Star Wars, Jesus, and the Devil

Growing up, I loved the original Star Wars trilogy. I watched it so many times. I can remember being sick one day and staying home from school and watching all three back-to-back. It made me almost happy to be sick.

Despite that, there was one part of Return of the Jedi that always drove me crazy. It’s during the last part when Luke and Darth Vader are having their big lightsaber duel. Luke gets angry and chops off Vader’s hand (it’s hard to keep both hands in Star Wars). The Emperor gets all excited, thinking Luke is about to turn to the Dark Side. However, Luke throws his lightsaber away and refuses to fight anymore. In retaliation, the Emperor starts zapping him with force-lightening. This goes on for quite a while until Darth Vader starts to feel bad and finally decides to chuck the Emperor down some kind of bottomless pit (I don’t know why he has that pit in his audience chamber, but it made for good cinema).

The reason I didn’t like that part is I really wanted Luke, the hero, to defeat the Emperor. It seemed lame to me that the victory didn’t come because Luke was stronger. I thought he should have been able to overcome both Vader and the Emperor, demonstrating that good is greater than evil.

However, I now think this is one of the greatest scenes in movie history. Let me explain why:

The greatest cosmic battle between good and evil happened 2000 years ago on a small hill outside Jerusalem. If you’ve read the gospels, you know what seemed to happen to the naked eye. Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah—King of the Jews, was forced to carry a cross up to the top of Golgotha, where he was crucified and killed.

This event was, at first, seen by his followers as the ultimate defeat. The Romans used crucifixion as a form of psychological warfare. They particularly liked to crucify would-be rebels. The point was to terrify the population into submission. “See!” They would seem to say, “This is what happens when you resist Rome! If you want to be high and lifted up (like a king), we’ll lift you up (on a cross)!”

Probably most of Jesus’ followers misunderstood his mission at first. They, like me, wanted their hero to defeat the bad guys by force. They were tired of being oppressed. They wanted someone strong and powerful to rescue them. Instead, it appeared Jesus had let them all down. He did not defeat the Romans, but was instead defeated by them.

Amazingly, 2000 years later, the meaning of the cross has been totally redefined. People now wear it as jewelry. It’s a symbol of victory, love, and power. How did this happen?

Well, three days after Jesus was crucified, he rose from the dead. That event deserves much more attention than I can give it here, but for this article, it is enough to say that it proved the cross was not at all what it appeared to be.

Later, Jesus’ disciples began to comment on the event and explain it to us. One of my favorite explanations comes from Paul in Colossians 2:15, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

This is an amazing statement! Paul says that the cross, while it looked like Jesus’ defeat, was actually his triumph over the devil. While he did not defeat the Romans on the cross, he did somehow defeat the demonic powers that stood behind Rome.

How is that possible? I think the answer is somewhat like our Star Wars story. Jesus, like Luke, won by refusing to fight. He went as a lamb to the slaughter (Is 53:7). He had the power to stop the crucifixion, but he chose not to use it (Mt 26:53). Instead, he let people and the devil do to him what they wanted (Mt 20:18-19; 1 Cor 2:8). What they wanted to do was brutally murder God.

Paul says this whole event was a public spectacle that embarrassed the devil. By acting in this humble, self-sacrificial way, Jesus caused the devil to overplay his hand. The devil poured out his ugly, evil intentions on Jesus through the soldiers and the crowds. Looking at it now from our vantage point, we can see the beauty of Jesus, dying on our behalf, and the horrific nature of the devil working to disfigure him. We can see the beauty and power of self-sacrificial love and the false, ugly power of force. We can say with Paul that the devil looks foolish and embarrassingly naked, and Jesus—who actually was naked—is clothed with glory.

A similar thing is in play in the Star Wars scene. Darth Vader has spent years serving the evil Emperor. He’s done so because he believes the Emperor is powerful and therefore worth serving. However, as he watches Luke save his life (suffering in Vader’s place) he realizes something. The Emperor isn’t powerful, Luke is. Control and violence aren’t power; love is. It’s not just that he wants to save his son (though I’m sure he does). It’s that his entire understanding of what greatness is has shifted. As a result, he takes his false god and throws him into the abyss.

Gazing upon the cross can do the same thing for us. It’s watching our false gods torture Jesus. He takes the beating to protect us. As we watch, we realize that our false gods of control, money, fame, ambition, lust, etc. are not real sources of power. Real power looks like Jesus on the cross. It looks like self-denial, self-sacrifice. Recognizing this will cause us to destroy our idols and worship only Jesus. In this way, what looked like Jesus’ defeat was actually his victory!

For more on this topic, check out my 8 part series, Warfare Theodicy.