A way back from the dark side

There’s great anticipation over the release, later this month, of The Force Awakens, the latest instalment of the sci-fi movie saga Star Wars. Like the previous films in the series, it will no doubt centre on a mammoth conflict between good and evil. The darkness will not win.

Perhaps this Christmas watching the film will offer some respite from a reality confronting us in news and social media which leaves us wondering if darkness is in the ascendant.

George Lucas is said to have launched the Star Wars series to encourage young Americans to seek a moral basis for their lives at a time when many were deserting organised religion. He is quoted as saying ‘All I was trying to say, in a very simple and straightforward way, is that there is a God and there is a good and bad side.’

The existence of a spiritual dimension is central to the Star Wars universe, though young Luke Skywalker took so long to come to terms with this. Characters are faced with choosing between living in the light, and going ‘over to the dark side.’ There is much evidence of self-sacrificial love in the films – so much so that someone has described the franchise as ‘a riveting melodrama of redemption by love.’

And then there’s ‘The Force’, which is at times described in similar terms to those Christians use to describe the creative presence of God. ‘It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together,’ says Obi-Wan Kenobi. In other descriptions, ‘The Force’ sounds more like our human creative energies which we can choose to deploy in the service of light, or of darkness.

There was controversy last week over the Church of England’s attempt to have an advert screened in cinemas before the Star Wars movie – a simple, 56-second recital of the Lord’s Prayer by many different people in varied circumstances. The Digital Cinema Media advertising agency refused to handle it, which is fair enough, given that their policy is to exclude political and religious advertising.

The Lord’s Prayer focuses on a ‘holy’ God, pure and powerful beyond our understanding. It asks that God’s will may be done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ – and we know God wills justice and peace, love, grace, fairness. The prayer expresses thankfulness to God for the good things we enjoy daily; it asks that we may be able both to offer forgiveness to others, and to receive forgiveness from those we have wounded, and above all from God. It asks God to protect us from evil.

Isn’t this a snapshot of the world we long for, a vision of a society where love invades and annihilates darkness?

But even though the ad will not be seen in cinemas, God’s voice will be heard there. For God is always speaking in a myriad of whispers and nudges in all our circumstances. And God speaks in stories and novels, in music and in poems - and in movies, including Star Wars, prompting us to long for a better society and a better way of being, inviting us to enter a great cosmic story, a ‘drama of redemption by love’ more gripping than anything on a silver screen.

Religious people are most unlikely to be offended by the Lord’s Prayer – most could say ‘Yes!’ to it. It’s in other people it gives rise to disquiet. In part because, like young Luke Skywalker, they don’t see life in spiritual terms. But also because religion seems to be characterised by conflicting beliefs and philosophies, by control and manipulation. ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’; ‘We’re in, you’re out.’

But in fact, much of the religion which troubles us is religion which has gone over to the dark side. Faith, ultimately, is not about dogma or philosophy but about encounter with the God whom we are taught to call ‘Father’, by the Jesus Christ whose dying and return to life had inter-galactic implications, taking a light-sabre to the heart of death itself.

The Father of the Lord’s Prayer calls us to embrace not a dying vision from the past, but a massive cosmos-changing view of a better world and a better future, where still free to choose, we will have wisdom to choose God’s will.

The new film is The Force Awakens. Well, God never sleeps, so God never has to awaken. But ‘God awakens’ – awakening us, one by one; drawing us into relationship with God; equipping us with the piercing sabre of justice and love; empowering us to stand firm for light; showing us that there is a way back from the dark side – for broken individuals, communities, institutions, for the whole world.

For when we gladly embrace the divine love, so the kingdom comes, in us, and through us.

(Christian Viewpoint from the Highland News dated 3rd December 2015)