"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter," said the galaxy's foremost Little Green Friend to a skeptical Luke Skywalker as he desperately tried to learn the ways of the Force but was having trouble believing, seemingly no different than the jaded Han Solo who once scoffed at a 'mystical energy field' controlling his destiny. Obviously in the beloved galaxy 'far, far away,' there wasn't much religious fervor, even the infamous Darth Vader is referenced as being the 'last of their religion,' referring to the defunct Jedi order.
Travel forward in time, at least in one man's vision of the future of our own galaxy and you find a post-religious civilization in which humanity has embraced its place amongst the various denizens of the galaxy, pursuing knowledge and peace, but also finding itself at odds with the more hostile residents, thus needing to defend themselves on occasion. In this grand vision, the pursuit of knowledge is the highest good and each civilization should be left to itself to decide what is best for themselves. A grand vision indeed, but one hard won and rarely achieved, as the dozen movies and half dozen TV series portray.
Besides for space travel and interesting alien costumes, what do these grand sagas of the stars have in common? What every good story has: they pursue what it means to be human and the grand questions pertaining thereto: what is the purpose of life, where did we come from and where are we going, why is the world a mess, and is there a way to fix it? Men have wrestled with these questions since the dawn of thought and how we answer them determines much about our lives and everything about our eternal destiny. What is interesting in this instance is that both try to wrestle with these profound questions outside the context of religion, which historically has been the source of those particular answers. What they don't realize is the very struggle for those answers is in itself the essence of religion or spirituality or philosophy or whatever you want to call it; you can't ask those questions if you want to avoid religion or think yourself beyond it.
In the last century and a quarter we started to look instead to science for our answers, overlooking the inconvenient fact that science can only tell us what or how or when, not why. We can count the hairs on a mouse or measure the distance between stars but that doesn't tell us anything about the reasons behind mice or stars, how they came about, for what purpose, or who put them there in the first place. We can invent theories on where the universe came from, what will come of it, and how life arose, but they are hypotheses that can't be tested, and therefore must be taken on faith, as much faith as it takes to believe, 'in the beginning God...' 'In the beginning something happened…' We are now outside the realm of science and into the realm of faith, religion, philosophy, and metaphysics; science will never answer the why. It is a tool, but a ruler or hammer or computer will never tell you anything outside of physical facts. That is the job of religion.
Ironically, in a movie mostly lacking in spiritual overtones (save for the useful but indifferent Force), we find a solid bit of spiritual truth (and no, I am not going to compare and contrast varying theologies here): Yoda hit it spot on with his 'luminous being are we.' Now I don't know if we actually glow in the dark, but we are certainly more than flesh and bone, yet like Luke Skywalker, we have forgotten this, our entire modern civilization has forgotten this, no wonder life no longer makes sense. Our souls remain, no matter how much we try to ignore or rationalize them away, and they are at the very core of our being, our identity, and were made to last forever while your physical self will fall apart within a century of its advent. Maybe, like Luke, we need to believe in order to succeed (and no, I'm not talking about the prosperity gospel here), rather we need to actually believe in Something, the Something behind Everything, the Reason for everything, the Why, and it isn't some unknowable, indifferent energy field or mindless force, He actually took on flesh and dwelt among us. Obi Wan isn't fond of objective truth, but I never said the theology of Star Wars was sound, only that it offered some interesting insight into our modern view of the world and its dysfunction and our own lonely souls. You don't have to go to a galaxy 'far, far away,' or even on a 'five year mission,' to find it, it is at the very door of your heart, patiently waiting, as it has ever been.
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