The Bible and Star Wars

The Bible and Star Wars May 21, 2016

On Cindy Brandt's Unfundamentalist Parenting blog, there is a great guest post by John Stonecypher describing the challenges that confront those who were brought up to view the Bible as one thing, only to discover it is something else. Loving Star Wars, and passing on that love with all its complexity, helped provide a useful analogy. Here's an excerpt:

Here’s the thing: Star Wars is no more consistent nor moral than the Bible. Did Han shoot first or didn’t he? Is Luke Skywalker a hero, or is he a terrorist who used his religion to blow up a building?I love Star Wars because I am able to let it be what it is, instead of turning it into some kind of god. It has been hard for me to love the Bible because I have been conditioned to put it into a role it is not fit to play — that of a uni-vocal source of moral, historic, and scientific information which I am not allowed to think critically about. If I had to approach Star Wars that way, I’d hate Star Wars.But the truth is, we have many stories, and Star Wars is just one of them. We also have Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, and the nerdly list goes on and on. All of those stories give us something different. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses telling us how things are, and wisdom lies in learning which voices work best in current circumstances. In the challenge I’m facing today, will I be Jack with his beanstalk, achieving success by daring great things? Or will I be Cinderella, achieving success by patient waiting for events beyond my control? Who is my wisdom today – Moses speaking truth to Pharaoh, or Daniel faithful in chains?Many stories means many strategies for many situations. Wisdom is rightly naming the story I’m in.The Bible is that set of stories that our people have used for thousands of years to understand Reality as a place in which we encounter this interactive infinity named Yahweh. Our stories come from different voices and diverse models of how Reality works, and that is strength, not weakness. For it is in those spaces in between the stories where wisdom blooms.

I am learning to love it as completely and un-complicatedly as I love Star Wars. Yes, the Bible is harder than Star Wars, but that’s because LIFE is harder than Star Wars. That’s why we’re willing to work at it. And our faith is that the Bible is teaching us to ask good questions that will make us wise unto Life.

Click through to read the whole thing.

 


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