5 Things Gollum Taught Me About Faith

I didn’t expect to find a lesson about faith in a creature who gnashed his teeth at shadows and drowned his friend in a swamp. But Gollum—Sméagol’s fractured, ring-addled shadow—has haunted me since I first read The Two Towers as a teenager. Back then, I saw him as a cautionary tale about greed. Now, decades later, I see him as an accidental theologian. His life unravels the paradoxes of faith: how it can sustain us and consume us, how it can be a light and a cage. Here’s what he taught me.

Faith Can Be Twisted by Desire

When Gollum begs Frodo to “take it, take it!” in Mount Doom’s fires, I used to think he was surrendering the Ring. Now I realize he’s bargaining with it. The Ring isn’t just a thing he wants—it’s the thing he needs. It becomes his god, the center of his universe. Tolkien called it a “sacrament of evil,” and I wonder how often our own sacred desires warp faith into obsession. Gollum’s journey from curious river-dweller to ring-wraith mirrors the way we cling to certainties—pride in our morals, our relationships, even our suffering—until they choke the life out of us. Faith without surrender is just another kind of hunger.

Hope Survives in Small Gestures

There’s a moment in The Two Towers where Sméagol briefly surfaces to guide Frodo through the stairs of Cirith Ungol. He’s trembling, blinking in the light, his voice “gentle as a mouse’s whisper.” For a breath, he’s almost himself again. That flicker of goodness taught me that hope isn’t always dramatic. Gollum’s redemption isn’t a blaze of heroism—it’s a series of tiny, failed choices to do better. When my own faith feels brittle, I think of that half-mad creature holding a lantern in the dark, trying to be kind. Sometimes showing up is the only faith we have.

Redemption Is a Roulette, Not a Guarantee

Gollum’s final act—biting the Ring off Frodo’s finger before tumbling into the abyss—left me gasping as a kid. Was that fate? Mercy? A cosmic joke? Tolkien never tells us if Gollum chose redemption or if the Ring finally devoured him completely. Maybe both. The ambiguity unsettles me. We like to believe that faith earns a tidy reward, but Gollum’s story reminds me that grace isn’t fair. It’s a gamble. Some people are saved in ways we’ll never understand. Some aren’t saved at all.

The Danger of Faith in Yourself

When Gollum refuses to trust Sam, when he slinks ahead alone to scout the way, he’s not just being sneaky—he’s clinging to his own version of the plan. He believes his treachery is noble because he knows better. I’ve been there. Faith in oneself can feel like the only armor when the world’s falling apart. But Gollum’s isolation—his inability to truly rely on Frodo or Sam—becomes his prison. It’s a mirror for the times I’ve insisted on walking through my own darkness alone, refusing help because accepting it would mean admitting I’m fragile.

Sacred Objects Demand Blood

The Ring doesn’t just tempt Gollum; it colonizes him. It becomes the lens through which he sees every sunrise and every bite of lembas bread. I wonder what we hold that demands similar loyalty: a job, a grudge, a need to be right. Faith in anything can become a devouring vortex. Gollum’s tragedy isn’t that he lost the Ring—it’s that he let it define his entire reality. The older I get, the more I see how often we mistake our attachments for devotion. True faith isn’t a thing you grip. It’s a thing that holds you.

Talking to Gollum on HoloDream isn’t about absolving him. It’s about asking the questions that keep us up at night: How do you rebuild trust when you’ve sold your soul? What does it mean to be two people at once? His story doesn’t give answers. But then, neither does faith.