“A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away”
Derek W.H. Thomas

    I first saw Star Wars here in Jackson in 1977 the day it opened. The episode called “A New Hope” was the first of a trilogy which has now expanded to six parts, the last of which, The Revenge of the Sith, is currently showing “in a cinema near you.” I fell in love with it on first sight: the sagacious Yoda, the gruff, but loyal, Wookie, Chewbacca, the brave, furry Ewoks, the terribly English CP3O, the curiously likeable R2D2, the swashbuckling Hans Solo, the young Luke Skywalker, the masterful Obi-Wan (played by Sir Alec Guiness); and who can ever forget Darth Vader (with that magnificent voice of James Earl Jones) and Lord Sidius (played by Ian McDiarmid)—the very epitome of evil.
    The sixth installment (actually it is Episode III), Revenge of the Sith, currently showing, raises some curiously modern spiritual and ethical issues. We learn, for example, that the demise of young Anakin Skywalker to the dark side to become Darth Vader was the result of pride, of trying to reach for something that is forbidden. And yet, unlike the biblical account of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, it is not without some moral justification: he was trying to save the life of his beloved wife, Padmé. You find yourself sympathizing with him, caught as he is in one of life’s moral conundrums: damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Anakin is even told by Obi-Wan, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” a curious remark which may mean that Anakin isn’t getting the whole picture, but in postmodern ears it will be understood as another affirmation of pluralism.
    It may well be the most telling remark in the entire series. It certainly becomes increasingly more difficult to believe that a sovereign providence or will is at work in George Lucas’ universe. There is only a “force” which is wished for and assured in the case of the Jedi Knights who have learned to “control” or “be controlled by” it. But we are never sure what to make of this “force.” It has a dark side—a dark side that can be succumbed to through allowing anger to show itself—something which is never fully explained and is more Buddhist than Christian. When Yoda renounces what he calls “attachment,” refusing even to mourn for the slain Jedi children saying, “attachment is a way to the dark side,” many of us may be forgiven if we think Yoda’s world is not worth dying for. Besides, it is Skywalker’s attachment to Vader (his father but he doesn’t know that) that brings about the final redemption of Vader in the closing scenes of episode six. Certainly, for Yoda, this world isn’t worth much. Remember in The Empire Strikes Back he said, “luminous are we… not this crude matter.” The real world (as in neo-Platonism) is the world of the unseen, the spirit. But Christianity has always insisted on the value of the physical. This is where the doctrine of resurrection cuts across all world religions and makes Paul especially so counter-cultural. The moral basis of Lucas’ world is skewed.
    Further corroboration, if it were needed, can be found in the redemption of Darth Vader ([sic] Anakin Skywalker). As my good friend Sean Brandt pointed out to me this week (Sean is a former student of mine and now a PCA minister and teacher of philosophy), Anakin’s redemption comes without any atonement or restitution whatsoever. To kill the Emperor is what he should have done in the very beginning. It does not atone for the killing of the young ones, or his wife. Forgiveness does not come simply because God says so. He must send His own Son to shed blood in atonement. The gospel is not that God forgives sin as is so often thought, even among evangelicals who should know better; it is that God does not reckon sin against His people because He reckoned it against His own Son at Calvary.
    It is very different, I think, in Lord of the Rings, where we are told there is “another will at work,” one which gives the story a belief that the end was not simply the result of combined heroism on the part of the individual characters. Tolkien was dealing in absolutes in a way that portrays the reality of good and evil—evil in its cruelest and most malicious form, but not ultimately sovereign. There is in the end of The Lord of the Rings a sense of inevitability about the triumph of the good, hair-raising as the end has been. In Lucas’ world, we are never sure where “The Force” comes down. The world of the shires was evidently worth saving, but Lucas’ world is different. The impersonal Force is a product of Lucas’ admiration for Zen Buddhism and Taoism. All opposites only appear opposite but are actually part of the whole. It is the dualism of Yin and Yang. Good and evil are temporary and what is in view is balance, not the conquering of good over evil. With Christ-like figures (both Obi-Wan [Sir Alec Guiness] and Qui-Gon Jin [played by Liam Neeson]) and Satan-like figures (Darth Sidius [played by Ian McDiarmid] and Darth Maul [apprentice to Darth Sidius, red-skinned with horns]—remember, their first encounter is in the desert), Zen-like substitution of meditation over prayer, new-age trust in feelings and intuition, and the reliance of technology as the instrument of liberation, Lucas has given the very essence of contemporary American spirituality.
    As Yoda might say it, “Difficult to resist, it is.”