home | search | poll | current columns
Gradual unveiling of Star Wars universe mirrors our slow journey toward truth[part five in a series of five articles celebrating the Star Wars prequel]
By Steve Lansingh
My exposure to the Star Wars universe happened all at once when I was a kid -- my earliest memories of the space saga included all three chapters. But for most of society, each Star Wars movie was, thrillingly, discovered separately. Plot twists upended what audiences thought was the whole story. New aliens species expanded their understanding of that galaxy far far away.
It was those eye-widening shocks and mind-widening worlds that I was most looking forward to in "Star Wars: Episode I" -- my first chance to experience Lucas' magician penchant for making known what he'd kept hidden. (I was surprised actually, that his revelation of midi-chlorians and his introduction of the Gungans was met with such hostility -- I suppose it goes to show how much we humans like our world ordered and undisturbed.) For me, the revelations were fascinating, even if I'm not yet sure what they mean or how they will play out over the next two episodes. The question of who the Jedi were and how the order functioned before it was destroyed is particularly fascinating to me, as is Naboo culture.
Unlike a lot of people, I never had to search for truth growing up. Every Sunday morning someone would tell us what the truth was and where to find it in the Bible. For many years, my problem was just trying to remember these truths from one week to the next. By the time I was a teenager, the Sunday morning messages started to repeat what I already knew, and, like most teenagers, I suppose, I thought I'd pretty much figured out the world. And I had the security of knowing that it wasn't some world view I'd cobbled together myself, but something straight from God.
Or was it? As I entered college I began to encounter difficult situations and new viewpoints that didn't fit so neatly into my idea of how the world worked. I discovered that the caricature of God I'd mapped out in my head was not only inaccurate, but that God would continue to transcend the understanding of him that I held. I learned that it was human nature to want our world ordered and undisturbed, and that's what my ideas had done to God: reduced his abstract fathomlessness into solid rules and guidelines, and then cut myself off to conflicting ideas. Once I discovered that the Hebrews rejected Jesus because he didn't fit their interpretation of the Messiah, I knew that I too had to allow for other possibilities than the single interpretation that I knew for most Bible passages. I began opening my mind to other Christian viewpoints, and began to work out for myself what I believed.
In short, I tore my viewpoint apart and reassembled it, this time confident that my world view was both Biblically based and something I'd had to wrestle with and decide for myself. But then I fell into another trap of human nature: wanting everyone to be like you. Convinced I'd figured out life, I started trying to share my wisdom with others -- and ran into mostly indifference or rejection. This, in turn, spawned feelings of superiority toward those who didn't understand me and feelings of contempt toward those who disagreed with me. Looking back I see this as my darkest, most reprehensible stage, although at the time I'd thought it to be my most enlightened.
It was at the very end of college when I had my viewpoint torn apart again. (And, like many revelations in my life, was introduced through a movie.) I was talking with my Senior Seminar professor about my final project, discussing a part of a paper where I chastised "The Bridges of Madison County" for glorifying adultery. If you've read my mission statement for this website then this will sound familiar: My prof told me about a friend of his who works in downtown Chicago who used the movie when counseling families and urging them to stay together, because in the movie Francesca stays with her family despite her infidelity. The idea that God could use a single tool (a movie) to send two equally valid messages to his children blew the roof off my ideas on life. It was at this point that I began to see how God relates to us all in different ways, that he's not looking to press us into the same mold but enjoy a relationship with us that cannot be reduced to a set of rules and precepts -- neither those on the liberal side or those on the conservative.
This journey toward truth (a quest I'm still very much beginning) is something I've only recently been able to make sense of. I did not recognize the pattern of my journey or understand the road God has led me on until I compared it to the episodic nature of Star Wars as prequel fever grew this year. At each stage of the journey I thought I knew everything there was to know -- then when more information and revelations came my way, I had to completely reexamine my universe. (And even now, when I'm utterly aware that I don't know everything, I am still forced to act upon only what I do know, so I'm in about the same predicament.) But it's been a joy for me to recognize how much richer and fuller and darker and more beautiful the world is than I used to imagine. I've loved discovering how rooted our faith is in mystery. And I've been once again affirmed in my belief that if we listen, God will use ordinary experiences like movies to speak to us and reveal himself.
"Star Wars" is so unique among movies because it's one of few film series that doesn't rehash the same old storyline, but pulls you deeper into its vast universe. The series is instructive, I think, because its method of revealing itself one clue and one fact at a time reminds me most of how I learned to discover this universe, how I learned to discover truth, how I learned to discover God.
The past two years, since leaving college, have seen my biggest growth spurts. When I stopped being spoon-fed answers and information but had to dig for them myself, I worked harder than ever to broaden my understanding. Right now, for instance, I'm reading a fantastic book by Gary Thomas called "Sacred Pathways," in which he identifies nine spiritual temperaments (naturalist, sensate, traditionalist, ascetic, activist, caregiver, enthusiast, contemplative, and intellectual). It not only helps me understand why I prefer to worship God in a particular way, it helps me understand Christians of other temperaments. Simply being affirmed that Christians can be different without being divisive has been important to me, and the book is helping me beat down those feelings of superiority and contempt that I still struggle with, even now that I recognize they're unreasonable and destructive. I've also learned a lot about the diversity of Christians in my small group and church, not to mention in my weekly compilation of Christian opinion for this website's forum. Perhaps most important has been writing these articles each week, chronicling my spiritual journey -- looking back on who I was and the changes I've gone through have helped me be more understanding of who others are and allow for the fact that they're also growing and changing.