Posted on 12/16/2015 1:37:06 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
The appearance of a new episode of the Star Wars film series is an important moment for Christian witness. To be sure, we can shrug our shoulders, since Star Wars is old news. Or we can enthusiastically introduce our grandchildren to what we might think is a beloved, harmless yarn. Or we can—and should—discover in the series an occasion to sharpen our presentation of the gospel message and help our children and grandchildren, and anyone else who might be interested, to understand the culture in which they live.
In this famous and creative saga, which we must respect for its artistic value, we find many positive ideals—bravery, friendship, love, and spirituality, and others—which help explain the success of the series. However, in examining Star Wars’ account of the mystery and nobility of human life, the Bible’s answer, in comparison, emerges with incomparably more convincing power.
The Star Wars Phenomenon
Answering questions of morality and spirituality was the goal of George Lucas when he created Star Wars. In the 1970s, in the heyday of secular humanism, people were hungry for spiritual truth. Lucas realized that stories were more powerful than intellectual theories—especially for children. He intended to produce a children’s fairy tale set in outer space as a “teaching tool” for the re-creation of “the classic cosmic mysteries.” In so doing, he influenced audiences young and old and deeply affected the last few decades of Western civilization. The new films will no doubt extend that influence into the next generations.
Understanding Worldview
As millions of people stream, perhaps naively, into theaters this weekend to reconnect with the powerful Star Wars adult fairy tale, most of them will be unaware of the worldview that gives this saga its structure and coherence. The term worldview simply means the way we think about the world without stopping to think about it. The fish doesn’t need to think about the water in which it swims. I’ve spent much of my teaching and writing years showing that there are only two ways to see the world. I call them “Oneism” and “Twoism,” which is another way of describing what the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1:25. He says that there are only two ways to be human—we either worship nature (in a thousand different ways) or we worship the Creator. If you can count from one to two you can understand worldview. Worship of nature is Oneism because nature is all there is and everything is made of the same stuff. “All is one!” This is the essence of a pagan worldview. Worship of the Creator means that in all of reality there are two kinds of existence: the uncreated Creator, and everything else, which is created. That is the worldview of Twoism.
By this standard, Star Wars is clearly Oneist. In spite of the fun elements we all enjoy, the message of the film is self-consciously pagan. If this sounds harsh, check out the following elements.
A Oneist Approach to Morality, Creation, Spirituality, Redemption, and Death
Here are some of the Oneist principles we find in the Star Wars movies:
Specifically, Star Wars Contains a Pagan View of God
Lucas said he desired to produce something spiritual, but the spirituality he proposes is clearly not based on biblical Twoism. This is most obviously the case when the constant pagan blessing “May the Force be with you” replaces the typical biblical blessing, “The Lord be with you.” For Lucas, God is a “force”—not a person. Nature, containing that “force,” is part of the Force. God the transcendent Creator, who is separate from creation, does not exist. This makes Star Wars, at the deepest level, Oneist.
But just how Oneist? To answer this question, we need a little background. You may want to watch the Ligonier teaching series Only Two Religions, especially part three, “Carl Jung’s Alternative Spirituality.” Very simply, Lucas’ terms “dark side” and “light side” come directly from Carl Jung. Jung was an anti-Christian Swiss psychologist of the last century. His enormous influence planted seeds of Oneist pagan thinking that now flower vigorously in our culture. Part of Jung’s legacy is Star Wars.
George Lucas picked up Carl Jung’s ideas from a man he called his “mentor” and “friend,” Joseph Campbell, who was a committed disciple of Jung. A highly influential thinker in his own right, Campbell rejected Christianity and became an expert in pagan myths. He produced a highly successful PBS documentary series, The Power of Myth (1988), filmed, in part, at Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch.
It was Jung who introduced the “spiritual,” pagan myths about joining the dark and light sides. For him, this meant the rejection of the biblical Christ and the worship of the Gnostic God, Abraxas, who was half-man and half-beast—a god who combines all opposites. This joining of the dark side and light side, of good and evil, of God and Satan (in his estimation), is what Joseph Campbell called “the monomyth” of “the ancient religion,” which he taught to Lucas. Thus, Darth Vader is “the balancer” of the light and dark forces.
Though Lucas doesn’t go as deeply into such ideas as did Jung and Campbell, he popularizes their ideas effectively. We see the joining of opposites in the following areas:
How Has Our Worldview Been Transformed?
Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), one of the West’s greatest scientists, said many years ago: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being… . This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all.” Thanks in part to Lucas, many now believe that humanity is that intelligent and powerful Being, empowered by the Force, and that we will save ourselves.
Will the ‘Force Awaken’ with the Same Force This Time?
Doubtless, The Force Awakens will attempt to capture a new generation of naive myth lovers. The trailer declares: “The Force is calling to you. Just let it in.”
With enough money and imagination, there is every reason to think that the Force will reawaken pagan thinking in a new generation of Western believers who have already bought $50 million worth of tickets for the December release. Moreover, the appeal of paganism has certainly not diminished since the ‘70s and ‘80s. The movie is bound to catch the imagination of those who now call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” Our contemporary world now embraces Eastern pagan spirituality:
A Christian Response
A large part of my life has been dominated by Star Wars imagery, as I have published a trilogy responding to the pagan phenomenon that it represents. Thus, I wrote The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back, Spirit Wars, and Return of the Rabbi (as an ebook—in printed form, Capturing the Pagan Mind). These “wars of the spirit,” popularly revived by Lucas, represent, as noted above, the only two spiritualities offered: the “monomyth” of pagan Oneism or the historic gospel of biblical Twoism. With Stars Wars, we find ourselves at the very center of this timeless spiritual struggle.
To Go or Not to Go
I believe there are good reasons for viewing this film. We can certainly respect its artistic and entertainment value. Galactic battle scenes and human drama are entertaining. But also, by seeing this movie, Christians can sharpen their understanding of both contemporary culture and their appreciation of the Christian faith, allowing them to see in antithetical clarity both the Christian message and the message of Star Wars in order to present the gospel in a fresh way for our time.
In doing this, we follow what Christians have done throughout the ages. We need to realize that when Obi-Wan Kenobi instructs Luke to follow “the ancient religion,” this is a clear technical reference (for those in the know) to “pre-Christian paganism.” The gauntlet is thrown down in a call to theological confrontation. But this ancient, modernized “religion,” while implicitly claiming to be true, creates immense problems and gives no satisfying answers to the major mysteries of life:
Only a transcendent, personal, triune Creator can do that. Only the truth of such a personal God can meet our deepest needs.
At this relaunch of the seductive Star Wars myth, with its declaration that “all is finally well because all is one,” the world needs to hear not a clever myth. It needs to hear a bold proclamation of an historical fact—the fact that in Christ God defeated the darkness of the evil empire of human sin. He now grants real deliverance to needy human souls and a real promise—not of impersonal “eternal sleep”—but of a future eternal resurrected life and a face-to-face meeting with Him, our Maker and loving Redeemer.
Dr. Peter Jones is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is the Executive Director of truthXchange. He has authored books on paganism, including One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference.
May we use every opportunity to witness Christ, the Resurrection and the Life who can awaken us.
I find the movie presentation of the force to mimic much of the Gnostic (secret knowledge) approach to religion.
Actually the religion in Star Wars is simply Buddhism. No more no less.
It is Eastern monism
I could see an argument for the force being a type of priority monism.
“the world (force) has parts (dark and light sides), but the parts are dependent fragments of an integrated whole”
Well the Advent/Christmas seasons is a very good time to start!
The biggest problem w/paganism that I see today is that, unlike monotheists that place God above man, pagans place nature above man.
This is why environmentalists work to protect nature, no matter what the human cost.
Excellent article; many thanks for finding it and posting it!
I thought it was established in The Phantom Menace that the Force was a bacterial infection...
[ I thought it was established in The Phantom Menace that the Force was a bacterial infection... ]
So chipolte is doing a Star Wars Promotion?
“It surrounds our food and penetrates into us. It grinds our guts until it swirls down the toilet like a brown and green swirling galaxy”
The series kind of lost me when Anakin’s mother stated that he “had no father”. The gnostic dualism is pretty obvious, but paganism is obvious in the old stories of Hercules and Thor, and early Christians have seen fit to preserve these. We are not like Muslims, who wipe out all memory of all history.
Superman comic books also have very much a non-Christian worldview, which is why they were forbidden by many of the priests and brothers teaching in Catholic schools in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
The Wizard of Oz was supposed to encourage atheism, or at least make fun of revealed religion. By the time it got to the movie level, it just came across as straight fantasy.
I wonder if the author really has watched any of the movies. None of the “points” cited about the movie are accurate, except possibly the last about “eternal sleep”.
There is a very sharp distinction between good and evil in the movie. Going by the author’s description, only force-wielders could be evil, and yet there are plenty of normal people in the movies who are evil. Succumbing to the Dark Side is not just emotion, but intent, and because of the external nature of teh Force, those who do go bad are more deeply trapped because the Force amplifies their own nature.
The Force is never stated to be the Creating engine for the universe, so there is no reason to talk of Existence creating itself. In this respect, the force is more like technology, in that it is created by intelligent beings, and enables those beings to become even more capable.
Luke doesn’t “create his own truth”. The force is a tool, not a spiritual revelation.
The fourth point is addressed extensively in both the books and the new movie, in that the Empire’s evil is just regular old evil, and thus killing the Emperor didn’t magically “save the galaxy”. In the books, the Empire lasts for decades after the fall of the Emperor, and never really goes away. Apparently the same is true in the new movie. Anakin’s redemption is of himself.
Lastly, Yoda’s phrase “forever sleep” is no different from our own human version of that phrase. It’s not meant to be a literal truth, just a figure of speech.
And I don’t recall Lucas *ever* saying he wanted the series to be a spiritual teaching tool. It was meant to evoke the old space serials he grew up with, nothing more.
The only “ancient religion” that George “I Hate George Bush And Wrote Him Into The Script As An Evil Sith Lord” Lucas ascribes to is $$$...
Well. So much for breakfast...
If so, then only Vajrayana.
Although it also heavily borrows from the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana.
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