Ever since the first episode of Star Wars lit up the cinema
screens (that would be Star Wars iv), and audiences almost universally had a
sharp intake of breath, theological controversy has dogged the heels of the
saga.
I clearly recall learned Christian articles, and a few
books, that were written around the time, as dismissing the concept of a
‘Force’ being made up of the ‘Light’ and the ‘Darkness’, in a constant struggle
to bring a ‘Balance’, as dodgy Eastern, Yin & Yang philosophy. Pretty much all of orthodox Christian thought
dismissed Star Wars’ theological
universe as un-Christian, un-biblical and, well let’s say, spiritually
unhealthy.
But, as a Christian, of some 50 years at time of writing,
the debate has long intrigued me. From
an early age, I have always enjoyed Sci-Fi: Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Van Vogt,
John Wyndham, Star Trek, etc., the list is long and glorious, but when I became
a Christian in 1966 at one of the Billy Graham meetings in London, Sci-Fi was laid
aside as the Bible became my main reading.
Later (1980) my wife and I went to Bible College, and the
irony is that the intense Bible studies led me to places in the Bible
along paths less trod; places rarely ventured, and verses rarely, if ever,
preached upon. And it was here, in the
somewhat dusty corners of the book of Isaiah (45th Chapter, 7th
verse) that I was effectively smacked in the face by this:
I form the light and create
darkness,
I bring prosperity and create
disaster;
I, the Lord (aka God), do
all these things.
I underlined the words in my Bible, knowing there was
something contained within them, something extraordinary, which I couldn’t get
my head round at the time, and even now, all these years later, still rocks me
to the core of my faith. I tried to shut them out, but they kept coming back to
challenge me, and I kept trying to ignore them.
The reason I desperately tried to ignore these words in
Isaiah was because of this date, some three years earlier: Tuesday 27th December
1977, the day Star Wars was released in the UK.
Naturally, when it came to our local cinema in Essex, some time later, early
1978 I think, we (my wife and I) went to see it, and, yes, we had a sharp
intake of - w0w - at the opening scene.
Of course, the film was amazing. Loved every moment of it. Acknowledged the Yin & Yang philosophy,
ignored it, as it went against the last 11 years of Christian teaching I had
received, and got on with life, hoping the next film wouldn’t be too long in
coming.
This Christian teaching (I am no theologian by the way) can
loosely be summed up as follows: the
Lord God is high over all, God is good and God created everything and is in
control of everything. Evil (aka Sin,
Darkness) entered the world because an Angel, Lucifer, aka The Devil, rebelled
against God and he and his followers were banished to Earth from Heaven. To sort out the resulting mess, God sent his
Son, Jesus, to die for all our Sin. All
those who follow Jesus will be saved and live forever. Yes, I know we could discuss this for a
century or two, and many have and do, but let’s move on.
Indeed let’s move on, and go back to the future (another
great film!), and those words in Isaiah’s book.
‘I form the light and create
darkness, I bring prosperity and create
disaster; I, the Lord (aka God), do all these things.’
Brain freeze, red alert, DEFCON 5........
As a child grows, and as they eventually make their own way
in the world, they will discover for themselves what they believe to be true
about everything; the world, the universe, body, mind spirit and soul. Sometimes
they will naturally rebel against the core beliefs of those who raised
them. I found that, being faced with
something which is in the Bible, but fundamentally shakes that core belief,
leads to conflicting possibilities: If
the Bible is true, then it conflicts with everything I had been taught about
everything. So I choose to ignore that
which caused this fundamental conflict.
But, as I have said, it kept on coming back over the years,
and still does.
Here then is the tough bit.
If, as Star Wars’ philosophy, which is basically rooted in Eastern
Philosophy, contends, there is a ‘Force’ and that there is a ‘Darkness’ and
there is a ‘Light’, and these two ‘sides’, Light and Darkness, are in constant
conflict, do not those words begin to look very much like those words from the
Bible’s book of Isaiah? Are they not,
indeed, saying the same thing, just under different names?
This view, if we go with it for a moment, makes a lot more
sense of what we see and experience of the world around us: the goodness balanced against the badness,
The Light balanced against the Dark. It
also starts to put a different perspective on why doesn’t God simply stop all
the bad things from happening? Why? If there is the need for a world both of
Light and Darkness, in the same way that there is Day and Night, if this need
is fundamentally part of the whole thing, then the significance might just blow
all our home-brewed Christian theologies and philosophies clear out of the
waters of our fundamental Christian belief.
There is an interesting moment in the first Matrix
film. Morpheus is confronted by
Agent Smith.
Agent Smith: “Did you
know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none
suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept
the program. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your
perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their
reality through suffering and misery.”
Maybe we are, at a deep and fundamentally level, only able to
function within a world of conflict
between Light and Dark. Is this what
those shocking words in Isaiah mean?
Where then is Christian faith? I still, in the face of this, deeply believe
in Jesus as my Saviour. I still believe
there is a God, who made the Universe, and who loves me at a level I have no
hope of truly understanding.
Everything I have experienced in the last 50 years proves,
deeply in my very being and soul, that God loves me. Do I understand it all, how it all fits
together and what are the deeper implications? No, and I would venture to
suggest that after some 2000 years of debate and learned theological discourse,
of myriad writings, of a million songs and of untold questioning, that no-one
else does either.
In the Bible, The Book of Hebrews, 11th Chapter 1st
verse are these words - Now faith is
confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
The whole chapter is about what can be done, and was done,
because of faith, even when people didn’t understand what was going on and
could only see darkness rather than light.
And that is what faith is really about, isn’t it?
