Aragorn son of Arathorn was not a reluctant king.

Why does this matter to you?

Because you are being reluctant.

In our culture today, men especially are taught that they should be reluctant. They should be averse, wary, even squeamish. Of course, we don't say it that way. We say men should be "sensitive" and they should beware their "toxic masculinity."

But to be a man means to cast off doubt and step forward courageously. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

J.R.R. Tolkien's character of Aragorn stands out to us because this fictional King Elessar represents man fully realized. He points, whether we know it or not, to the fully realized man of Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the One we are to emulate.

Enter this beautiful thread from The Chivalry Guild.

There's going to be a wall of text here, but it's worth it:

I sometimes think the flaws of the LotR movies are kind of perfect. They are perfect because they tend to show the genius of Tolkien and highlight the superiority of his vision over Peter Jackson's vision. In the process they demonstrate how relevant LotR is for our times.

Let's take the whole Aragorn-as-reluctant-king issue. The women who wrote Jackson's script did not want Aragorn to be Aragorn: a man who knew he was made to rule.

This seems to be part of a vague modern idea that the only man who is worthy of power is the man who doesn't think he's worthy of it.

The had more of an emo-Aragorn in mind. The claim is that making Aragorn reluctant gave him a stronger "dramatic arc." I, for one, never really bought movie-Aragorn's supposed conversion to greatness in the movies. It all seemed rather fake.

Nor do I buy the argument that it was necessary to compress Aragorn's backstory for run-time. Either way, I'm more interested in what was lost in the alteration — which is a sense of magnanimity.

Magnanimity is great-heartedness. A man is magnanimous, according to Josef Pieper, "if he has the courage to seek what is great and becomes worthy of it." Modern Christians have been taught to think this virtue somehow "unchristian" because it sounds like pride.

But Thomas Aquinas, the universal teacher of the Catholic Church, called magnanimity "the jewel of all the virtues" because it "decides in favor of what is, at any given moment, the greater possibility of a human potentiality for being."

This virtue is right because creatures made in the image and likeness of God are called to lofty things.

It is important to realize who we are and what authority we have.

God created man in His image and told him to multiply and rule the earth – to subdue all creation under his feet.

This is not a small task.

We were to be the Kings and Queens of Narnia, as it were, and somewhere deep, we still know it.

But modern men are told to step aside. The world would be better off without them. Many, sadly, take that instruction to heart.

It would be better, we are told, if humanity was not here. We are destroying the planet. We must divest ourselves and give up our guardianship. We are not kings and queens, but mere animals. Whatever joy we find is meaningless, but in order to chase that meaninglessness, we must become slaves in a career so we can afford to play golf when we're 70.

Modern man has all but forgotten the greatness to which he was called, and Who called him to it.

Contrary to what many assume, magnanimity is not contradictory to humility. Instead these two virtues need each other and they work together to help us avoid the wider range of temptations that might come for us.

Pride is not the only problem. Despair, laziness, sloth, acedia — all these things seem to be a more lethal threat to most of us today. And it is magnanimity that protects us against this onslaught of dispiritedness.

I hope it's clear how incredibly relevant this is — especially at a time when our enemies are ambitious as hell. They are going after it all. They have no scruples about wielding power and crushing their enemies with it.

In other words, this is no time for half-heartedness on our part, no time for reluctant heroes. We need to rise to meet the challenge with eager readiness. Anything else and we're already done.

We need to be seeing an Aragorn who knows his destiny and is up for it.

I want to switch gears and give you a few Bible verses about men and women that you may have forgotten in these waning days:

"Do you not know that the Lord's people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!" - 1 Corinthians 6:2-3

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet" – Psalm 8:3-6

"In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters." - Hebrews 2:8b-11

You were not called to be an animal cowering in fear at climate change or gender theory or economics.

You were called to have dominion over the works of God's hands, with all creation under your feet, as a brother or sister of the King of kings, the risen Christ who rules over all of heaven and earth; an eternal soul with the promise of a resurrected body and the authority to judge heavenly things.

Are you beginning to understand?

You are not Christ. You are not Aragorn.

But you are called to such greatness; the kind of greatness modern man has forgotten.

This next part from The Chivalry Guild is important, for being sure of our authority does not mean abusing it:

And please note, I am not talking about becoming ruthless or losing our own souls in the attempt to match our enemy's energy. It is important to note that Aragorn's desire to be king and wield power justly have limits. He is not willing to take the ring for himself.

But he knows what is required of him and he is not about to shy away from it, for fear that it's too much for him or that he might screw up like his ancestor did.

When they make Aragorn a reluctant king, they basically bleed him of magnanimity and make him "relatable" to the viewer. This ultimately mean suffering from staggering self-doubt. Tolkien, a visionary, had something else in mind.

He understood that in crazy times you need great men with a sense of mission. They of course need humility and purity of heart, but they also need a sense of being called to great deeds.

Men also need something worth the fight. It is not enough to merely claim a kingdom or subdue creation: There must be promise of someone to share it with – someone who can bring new life and an endless future for the world that shall be made.

As a side note, even if Aragorn had forgotten his duty and destiny to rule, his prospective father-in-law gives him yet another reason to claim his throne.

In Appendix A, Elrond informs young Aragorn: "Therefore, though I love you, I say to you: Arwen Undómiel shall not diminish her life's grace for less cause. She shall not be the bride of any man less than the king of both Gondor and Arnor."

Elrond knows exactly what he is doing. He has the fate of the world in mind. He knows that the world of men needs a king, that there is no future without one, and so he challenges the heir to become the man everyone needs him to be.

It's a very rousing challenge Elrond puts to him, and Aragorn accepts. He sets out "to danger and to toil."

We live out these things even when we do not know why. We still search for a home, we still seek out the woman to share it with, and we still fight against evil – because it is within our very nature to do so – but we often do not realize why we do these things.

Take up your sword, son and daughter of the King. Feel its weight in your hand, for you are called to weighty things.

Never forget it.