeting. Every day, I would wake up and be like, this isn't working. It's not working. I've now put three years into this. It's not working. And relationships sometimes feel like that. It feels like a mess every day is up times. But again, that long suffering, that steadfastness, that is the point of it, really. It's not just to like, I feel great today, but a commitment. We see this in Lewis and Tolkien. They were committed to one another and that meant everything, really, for the long suffering of their friendship. Do you want to comment on this image? Oh, well, this is a cutaway image from Eagle and Child. This is Lewis walking in with a bundle of papers. Halfway probably between various administrative duties or meetings he's skipping out on, dropping into the Eagle and Child, which it was their famous pub that is still there in Oxford today. Bird and baby is what they called it. It is currently closed and no one exactly knows what is going on. I think it's going to be renovated and just everyone is hoping it's not going to be gutted on the inside. But if you walk through Eagle and Child in the very back was the rabbit room. It's a wonderful, cozy little room with a fireplace where they always did their hangouts. Here we have some of the regular characters from the early Inklings meetings. We're going to go back to that big question number three. John and I have the blessing of having very different perspectives on this because I'm unmarried and I don't have children. You think about the ships and friendship and relationships. I think part of what I've learned through friendship is the way in which friendship translates to my familial relationships. I think I'm a better sister. I think I'm a better daughter. I think I'm a better aunt. I think I'm a better cousin because I practice in those relationships what I practice in my friendships. I think it's the same building blocks that we've talked about. Trust, accountability, sharing, being there. I have to be very conscientious because I live here in California and you may have noticed that I don't sound like I'm from California, perhaps. I'm originally from Louisville, Kentucky. I don't have any family here in California. I have to remember the time difference. Three hours, which is just enough to be like, oh, they're eating dinner. They're going to bed. Oh, they're—and so this point of being conscientious, we have all kinds of technology now, which is very helpful with that, honestly. Being able to see someone—I mean, if phone call was great, but now I can look at my niece and nephew. I can look at my parents. They can look at me. And I can't tell you how many times it's been wonderful to say, oh, I want to show you something and be able to say, here's this picture or this thing or look at this or that. And those moments, they add up over time. And I think that's what I'd say about relationships in general is that they're cumulative. And even when we get it wrong, we have this accumulation of moments when we've got it right, we have this trust, we have this sacredness, and we have this notion, at least in the Christian world view, that we're going to forgive one another. But we also have these other things that we've accumulated and we can lean back into. We can remember why this person is dear to us. We can remember how they've supported us. We can remember who they've been to us, and they can remember who we've been to them. And so I think practicing friendship is always abundance, whether it be with my family, whether it be in a romantic setting, it's a practice of abundance. And I think all these qualities you bring or skill sets you bring, they transfer very easily. Yeah, what would you say? No, that's great. Yeah. I mean, the image of the cup running over, right? That is a really countercultural image that God gives us. Imagine the most expensive wine in the world and you fill it up to the brim and then God just keeps on pouring and it's just spilling onto the ground and you're like, bro, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's expensive. He's like, nope, nope, it is the lavishness of love. That is a really good thing. Yeah, it's a really good advice. I'm going back to Lewis and Tolkien, just a small story from their life. Like they were British men. They did not talk about their feelings, right? This this was kind of a debt. They were kicking down the road until the bill came due in their relationship. Like, for instance, it took Tolkien 17 years to write Lord of the Rings. Basically, he wrote one single story of his whole life that involves the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and similarly, in which he was never published in his life. Lewis wrote all seven Narnia books in seven years. Lewis would basically on the first draft write something that would become a bestseller. He became literally a hero, Lewis became literally a hero of Britain in the war doing these radio talks, trying to talk about God and what eventually became mere Christianity, right? So Tolkien was like one of those friends, it's like, you know, good job you, but also like, man, what are you doing? He did as a Catholic. He thought it was crazy that Lewis could just write a book of theology without going to seminary. He thought that was wildly irresponsible. Like Lewis dedicated screw tape letters to Tolkien. He never understood why. He thought that book was super weird and was speculative. And, you know, he hated Father Christmas in Narnia. Right. Tolkien hated Narnia. But what I tell people is Tolkien hated everything. So it doesn't matter that he hated Narnia. This was just his like mindset on the world. Okay, that was all preamble to say. When Lewis fell in love with Joy Davidman, Lewis knew deep down, Tolkien was skeptical about the things he had been doing. He was skeptical about his theological positions that he took in miracles. He was skeptical about the idea that someone could remarry a woman who was divorced, even a woman who had been divorced from an abusive husband. And so Lewis not wanting to hurt him or to bring something up that would be uncomfortable just didn't tell him, right? And probably was like, this will work itself out. Well, he got married and Tolkien found out from a friend that Lewis had gotten married. This broke Tolkien's heart, right? Like not just that you married a woman who was divorced, but that you didn't tell me, right? That was the big breach of honesty between them. That I think really sent them down the path where they could never have the same fellowship that they did before that moment. And all of that I think was an accumulation of, you know, you kind of some of your friends, you have like friend friends, and then you have like some that are like frenemy friends. You know, you're like, yeah, we hang out, but like sometimes I just wish they wouldn't do so well at everything. And I think actually Tolkien kind of transitioned into that a little bit. And the bitterness and the jealousy of that kind of got the better of him. But yeah, I mean, in some ways, it can be a sad story if you read it that way. In my book, I give them a chance to maybe say the truth that they believed, and that is that this is not our home. And I think that's really good to remember. The new earth, that is the wildest thing the Bible has ever come up with. And we have to remember that every day. And Tolkien had this word for what he loved about stories. Don't worry, I've got only 30 minutes more on this topic. He called it the Yuka Tastrophy. He said, "All good stories have it." And it's basically the anti-Katastrophy. And in fact, one of the criticisms of Lord of the Rings is if you've read it, is that they're all over the place. Like Gandalf comes on the third day at Helms Deep, the Eagles come to save Sam and Frodo. It's the idea that when things are at their darkest and there is no hope left, something happens and hope is back. And of course, Tolkien was obsessed about this because to him, the ear text of the Yuka Tastrophy was Easter. And so I could not tell Amith about Lewis and Tolkien's friendship without a Yuka Tastrophy. So I'm just gonna say you'll have to read the book. (audience applauding) Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so you don't miss an episode. If you have feedback or ideas for what we can share on this podcast, send us an email at [email protected]. We love hearing from you. Our production is led by me, Seth Bollinger, and a team at Resonate Recordings. Thanks to Bethany Jenkins for providing content editing and audio support for this episode. And Jessica Ramsey for coordinating all of our production needs. As always, we want to thank our colleagues on the Veritas University Partnerships team, as well as our local ministry partners, and students who work so hard to host great conversations like the one you heard today. Thanks also to our incredible partners who help support Veritas and make sure these conversations are possible. And the final thanks goes to you, the listener. Thanks for listening as we explore the ideas that shape our lives. [Music]