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Originally Posted by Lalwende
Looked at this way, one of the major themes of his work may be the struggle to deal with a veangeful God who you cannot let go of.
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I think it is the psychological 'tension' Tolkien felt between the reality he had known - losing his parents, his closest friends & having seen man's inhumanity to man on a scale never before experienced (which must have tempted him to question the existence of a caring God) - & his inability to reject God because of his mother's 'martyrdom' for her faith, which may actually have enabled him to produce his Legendarium, to spend most of his life producing it. That inner conflict had to be dealt with. God stands back & allows waste & suffering on a collossal scale - why doesn't he intervene & stop it???
Yet his own mother gave her life for that very God. To reject God would be to reject his own mother - or at least to declare that she was
wrong & her death unnecessary (she quite possibly wouldn't have died if she had not become Catholic & brought her family's rejection & withdrawal of financial support on herself & her children).
I don't think that Tolkien's God was
simply a 'vengeful' Deity who demanded human blood, & was glorified by that, but I do think he had that aspect to Him. Of course, Tolkien had to find some reason, or justification, for his mother's God having such a 'dark' side.