Anakin Was Right
Are We Making the Mistakes of the Jedi?
I was listening to a Systematic Geekology podcast episode about what it means to be force-sensitive in the Star Wars universe and I had a few thoughts. I liked Tripp Fuller’s discussion of how each of the three Star Wars trilogies fit within their time and cultural contexts. I remember standing in a long line to see the very first Star Wars movie, and I have enjoyed each movie in its context. One of my favorites is The Last Jedi, which I know is a controversial view. But I also struggle with the old expanded universe because it presented static characters and societies by and large. The reason I like The Last Jedi is that I find the treatment of Luke Skywalker to be excellent. But that is because I also believe Anakin Skywalker was right in his critique of the Jedi. Luke’s character in the sequel trilogy flows from Anakin’s own critiques.
If your only experience of Anakin Skywalker is that found in Episodes 1–3, then I recommend the animated Clone Wars series. The animated series makes the character of Anakin Skywalker breathe in complexity and tragedy rather than the shallow and cliche portrayal in the movies. You come to like and care for the Anakin in Clone Wars and understand his loss of faith in the Jedi. Anakin ultimately chooses a path of violence because of that loss of faith, but his concerns were valid.
Anakin was right. The Jedi had become corrupt because they had become fundamentalists when it came to the Force. For the Jedi, the Force had become a thing to control. They quit viewing the Force as that which bound all together and became the arbiters of its experience. In becoming more and more firm, they were unable to see the threat of Darth Sidius as they calculated how to control the Republic. Anakin came to that conclusion on his own, but Sidius shaped that realization to his aims of power. Anakin made one choice, but his padawan, Ahsoka Tano, made a very different choice.
Ahsoka also recognized the corruption that permeated the Jedi, but she chose a very different route than that of her master. She left the Jedi Order before Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side. But she did not stop working with the Force to bring about good. The character of Ahsoka shows a different route for those for whom orthodoxy’s judges become corrupt. Fight with goodness. Asohka also shows us the redemption of Anakin Skywalker in the series Ahsoka. In the Jedi afterlife, Ahsoka meets Anakin who is also Vader. We encounter a whole Anakin not encumbered by the binary of Dark and Light, but a full expression of the Force inviting Asohka to learn and live again. It is in one powerful scene that we see the entirety of the Force, Dark and Light, contained in Anakin and we come to understand the way he brought true balance.
All of what preceded Luke’s withdrawal from the Force helps to understand why. He, like his father before him, was right about the problem, but wrong in his decisions. Luke, just as he does throughout his story, allows fear to turn him into a hermit. He withdraws until he realizes that what he thought made a Jedi changed. It is Luke’s own embrace of a type of heresy that preserves hope long enough for another great truth of Star Wars. Only a Palpatine could bring true closure. Rey’s unorthodox choice to continually choose relationship over control allows her to be resurrected by a Skywalker (Kylo Ren/ben Skywalker) to defeat her grandfather, Darth Sidius. This is why I enjoy the sequel trilogy, because it takes the ideas from all that went before and realizes that the orthodox enforcement of the Jedi was the problem. The Force is wild and not to be contained by the propositional orthodoxy of the Jedi, but rather tapped into by the relational experience of those not constrained by those assumptions.
Now, go back through this and think Holy Spirit where you see Force and think on how the Church too often taps into the propositional orthodoxy to preserve itself when the Spirt is leading elsewhere through relational truth and holiness. Do we allow fear to drive our decisions, or do we look at where the Spirit leads and go boldly like Rey to see the light?