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Title: Problem with Anger?
Design: Orange and black 'advert' on brown
Make: Chunk
This T-shirt was the reason I was refused service in a gift shop at the Grand Canyon. No, really. The girl on the check out insisted she read the entire shirt before allowing me to pay for the souvenir nick-nacks I was buying.
It’s strange, but not a unique experience. This is one of my most commented on T-shirts. Usually the comments are positive, although the kid in my church who has Asperger’s told me it was “stupid” because “everybody knows” that Darth Vader died. The spirit of Anakin Skywalker appears right at the end of Return of the Jedi to prove it! “So, he couldn’t be running anger management classes.”
I had to agree with him as his logic was ruthlessly sound. But I still like the joke. I like the idea of Darth Vader wondering what to do with his life now he’d given up being the Dark Lord of the Sith, and resolving to help people through setting up an anger management clinic. I think that’s amusing.
But it’s also something more.
I think the whole Darth Vader’s redemption story-line is pretty meaningful. Many people may fail to find the meaning, but anyone with half an insight into the central theme of Christianity – the redemption of human beings from a dark existence of wickedness and fear – should be able to spot why the Star Wars saga affects people so powerfully, particularly men my age who watched it repeatedly as kids (and now watch it repeatedly as adults!)
The spiritual dimensions of Star Wars are multiple and varied. There is the contrast between spirituality and materialism, the struggle between tyranny and freedom, the sense of destiny, choices between right and wrong, sacrificial heroism or brutal subjugation of others, belief or cynicism, the fact that the things we judge weak can prove to be mighty (“Judge me by my size, do you? And well, you should not, for my ally is the Force…”) and so on.
Even the dualism of light and dark echoes the Christian narrative: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” says Jesus in John 8:12. This is the light that continually shines in the darkness which has not and will not overcome it (see John 1:5).
But underpinning all those themes is the grandest theme of all – redemptive hope. It’s in Luke Skywalker’s voice as he tries to convince his sister that there is ‘still good’ in his father. It’s in the spine-tingling scene when Luke faces down the Emperor and throws away his lightsaber instead of killing Vader. It’s in the unmasked Anakin Skywalker’s last words as he tells Luke that ‘you were right about me’.
The ‘pull’ of the Star Wars films is their emphasis on redemption, simply because that is what many of us are looking for, even if we aren’t aware of it yet. We all recognise there are things in life that we have done wrong, that we would do differently if we had the opportunity. We may even wish we could ‘change our destiny’, to do good things instead of bad; to escape from the ‘dark side’, of ourselves if not the Force.
It’s this hope of redemption that makes so many of the statements in the Bible ring true. The verse next to the ‘most famous verse in the Bible’, John 3:17 says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save [or redeem] the world through him.” Paul writes to Titus saying: “we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness” (Titus 2:13-15).
Paul talks of redemption being a yearning of the whole created order, in Romans chapter 8: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” (verses 22-24).
The central message of hope is that whatever we have done, including the destruction of a populated planet with our brand new armoured space station, we can find some sort of redemption. On the T-shirt, Darth Vader makes the promise that “I came back from the dark side, and so can you.” It’s the kind of advert we frequently see, promising us that our lives can change. Those ads often ring hollow. But what if someone were to make us such an offer and it was genuine?
Would we take the opportunity? Would we, like Vader, come back from the dark side? Would we accept the offer of redemption?
Redemption knows no limits
This T-shirt was the reason I was refused service in a gift shop at the Grand Canyon. No, really. The girl on the check out insisted she read the entire shirt before allowing me to pay for the souvenir nick-nacks I was buying.
It’s strange, but not a unique experience. This is one of my most commented on T-shirts. Usually the comments are positive, although the kid in my church who has Asperger’s told me it was “stupid” because “everybody knows” that Darth Vader died. The spirit of Anakin Skywalker appears right at the end of Return of the Jedi to prove it! “So, he couldn’t be running anger management classes.”
I had to agree with him as his logic was ruthlessly sound. But I still like the joke. I like the idea of Darth Vader wondering what to do with his life now he’d given up being the Dark Lord of the Sith, and resolving to help people through setting up an anger management clinic. I think that’s amusing.
But it’s also something more.
I think the whole Darth Vader’s redemption story-line is pretty meaningful. Many people may fail to find the meaning, but anyone with half an insight into the central theme of Christianity – the redemption of human beings from a dark existence of wickedness and fear – should be able to spot why the Star Wars saga affects people so powerfully, particularly men my age who watched it repeatedly as kids (and now watch it repeatedly as adults!)
The spiritual dimensions of Star Wars are multiple and varied. There is the contrast between spirituality and materialism, the struggle between tyranny and freedom, the sense of destiny, choices between right and wrong, sacrificial heroism or brutal subjugation of others, belief or cynicism, the fact that the things we judge weak can prove to be mighty (“Judge me by my size, do you? And well, you should not, for my ally is the Force…”) and so on.
Even the dualism of light and dark echoes the Christian narrative: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” says Jesus in John 8:12. This is the light that continually shines in the darkness which has not and will not overcome it (see John 1:5).
But underpinning all those themes is the grandest theme of all – redemptive hope. It’s in Luke Skywalker’s voice as he tries to convince his sister that there is ‘still good’ in his father. It’s in the spine-tingling scene when Luke faces down the Emperor and throws away his lightsaber instead of killing Vader. It’s in the unmasked Anakin Skywalker’s last words as he tells Luke that ‘you were right about me’.
The ‘pull’ of the Star Wars films is their emphasis on redemption, simply because that is what many of us are looking for, even if we aren’t aware of it yet. We all recognise there are things in life that we have done wrong, that we would do differently if we had the opportunity. We may even wish we could ‘change our destiny’, to do good things instead of bad; to escape from the ‘dark side’, of ourselves if not the Force.
It’s this hope of redemption that makes so many of the statements in the Bible ring true. The verse next to the ‘most famous verse in the Bible’, John 3:17 says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save [or redeem] the world through him.” Paul writes to Titus saying: “we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness” (Titus 2:13-15).
Paul talks of redemption being a yearning of the whole created order, in Romans chapter 8: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” (verses 22-24).
The central message of hope is that whatever we have done, including the destruction of a populated planet with our brand new armoured space station, we can find some sort of redemption. On the T-shirt, Darth Vader makes the promise that “I came back from the dark side, and so can you.” It’s the kind of advert we frequently see, promising us that our lives can change. Those ads often ring hollow. But what if someone were to make us such an offer and it was genuine?
Would we take the opportunity? Would we, like Vader, come back from the dark side? Would we accept the offer of redemption?
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