J.R.R. Tolkien was a committed Christian all his life, not just someone who talked the talk, but the kind of Christian who also walked the walk, the real deal. So how did his deep faith impact his fictional story of 13 dwarves and a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who with the help of a wizard named Gandalf, set out on a quest to regain their lost treasure from a dragon named Smaug?

First, let’s start with the so-called luck that surrounds Bilbo.

The word luck appears 25 times in The Hobbit, luckily is used 11 times, and the word lucky nine times. These luck-related words are used so often that it soon becomes clear the author is suggesting that what may seem to be luck is really the invisible hand of someone at work behind the scenes—someone who cares for Bilbo and for Middle-earth.

Gandalf tells the dwarves if they think he made a mistake in choosing Bilbo, they can stop at 13 and have all the bad luck they like, thus framing their whole quest under the question of luck. In chapter 5, Bilbo is saved by “pure luck” when he needs more time to figure out Gollum’s riddle but can only stammer, “Time! Time!” which is actually the answer. We are told luck “of an unusual kind” is with Bilbo.

None of the occurrences of luck in The Hobbit can match the apparent coincidence of Bilbo’s finding the ring Gollum has lost. To many readers, Bilbo putting his hand in just the right spot to pick up the ring may seem to be too much of a coincidence, as being simply too much luck. As if recognizing this, Tolkien’s narrator states, “A magic ring..! He had heard of such things…but it was hard to believe that he had found one, by accident.” Later Gandalf explains that Bilbo was meant to find the ring and not by its maker. The luck that surrounds Bilbo is clearly something more than luck, something we might call God’s Providence.

Besides finding a Christian sense of Providence in The Hobbit, we also find a Christian sense of purpose.

Gandalf promises the disbelieving hobbit that the adventure will be very good for him and profitable, too. As it turns out, the adventure is actually not that profitable to Bilbo, not in the sense that he returns with one-fourteenth of Smaug’s hoard as promised. Bilbo comes home with a very different kind of treasure, which is exactly Tolkien’s point. Bilbo goes on a quest to help others and in doing so helps himself. Many of Tolkien’s contemporaries wrote about characters whose lives had no real point. By contrast, in The Hobbit we find a world filled with a special kind of purpose—one which is beneficial to the individual and the world of which he is a part. This purpose is similar to the one which is a part of the foundations of the Christian faith.

Finally, in The Hobbit we find a very Christian sense of right and wrong. This is seen most clearly when Bilbo decides to give up the Arkenstone to help prevent the fight over Smaug’s treasure between elves, men and dwarves. Similar to Christians in our world, Bilbo decides he must do the right thing, no matter the cost.