Get Radical
| By: Dr. Ted Baehr; ©1999 |
| Can life be reduced to a simple battle of “good vs. evil” as the Star Wars movies portray? Or is there more that Christians should be aware of? |
Some critics are calling STAR WARS culturally conservative because it portrays good vs. evil. They say THE MATRIX is much more complex and culture specific. This type of easy criticism believes in the dualism that life is either/or. The fact of the matter is, in spite of Joseph Campbell’s mumbling, there is a third way—a way other than the Environmentalist saying, “There is no enemy but man”; a way other than the Romantic’s misguided conclusion that man is good, which led to the bloodbaths of the French Revolution, the Nazi terror and the Soviet pogroms; that way is the way of Jesus Christ.
Man is fallen and corrupted, but he is also created in the image of God and has the potential to do great good. Throughout history, heretics have taken the position that Jesus was either fully man, who did a good deed, or fully God, who didn’t really suffer. The fact of the matter is, Jesus is fully God and fully man, and so His suffering and death on the Cross ended in Resurrection, in eternal hope for fallen people created in the image of God.
Don’t let the so-called intelligentsia confuse you. “Either/or” is not the answer; the “Both/And” embodied in Jesus Christ is.
