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I
winced at the news report that President Reagan had given his
blessing to our astronauts in outer space with “May the Force
be with you!” Knowing something of the character of the
President’s faith, I put the best interpretation on those
words, taking him to mean
May
God be with you!
While
I suppose one might refer to the God of heaven as “the Force,”
something like the Scriptures refer to him as God Almighty, we all
know that the term is the invention of George Lucas, creator of Star
Wars, and I doubt if the Force of Star Wars is as much as a shadow
of the God of history and the Creator of the universe. It may in
fact be a dangerous subterfuge, an insidious denial of the immanent
and transcendent Supreme Being.
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By
immanent I mean that God is a
living
God
who is active in history and who involves himself in the human
drama, a God who hears and answers prayers. By transcendent I mean a
God who is more than nature or “mind” or “feeling,”
one who stands above and beyond all things, both animate and
inanimate, as Creator and Lord of all the universe. If we believe in
the immanence of God, we believe he is with us and in us and that he
rules in the affairs of men, always accomplishing his purposes, and
we believe we are his children and that he loves us. If we believe
in the transcendence of God, then we believe that even though he
dwells in our hearts the universe cannot contain him. We worship him
in reverence and awe because we believe that he transcends all
things in time and space.
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It
is not likely that this is the Force of Star Wars. But my misgivings
may have been based upon a warning given by C. S. Lewis in his
The
Screwtape Letters.
Screw
tape is the master devil who advises the inexperienced Wormwood on
how to deceive man. Wormwood wants to know if he should keep his
patient ignorant of his existence. Lewis has Screwtape tell his
disciple that the “present policy of the High Command”
is that they are to conceal themselves from man, even if that does
take away the diabolic pleasure of direct terrorism. Then Screwtape
says, “On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot
make them materialists and sceptics.” This is Lewis’ way
of noting that man cannot consistently believe in evil spirits and
yet be a materialist or a sceptic. So it is wise for Satan to so
blind us that we believe in no spirits at all, for that keeps God
far from our hearts and minds.
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Then
Screwtape says to Wormwood: “At least, not yet. I have great
hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and
mytholigise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect,
a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the
human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy.” The Enemy
to the devils is of course God. Then Lewis has Screwtape nail it
down as if he had read George Lucas’ script, even though Lewis
died long before the first saga of Star Wars: “The ‘Life
Force,’ the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis
may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work —
the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably
worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while
denying the existence of ‘spirits’ — then the end
of the war will be in sight.”
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Yes,
if Satan can emotionalise and mythologise our science to the point
that “Forces” or “the Force” are
“worshipped” by those who reject anything supernatural,
then he has won the war. In honoring “the Force” men can
actually be worshipping Satan while rejecting the God who created
them and loves them. Lewis says that when this happens Satan has
created his Materialist Magician. “The Force” becomes a
kind of cosmic wonderworker in a universe that has no God.
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Satan
always employs vagueness in his counterfeiting efforts, which is
evident in Star Wars. There is no Spirit to pray to and no God who
hears the cries of suffering humanity. There is no God who discloses
his will to man, no God who gives himself in extravagant love. Luke
Skywalker learns to “tune in,” as it were, to some
cosmic force, which may be no more than mystic concentration or
getting one’s thinking on track. The Eastern religions with
their cultic practice of transcendental meditation have been doing
this for centuries, and their current impact upon American culture
may influence the “religion” of Star Wars far more than
the Christian faith.
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C.
S. Lewis was not ignorant of Satanic wisdom. All Satan need do is to
create a Materialist Magician for man to worship, for then man
really worships Satan himself. This is cleverly accomplished in Star
Wars. The Jedi, the good guys with the white hats, are on the side
of the Magician. The Evil Empire is evil because it does not believe
in the magician. There is really no God in the drama, no Supreme
Being, no miracles, nothing that transcends man himself. The Jedis
reach only within themselves and discover the “god” that
is man, man at his best, or Man the ultimate, which some humanists
speak of. There is surely no Bible in Star Wars and no “visited”
planets. If the Christian faith believes that “In the
beginning was the Word,” the religion of Star Wars would have
to be something like “In the beginning was the Computer.”
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Ah,
how insidious it all is! Our youth will sit watching the saga of the
Jedi with lumps in their throats, mesmerized by the good guys with
all their electronic gear who have the cosmic Magician on their
side. Satan does not mind their
believing
so
long as their hearts and minds are not directed toward the Father of
the Lord Jesus Christ. In substituting “the Force” (it
gives one something to believe in!) the likes of Screw tape and
Wormwood have already won, hands down. The deceptive device “the
Force be with you’!’” in the context of Star Wars
means nothing at all, except something like “Draw upon all the
forces within you!” The “religion” is a kind of
scientism or scientology that implies that man can save himself by
probing ever more deeply into himself and his universe, or, as in
Star Wars, universes.
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Our
youth who are taught the Scriptures may be entertained by Star Wars,
which I heartily applaud, but they will not be tempted to substitute
the vague forces of nature for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The God of Scripture is the great “I Am” who spoke to
Moses out of a burning bush. “I have seen the affliction of my
people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry,” he said
to Moses. “I know their sufferings and I have come down to
deliver them.”
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I
have seen
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I
have heard.
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I
know.
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I
have come down.
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This
is the Good News that is basic in the story of the Bible. As with
the Hebrews in Egypt, God always sees when we hurt. He hears our
cries. He knows all about it. And, praise God, he comes down to us!
His love is so extravagant that he gave us his own Son.
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It
all led the apostle Paul to exclaim,
If
God be for us, who can be against us.
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In
the backdrop of such truths the exhortation “The Force be with
you” pales into insignificance. —the
Editor