Built on Hope: Peace, Spirituality, and… Star Wars
I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining myself as a courageous Jedi Knight exploring the galaxy, keeping peace, and bringing justice. I would grab the used wrapping paper tubes out of the trash and swing them about like I was Obi-Wan Kenobi, the last Jedi standing against the swarm of B1 Battle Droids descending upon the planet. Cue the music. Cue the lightsaber sounds.
I am older now—considerably so. But I continue to wonder what it would be like to be a Jedi Knight, armed with nothing more than a laser sword and some hokey religious powers. But with age has come an unfortunate realization, the insistent, uncomfortable yet obvious truth embedded in the very fabric of our favorite space opera: the war part appears to be assumed and nonnegotiable.
Violence undergirds everything when it comes to these star wars. Those cardboard tube lightsabers I swung around mimicked weapons that sliced through flesh just as easily as the metal arms of battle droids. Those pew-pew sounds of blaster bolts were not just silly sounding; they blew up buildings and lives. In each of the TIE fighters or X-wings that went spiraling into oblivion, a living being was lost. And for every noble Kenobi-esque sacrifice there were three dozen other life stories snuffed out in some forgotten corner of the galaxy with barely a blink of the eye. This violence, it seems, is central to our shared experience of a galaxy far, far away.
But does it have to be? Is there a third way? I struggle now to so easily look past the casual treatment of war and conflict when so many communities in our galaxy oh-so-near and oh-so-real live in constant fear of bombs falling from the sky. More importantly, I struggle to accept that war and conflict and violence are simply the way things are. Star Wars seems to require them; but do we? Might there be another way?
Let us see if we can use some insights from that galaxy far, far away to better understand the systemic violence embedded within our own society—and within our very selves—that insist upon conflict, weapons, and war as a necessary evil.
“No longer certain that one ever does win a war, I am,” Yoda admits in the sixth season of The Clone Wars. “For in fighting the battles, the bloodshed, already lost we have.”
Yoda is not wrong. By leading the war efforts, the Jedi have caused suffering and death, all while maintaining the moniker of keepers of the peace. In the final arc of The Clone Wars animated series, Rex, the beloved clone captain of the 501st, admits to Ahsoka Tano that he and his fellow clones have pretty mixed feelings about the war. “Many people wished it never happened. But without it, we clones wouldn’t exist.”
How much more entangled in the systems of violence can one get? One’s very existence is born out of and for violent ends! And yet, in Rex’s character, we glimpse the nuanced potential for good tucked inside seemingly endless evil and suffering. Rex, a good man, stands up and steps forward. He does his duty to protect the vulnerable and fight for justice. The lives he touches, the fellow clones whose hearts he changes, are just as real as his valor, sacrifice, and friendship. But, like all clones, Rex wrestles with whether his purpose goes beyond violence and conflict. Is there—can there be—a place for him in a galaxy at peace?
Unfortunately, he never gets to find out. Order 66 commences as soon as Rex finishes sharing his reflections on war with Ahsoka. And although Ahsoka helps Rex break free from Imperial programming, the rise of the Empire from the ashes of the Republic immediately calls into question the very existence of clones. Rex finds himself fighting a new foe.
When you have known nothing but war, do you keep fighting even though the context and the players and the declaration of purpose have changed? That question takes center stage in The Bad Batch, the animated sequel series to The Clone Wars. The clones, created to fight against the Separatist forces on behalf of the Galactic Republic, find themselves with new leaders and new enemies—but still the order to kill.
Do these clones continue to wage war regardless of who is directing the battles? What do their lives even look like if they are not fighting? Are their lives their own to live? Or do they forever owe something to their warmongering benefactors? And if they choose to fight, what then? Do they support the Republic-turned-Empire, even though that Empire now stands for what they once fought against? Or, do they stand against this new power, assuming the role of separatists or rebels—the very threat they sought to eradicate mere days and weeks and years earlier?
Good soldiers follow orders, we hear again and again in The Bad Batch. At first, it is given as a command. But slowly it becomes a justification. A rationale for avoiding the tough questions of wars that are waged forever. Should the clones resist Imperial command? Such action would fly in the face of not only all they have known, but how they have known the world to work. And so, this twisted mantra seduces good people into maintaining an unquestioning position on a disconcerting status quo.
In the third episode of season two of The Bad Batch, a disillusioned Commander Cody asks the Bad Batch-turned-Imperial clone, Crosshair, “Are we making the galaxy better?” Cody’s subsequent desertion from Imperial command makes clear the answer he has discerned. “We make our own choices,” Cody insists. “And we have to live with them, too.”
When we are caught up in the machine of war, it becomes nearly impossible to disentangle ourselves from the status quo. And so, if the questions we pose take conflict as a given rather than an opportunity to probe whether death and destruction should even be on the table in the first place, we trap ourselves; we see no other way.
Can there be a nonviolent path?
“We were all raised in violence,” writes peace activist John Dear in his book The Nonviolent Life. “We are taught that violence is normal, the way of the world, the way of life. We have no inkling that life could be otherwise. It is only natural that we internalize that violence done to us as children. If we do not explore and call out that legacy of violence, we will continue to do violence to ourselves and others.”[1]
Clearly, we do not need to enlist in some intergalactic war to get caught up in the violence done to our world. Looking at others with an eye of judgment, using language that evokes harm, and thinking ill of ourselves—these are all forms of violence that we have become desensitized to. From the seeds of this numbness grow spiritual weeds.
In another of his books, Living Peace: A Spirituality of Contemplation and Action, Dear writes, “The culture of violence would have us believe that just as we are violent, God must also be violent. . . . Instead of God the peacemaker, we have been taught to believe in god the warmaker. . . . Because of this, many reject God. Who would want anything to do with such a terrifying prospect of ‘divine violence’?”[2]
Who indeed!
There are no easy answers to violence and suffering. Good people serve in armed forces around the world and protect the safety of communities large and small. At the same time, there are entire communities who do not feel safe, who do not feel that they can turn to authorities for protection, and consequently take up arms, adopting violent means for mere survival. There are those struggling under oppressive regimes who see no way out but through the path of violence, death, and destruction. This is simply the world we live in, and I do not presume to have answers to these snowballing tragedies.
And yet, would it not be nice to at least imagine a world where structural violence—guns and tanks and nuclear warheads baked into the maintenance or construction of societal order—was not necessary? And how far we are from such imaginative potential when we reduce our spirituality and whatever word we use for God to no more than a blesser of wars!
“If we do not address the violence in the world, our inner peace is an empty illusion,” Dear continues. “Likewise, we cannot seek peace publicly and expect to help disarm the world while our hearts are filled with violence, judgment, and rage.”[3]
In perhaps one of the greatest monologues of the entire Star Wars franchise, the spymaster of Andor, Luthen Rael, lays out plainly the cost of Rebellion: Luthen sacrifices his very soul to prop up the fledgling rebel cause. He employs the tools of his enemy. “I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see,” he laments.
He, too, is a victim of a violent system. He, too, is unable to extract himself or envision a way forward that does not necessitate violence.
And perhaps he is right. Perhaps there is no way to overthrow the Empire without the shedding of blood. Clearly, Luthen has come to that conclusion, but he is not happy about it. He knows he has forfeited some fundamental part of what it means to be human, to be alive.
What does that kind of self-sacrifice do to a person? How does someone of this commitment emerge on the other side, in a peaceful society that has transcended the Empire?
I do not know the answer. But I know it is far from easy. This arms race of violent extremism has no logical end but in the complete and utter annihilation of the enemy. Think of how broken the Empire was when they were finally defeated at Jakku, a whole year after the destruction of the second Death Star—and even then, they fought on, wasting lives and resources! Rather than seek peace, they fought until there was nothing and no one left. That is how twisted our rationale becomes in this system of violence.
Either we win it all and we win it our way, or we burn ourselves and everything in reach to the ground. It is worth reflecting on Emperor Palpatine’s contingency plan in the case of his death—most notably seen in the video game Battlefront II. Step one was bOperation: Cinder, a galaxy-wide campaign of genocidal destruction on Imperial and non-Imperial worlds alike. The goal? Sow chaos and death and ensure no one claimed his mantle of power. Sith, we are told, deal in absolutes. It is the dark side that can find no compromise, no accommodation, no common ground upon which to build from shared humanity and experience.
In a sarcastic, biting retort from the great series of books Star Wars: The New Jedi Order, Han Solo imagines how the Empire would have responded to the invasion of the mysterious, powerful, and deadly alien species known as the Yuuzhan Vong.
What the Empire would have done was build a supercolossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn’t have worked. They’d forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up.[4]
More and more violence. A refusal to seek out a third way. The very epitome of a way of life that reflects wealth, privilege, and power. The ongoing march to more security, safety, and prosperity that necessitates a never-ending accumulation of power and weaponry to outgun a would-be opponent. That is the solution of empire. That is the solution of the Empire. And that is the solution we too readily turn to, even though we know it cannot possibly keep us safe or end the violence and uncertainty and danger. We pay more and more money for this illusion of safety—and of course, someone is always willing to cash those checks. Remember Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi? We saw the wealthy, privileged crowd on Canto Bight, how unaware and unconcerned they were about the actual lives of real galactic citizens. We saw Finn’s reluctant discovery that both the First Order and the Resistance sought these folks out to fund the war effort.
Still, we give in to our fear even though we know where fear leads, which is to the same place as dealing in absolutes.
In all the promotional materials for The Last Jedi, we were told things were not going to go the way we expected. As it turned out, this proved to be true.
In what is perhaps one of the most surprising scenes, Luke Skywalker projects himself through the Force from Ahch-To all the way to Crait. There he confronts his nephew, Kylo Ren, in what I expected would be an epic showdown. Weren’t we all expecting a lightsaber duel and the chance to see the great Jedi Master once more wield his legendary laser sword?
But blades never crossed. And, as we learned, the threat of violence between the two was never actually real. Kylo could not have hit Luke even if he had been able to land a blow, and Luke seemingly was unable to destroy his nephew because he was not really there at all.
This was an example of nonviolence masquerading as its opposite. A subverting of expectations. What appeared to be violence was its opposite. Nonviolence appearing in unexpected places necessitates a different kind of courage and skillset but the same kind of sacrifice. Nonviolence allows others to escape with their lives, giving them the chance to make new choices. John Dear explains: “Nonviolence confronts systemic injustice with active love but refuses to retaliate with further violence under any circumstances. In order to halt the vicious cycle of violence, it requires a willing acceptance of suffering and death rather than inflicting suffering or death on anyone else. The art of nonviolence lies in the mastery of dying, not killing.”[5]
This sounds an awful lot like what we saw Luke do. In standing up to injustice with love rather than anger, and in bringing a willingness to accept his own death to give both his nephew and the Resistance the opportunity to keeping going, Luke exhibited a mastery in personal sacrifice and a devotion to the greater good.
Love manifesting itself in self-sacrificing deeds: that is the Christian story. That is what God accomplished through Jesus. The nonviolent Christ disrupts both the status quo and societal expectations, going willingly to a violent death in order to give us the chance to live a new way of life. That is Easter—and every day that follows.
This is where hope leads us. We insist that there must be another way, a third way, some nonviolent path that disrupts the status quo. There must be a path that resolutely stands up to injustice and evil and destruction while not giving in and becoming what we seek to destroy.
“It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them!” Obi-Wan screams at his fallen Padawan in the final moments of Revenge of the Sith. We hear the echo of his words as we make choices for peace and justice, light and life, or power, privilege, violence, and darkness.
Let us not become what we seek to destroy. Let us instead imagine a better world, one built on hope.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This essay is adapted from the Afterword of My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars (Loyola Press).