By David Höhne

I remember it well, my tenth birthday. My parents took me to see the new movie that everyone was talking about "” Star Wars. It is now nearly thirty years later and a new generation of ten-year-old boys will go to see Star Wars. George Lucas, the creator,is the head of a multi-billion dollar empire, and the Star Wars myth has become part of the late twentieth century's fabric of cultural legend and iconography. Since Star Wars first appeared, many commentators have interpreted and reinterpreted its meanings and agendas.

According to Lucas, Star Wars is not significantly religious, although it addresses religious themes. Says Lucas,

I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distil them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct"”that there is a great mystery out there. (1)

As far as Lucas is concerned, all religions are true. Yet he feels the need to challenge young people, as he calls them, to ponder the greater mysteries of existence.When confronted with a charge that he has trivialized religion Lucas responds as follows:

That's why I would hesitate to call the Force God. It's designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, Here's the answer. It's to say, Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God? Just getting young people to think at that level is what I've been trying to do in the films. What eventual manifestation that takes place in terms of how they describe their God, what form their faith takes, is not the point of the movie. (2)

This seems an appropriately post-modern approach"”encourage much questioning without taking any responsibility for answers. So I thought in reviewing the movie we could enter into the great dialogue and ask some of these questions while we ponder the great mystery.

God or the Force?

The first question to ask is, what is the difference between God and the Force? We learn a lot more about the Force in Episode 1. The Force is still an energy field that surrounds us and binds us together. It is still an ally for the Jedi to use in his defence. Yet now we find out that the Force has a will of its own. It produces a "vergence' around young Anakin Skywalker (later 2. Ibid., p. 73. Darth Vader), immaculately conceiving him. It seems that Anakin is the chosen one who will bring balance to the Force, according to an ancient Jedi prophecy. This is interesting, because apart from the obvious parallel with Christianity it would imply that although the Force is volitional, it lacks the power of self-determination.

This is certainly a big difference between the Force and the God of the Bible who creates and determines all things. In the book of Revelation we read:

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. (Revelation 4:11).

The Bible tells us that God created and governs everything by the power of his will. This means that everything is dependent upon God to exist and also that God exists independently of everything else. This does not seem to be the case with the Force, which is intertwined with the destiny of the universe and individuals within it.

Then there is that problem of the dark side of the Force. Yoda, the de facto leader of the Jedi council, tells us in Episode 1 that while the dark side is hard to see, the path there is quite simple. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering. This is basically what the dark side is all about. We can further adduce that the dark side is a lust for power, an all-consuming greed. Apparently, the Sith lords, who follow
the dark path, can only exist in pairs"” there are always two, no more and no less. A master and an apprentice, says Yoda. This is because (other Star Wars mythology tells us) the Sith lords were so consumed with the lust for power that they almost destroyed themselves. As a result there can only ever be two who live in constant tension. Thus you may recall that Darth Vader wanted Luke to join him and together destroy the emperor who was Vader's master.

Finally, we also notice that the dark side is associated with everything industrial and mechanical. Consequently the enemy armies in Episode 1 are all robots, and the evil Darth Sidius is able to hide himself under the noses of the Jedi council on the city planet of Coruscant. This is the planet at the centre of the galaxy that is home to the Republic's senate and is entirely covered by a city. (3)

If Lucas wishes us to wonder "If there is a God,' yet keep this God separate from the Force, he certainly doesn't make it easy. God is conspicuously absent in the Lucas universe, whereas the Force is all pervasive. The only other significant determinant in Lucas's world is destiny, which no one seems to be able to escape"” except, of course, when Luke doesn't give in to the dark side like his dad seems to think he must, but that's another story. The Force is the only thing that provides some kind of metaphysical unity, although it is not clear what the exact relationship between animate life and the Force is. Symbiosis is a buzz word in the Phantom Menace, or "symbiont" relationships, as the Jedi prefer to call them. This seems to If God were like the Force he would be dependent upon the creation rather than the other way around. be the link between life and the Force, which means if God were like the Force he would be dependent upon the creation rather than the other way around as we read in Psalm 104:

When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104:30).

As we mentioned before, the Bible tells us that life is dependent upon God for its perpetuation, but life in this universe is not somehow part of the divine as Star Wars seems to suggest.

Lucas is doing far more than just asking, "Is there a God?'. In the very way that the Star Wars universe functions, he has ruled out the biblical God as an answer.

How do we experience God?

Let us turn to Lucas's other questions: What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? This leads us to an interesting development in the plot. In The Phantom Menace we are introduced to "midiclorines'. These are nanoscopic-sized creatures that exist in our cells with their own DNA. The midiclorines are the link between us and the Force. That is, they speak to us"”subconsciously of course"” and help us to know the will of the Force. Hence the need to ignore our thoughts and trust our feelings. It is only when we focus on the moment and ignore the conscious self that we understand the living Force. Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) is at pains to point this out to his young padawan apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), throughout the movie.

As it turns out, the higher your midiclorine count, the more powerful you are likely to be in the ways of the Force. Yoda, the Jedi master, has a count of 200, but young Anakin's goes right off the scale, since he was spontaneously conceived by the midiclorines. If this sounds a little fantastic, it seems that there is grain of reality in it all. A friend of mine studying microbiology explained to me that human cells contain what are known as mitochondria. This is a tiny bacterium, with its own DNA, that exists in our cells. According to biologists, these mitochondria are the reason why life on earth was able to evolve beyond the level of single cell organisms.

It is here that fact and fantasy diverge, but it does raise some interesting questions. If God were like the Force, he would be completely dependent upon the life of the creation, so the best we could hope to discover in our search was a kind of pantheistic presence in the universe"”like some kind of universal soul. This idea is prevalent in many of the Eastern religions, but also has characteristics in later Platonic thought right down to recent times with Spinoza, Whitehead and 20th century theologians like Jürgen Moltmann. Even the more popular agnostics like Paul Davies confess to a suspicion that God is somehow a product of the universe, and it seems that Lucas is no exception. In contrast to this, the Bible tells us that God communicates with us through his son"”the man Jesus Christ. As we read in the letter to the Hebrews:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Hebrews 1:1-3)

The implications of this are that Jesus perfectly represents and reveals God to us. If you want to know God, all you have to do is know Jesus. This may not seem as direct a link as midiclorines whispering to your subconscious, but it is a lot easier to understand; and the objectivity of God revealing himself through Jesus makes it a lot more reliable than getting that certain feeling.

The answers to the questions of what God is like in Lucas's world are not only antithetical to the Bible, they are considerably less attractive. Once again, Lucas may think he is only raising questions, but the kinds of answers available exclude a God who communicates objectively and reliably
with us.

How do we relate to God?

Perhaps the most important question then is, how do we relate to God? If God were like the Force we would have the benefits of midiclorines to help us, but without these there seems little alternative. It might also make us wonder why some people have more midiclorines than others"” notably the Jedi. You could say that since the Jedi work for peace and justice throughout the galaxy, that this is the Force's way of ensuring that there is good in the universe. Otherwise it seems a little unfair that some have more access to God than others, and no hope of changing the situation. Even then, if the Force is working for good through the Jedi there is always that nagging problem that the Jedi in question may turn to the dark side which the Force is powerless to halt. So if God were like the Force he would again be dependent upon life to correct the situa-tion"”such as when Luke redeems his father in the end of Return of the Jedi.

How does God relate to us?

So far what we have gleaned about the mysteries of existence in our Star Wars universe is that there could be some kind of universal soul"”the Force. The Force, which has a will of its own, is yet unable to act upon that will. Therefore, the future of the universe and the Force"”since they are co-dependent"”is determined by the actions of individuals as history unfolds. So it takes the intrepid Luke Skywalker to save the galaxy (and by association the Force itself ) from the clutches of evil (evil being the dark side of the Force in conjunction with the Sith lords.).

Here is where the Force idea is the scariest. Consider what is suggested about ultimate justice in these movies. If we go back to the beginning of the story, Anakin Skywalker will grow up to become Darth Vader the villain, who is "more machine than man, twisted and evil". Darth Vader will help Lord Sidius hunt down and destroy the Jedi, and bring about the evil empire that thrives on the "lust for power and fear of those who wield it". Yet at the end of his life, Vader saves his son from the clutches of the Emperor"”hardly more than one might expect from a father"”and as a result he is allowed to go to Jedi heaven with Yoda and Obi-Wan, who Vader has previously killed.

If God were like the Force, there would be no justice in the universe. One good deed of questionable valour can negate a lifetime of evil. Simply because Vader saved his son"” just after, mind you, he had lost a fight in which he had been trying to kill his son"”all his previous murders and tortures are forgotten. More significantly perhaps, the rebels have been wasting their time fighting the empire, since it seems that anybody with the Force can end up in Jedi heaven in the end. The one exception seems to be Darth Sidius, who must rank along with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and child molesters as the truly unredeemable.

The God of the Bible has a far more just approach to evil. In the book of Acts we read:

In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:30"31).

This means that God has set a day when all the evil in the world will be brought before Jesus, the judge. Jesus is the perfect judge since he never did anything at all wrong himself. In this way the universe is guaranteed justice by the one who made it. Considering the amount of evil that exists in this world at the end of the twentieth century, if there was no reckoning for those who do evil there would be little point in doing good at all.

Of course, it could be argued that the Star Wars alternative is a better option since they all lived happily ever after. As long as people do even one good act, all the evil they do can be overlooked and they will go on to the afterlife. Yet when a father saves his son from evil, it is an act that falls firmly within the "least that he could do' category, especially since he has previously been either trying to kill him or to enslave him to evil.

If this is all it takes to overlook a lifetime of evil, then our actions and our lives are truly meaningless. The afterlife is simply just another state of existence that everyone is drawn into. That is, of course, if they are Jedi knights"”there is no indication that anybody else will have this future, especially since it is only the Jedi who have an active relationship with the living Force.

The Bible tells us that God takes our lives seriously by calling us to account for our actions. Yet at the same time, God is able to offer mercy and forgiveness to even the perpetrators of the worst evil. In the gospel we hear that

" now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known" This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justif ied freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpun-ished"”he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:21-26).

These verses tell us that God has made a way for justice to be done in the universe and, incredibly, for the doers of evil to be declared to be in the right. This happens because Jesus the Son of God is sacrificed to make recompense for evil. In fact God is prepared to offer him as a substitute in the place of evil-doers. In this way justice is done because there is a punishment for evil. The incredible part of the gospel is that anyone who trusts in Jesus will be declared to be in the right or justified. They will be treated as though they had never done evil.

This is the greatest difference between the God of the Bible and the Force. The Force is unable to do anything about evil, and the result is that evil doesn't matter. In the Bible we learn that God does care about evil, and is able to do away with it in a way that also offers mercy and forgiveness for those who do it.

When I consider some of the questions that Lucas wants to raise, I must say that I'm glad it's just a movie. I'm also glad that Lucas hesitates to call the Force God. If the questions about the mystery of the divine lead us anywhere near the answers of Star Wars, then the universe is a dangerous and frightening place with no justice and no order. A God who is dependent upon life for self-determination is a hapless and purposeless deity, who can only be saved by Hollywood's need for a happy ending.

ENDNOTES

1. ‘Of myth and men’, TIME, May 3 1999 p.73

2. Ibid. p.73

3. Readers of Asimov's Foundation series will note the similarity. Aficionados will also recall that Yoda hid from the Emperor on the planet Dagobah which was renowned for the number of life forms that it could sustain.

David Höhne has degrees in Arts and Theology and now works in ministry.