So the Messiah in Star Wars is supposed “to bring balance to The Force,” but I never understood what it meant.
Star Wars is extremely dualistic–there is a good side and an evil side, a light side and a dark side, the Jedi and the Sith. Every plotline is based around a manichean struggle where only one side can win by annihilating the other.
The “good side”, the Jedi, are explicitly looking a savior to provide “balance” while at the same time imposing all sorts of restrictions on which force powers are allowed and which aren’t. For an order whose messiah is based on Taoist equilibrium, they are positively Christian in their obsession with purity.
I think there is an implicit subtextual critique of the Jedi Order in the prequels that they incompetent, as you might expect from the leaders of a theocracy, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I think the closest we get to ANY real discussion of balance is Luke’s vision on Degobah, where he must see himself as potentially Darth Vader, which can be interpreted as an attempt towards wholeness OR as a warning to not stray into evil.
Can anyone square this circle?
Edit: It’s funny to me that there are more comments than upvotes. People want to share. I love it.
I’ve learned that systems serve themselves, first and always. There is no better lesson of that than Christianity. The historical Jesus was basically a radical hippie, but he was buried first by Paul and then the institution of the Church, which didn’t even feel the need to purge the story of the Pharisees or the Good Samaritan from the Bible, two stories which obviously call out the negative religious impulses the Church is founded on.
Yes, emotions are there to be listened to. A big part of waking up is taking your feelings seriously instead of burying them or denying them or ignoring them. I fucking HATE Christian funerals because they spend almost all their time convincing themselves that God is Good and The Person is Happy in Heaven, and it’s absolutely a terrible way to deal with grief and maybe even anger. I went to a funeral for a woman who had been literally disemboweled by her mentally-ill son, and, yeah, you can imagine the questions about God that were not asked at the service.
By ignoring your emotions, the risk is that you either become a zombie, miserably unhappy and not sure why, or you get completely overtaken by your shadow, the parts you are trying to deny (what happened to Anakin, and what happens to all those gay evangelists caught in bathroom stalls).
I don’t know where you are on your spiritual journey, but I left Christianity to become an atheist and now I’m trying to build some spirituality back into my life to keep the suicidal nihilism at bay. Britt Hartley’s YouTube channel No Nonsense Spirituality has a lot of good ideas.
I’m sorry you lost your mom.
I agree. That’s why religion and politics don’t mix. Someone truly spiritual is bad at playing politics, a politician can rarely be genuine. So then it just becomes a self sustaining system that doesn’t do or help anyone.
I agree.
Right now I’m just done for now attending anywhere and mostly with studying anything, aside from a few things like looking into Hinduism a bit, visiting with someone to a different sect of Christianity, stuff like that. I’d be pretty surprised if there was no intelligent design or greater purpose to the world. I do believe some form of spirituality is important to the human experience. I’m not married to any idea at the moment though.
Thank you, that’s more than anyone else said :) I haven’t lost her yet, but it’s just a matter of time. A few more years at most.
In my travels through religion, I find that people cluster in predictable ways around EVERY religion. Most people just want to think they live in an orderly universe and can manipulate it with superficial piety. Other people really want to use religion to be better people (usually more compassionate), others want to use it to be worse (tribalistic), and the smallest number are actually looking for an experience of the divine.
Though there is that commonality, there are some wild differences between religions. Like Christianity is very much based around faith in supernatural stuff. If you don’t believe, you’re not part of the Church and you are cast out because your doubt may infect others and thereby send them into Hell for eternity. I wish, as someone who doesn’t believe, that I could find a spiritual home, but I can’t find one within Christianity. But not all religions work that way.
Good luck with your exploration (and your family stuff!