WRITING ADVICE: *UGH!* to Prescriptive Writing Books

Ugh!

That's my response to writing books that prescribe exact formulas and imply that This Time, You'll Make It. THIS is the way to Do It!

"It" of course is To Get Really Well Published.

So -- what's the difference between the book I checked out from the library this week on the subject of weekend novel writing and say:

FONDLING YOUR MUSE (by John Warner which is inspirationally hysterical),

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS (by Nancy Kress which is gently instructive),

STEPHEN KING ON WRITING (which is bizarre and entertaining),

HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (by Orson Scott Card which is fundamentally meant to be underlined and dog-eared),

COMEDY WRITING SECRETS (by Melvin Herlitzer which is a sober study of why stuff is funny),

THE FIRST FIVE PAGES (by Noah Lukeman which was a startlingly sensible revelation),

WRITING THE BREAK OUT NOVEL (by Donald Maass which made me stop breathing once or twice in awe),

and ALIENS AND SOCIETIES (by Stanley Schmidt which is a permanent reference)?

I can put my finger right on it!

It's attitude.

The attitude of a writer is conveyed by the tone of the book. The tone is an outgrowth of the writer's personality (which might be a public persona or the Real McCoy). Personality determines if the writer heaves themselves up in front of a room of hopefuls who Need To Be Taught The Right Way To Write. Personality determines whether the writer slips up alongside you and points out the places you need to grow.

For me, attitude is the difference between a televangelist preaching to an electronic audience (anyone else see the irony here?) and a street missionary who, after you've done a neighborhood cleanup on Earth Day together, invites you out for a cuppa or a soda and asks why YOU came to clean up other people's trash and when you ask (knowing full well what's about to happen, but not minding 'cause they seem nice, if deluded), they tell you why they came.

The televangelist and the Right Way To Do It bug the heck out of me!

The street missionary and the hysterical, instructive, bizarre, dog-eared, sober, sensible, awe-inspiring and permanent I'm glad to listen to. Even though they are total strangers -- they seem like they CARE.

GALILEO WAS A CHRISTIAN AND MAYBE ALIENS ARE, TOO!

In this five part series, we’ve looked at what I’ve started to call…

The Four Gospels of Science Fiction

The First: Humanity can connect with a universal, non-personified force
The Second: Humanity is ultimately perfectible
The Third: Humanity can transcend its Humanity
The Fourth: Humanity will leave earth, its religion and philosophies behind

I think these gospels are both dangerous and actively promoted by the SF/scifi community.
The basis for this critical observation is Psalm 73:8-9: “They mock and speak wickedly of oppression. They speak from on high. They have set their mouths above the heavens and their tongues parade through all the earth.” I believe that many SF/scifi writers have set themselves up as the promoters of an “updated” form of religion that people find easier to swallow than Christianity. They do this through stories and movies. It’s easy to slip philosophy into SF/scifi. C. S. Lewis, himself a science fiction and fantasy writer said, “…any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under the cover of romance [SF was known at first as “scientific romance”] without their knowing it.” (LETTERS OF C. S. LEWIS)

There is, however, one other possibility. Any mathematician has to grant that there is some probability – however infinitesimal – that Jesus will not only survive the trip off Earth, but that there might be other life Out There that believes that God’s Incarnate Son came to Earth so redeem sinful Humanity. Even so, before we reach those aliens, we’ll colonize near space, the Moon, Mars and the other planets, moons and perhaps even the atmosphere of Jupiter or Saturn. We will obviously have to answer some tough questions about the promulgation of our faith in the colonies and on the worlds of the Solar System. We will have to defend our requests and choices to commanders, administrators, councils, kings or presidents when they ask, “It costs money and materiel to make the crosses, provide air, give space and provide time for you to do something that gives no physical benefit to the colony. Why should I grant you a permit to start a Christian Church here? It provides no physical advantage to the colony and probably even promotes division among the people!” However, I think that those questions were already answered when Humans spread across Earth. The Church followed – and at times led – the exploration of the frontiers on this planet. Despite the intense secular focus on slavery, smallpox and slaughter – occasionally the Church did it RIGHT and brought transcriptions of unwritten languages, medical care, education and a vision of a broader world. We know what Humans did with their faith on Earth. What will we do with it in space?

So – what if we meet intelligences in the skies of Jupiter – aliens in our own star system? Seeing that they’re local, did Jesus die for them? An intriguing possibility might be posed by Ezra 9:6, which says, "O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.” Does this mean that the sins of Humanity fell on ALL of creation – the heavens (stars, planets, galaxies, the universe), causing it all to Fall? If that were true, would the redemption of Jesus Christ have spread “to the heavens” from Earth? I think it’s at least a possibility…

Hang with me for a moment and suspend whatever disbelief you have and agree that God created other aliens. Join C.S. Lewis and me and agree that there is a possibility that there are unfallen aliens Out There. These aliens faced their Obedience Test. They passed and have remained in perfect communion with God. “The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also that there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen and who needed redemption…and had not been vouchsafed it…It may be full of life that needs no redemption. It may be full of life that has been redeemed. It may be full of things quite other than life which satisfy the Divine Wisdom in fashions one cannot conceive.” (“Dogma and the Universe”, GOD IN THE DOCK) Lewis explores this in PERELANDRA. I will be exploring it more in my own fiction.

Finally, when we DO open a Discover Church (http://www.discoverchurchnetwork.org/ ) in the International Space Station or on the Moon or on Mars or in the clouds of Jupiter – and if we meet aliens, then Psalm 57:10 perhaps speaks most hopefully: “For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.”

The question I ask the brethren – and the sistern ;-) is: Do you think we’ll do better reaching aliens than we did reaching Muslims and Jews during the Crusades or reaching out to science fiction readers today?

{Post Script: An ancillary Gospel to the 4GoSF might be summarized as: Smear The Church And Chance You Get! In testament to this, I offer the following: “DAVA SOBEL (Author, Galileo's Daughter): Galileo was honest when he said that the Bible was the true word of God. He just didn't think it was a good astronomy textbook.” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2912_galileo.html) SO! The great Galileo believed in God! Not ONLY did he believe in God but apparently that the Bible is God’s word. All I’ve ever heard from the science media is that the Church was stupid, hateful, small-minded and hated Galileo. It may have been all that, but by extension, the scientific establishment has allowed us to believe that Galileo hated the Church in return. And that appears to NOT be true, either. Hmmmm….how many other hatreds are both sides willing to propagate?}

JESUS LOST IN SPACE

The Third Gospel of SF is that Jesus was the founder of an Earth-based religion that will disappear when we leave the planet. Two of the best-known proponents of this viewpoint are Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffrey.

Asimov is generally acknowledged to be one of the three most influential SF writers in the world (Clarke and Heinlein are the other two). He is an avowed atheist: “I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” (http://www.adherents.com/people/pa/Isaac_Asimov.html)
As an atheist, the worlds he created: The Foundation books, the Robot books and dozens of others, (along with 1600 science fact articles) left Jesus behind on Earth as “human religion”. As an apostle of the Fourth Gospel of SF, his influence is far-reaching even today, sixteen years after his death.

In a 1994 letter, I asked SF writer and creator of the multivolume, incredibly popular DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN® series (over 21,000,000 copies of her books on the shelves of the English-speaking world), “Pern has a noticeable absence of the religious traditions of present-day Earth. Does this absence reflect a belief that Humans will outgrow such trappings?” She replied, “The absence of religion on Pern was deliberate…The need to blame a superior being for the vicissitudes of life might help the ignorant and untutored but I do not wish to be counted in that number. Nor will I impose my value judgments on others…therefore I leave religion off Pern!”

Theology – or lack of theology – bashing isn’t my forte, so I’ll leave that to someone who knows theology better. My biggest qualm is and always has been the size of the platform from which the Four Gospels of SF are proclaimed. Psalm 71 says it best: “They have set their mouth above the heavens and their tongue parades through all the earth.” At any rate, for the sake of my beliefs and for the high probability that several in the SF community will find them irritating, I’d just like to point out that it’s impossible to leave Jesus behind on Earth – no matter how much we want to.

2 Peter 3:8 says, “But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.” Based on this and other verses, I believe that God is outside of time and does not experience it in a linear way as we do. Because Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), Jesus is the same way – outside of time.

Because He is outside of time, He is most likely outside of space as well because, according to contemporary physics: “In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single construct called the space-time continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of the fourth dimension.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime)

Now, let’s see if I can explain my belief clearly:

a) Jesus stepped into linear time and lived for 33 years on Earth in a linear fashion

b) Jesus performed miracles on Earth, taught, was crucified, died and was buried on Earth

c) He went to hell, returned to heaven and then rose from the grave on Earth, defeating sin and reclaiming Humans as His children

d) While doing all of this, He remained both fully human and fully God and as God, He was outside of time

e) Given what I believe, Jesus was God, outside of time and space

f) Outside of time and space, He exists, so that when we go into space, we will find it impossible to “leave Jesus behind” -- because he's already there.

…and as much as I love to hear my own voice, that’s all I can think of to say on the topic!

WRITING ADVICE: Educating For Dollars

Every year or so, I get a call from someone who wants me to do some educational writing for them. This could be anything from Sunday School curriculum to writing test items for the Minnesota Department of Education. As well, I've been called on to read test items for a teacher certification exam and evaluate them and I've written political Opinion Essays discussing educational issues.

All of these have come with a satisfyingly large paycheck!

The key here is to LET IT BE KNOWN THAT YOU ARE AVAILABLE! It helps that I am a veteran teacher -- but when I started educational writing, I wasn't a veteran. A friend of mine was called by the Science Museum of Minnesota because someone had heard that he could write a sentence or two. He was busy and referred them to me. They took me and the end result was that I received the Science Museum of Minnesota's Teacher of the Year award, an all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC and a chance to actually, really meet with the (surprisingly short!) Paul Wellstone.

Another key is to write whatever you have the opportunity to write -- don't be picky. Writing is writing and you have the internet and children's books to research any topic that you don't know much about.

Lastly: Let it be known that you are not picky!

WRITING ADVICE: Writing LONGER Short Stories

First of all, sorry for the delay in posting! Semester I Finals (writing, grading and entering into the computer) took precedence as did my son studying for and passing both his National Registry Emergency Medical Technician exam (I was the "study buddy") and his driver's licence test (practice partner).

So, my flash of information or insight on short stories?

These are what I have the most experience writing. Literally hundreds of the things live on hard drives, as hard copy in folders and on old-fashioned disks. And what have I learned? Reflecting on that in church yesterday while letting my mind wander before the worship began, I realized that the short stories of mine that have gotten published have always Said Something in a quiet and subtle way.

This led to the sudden terrifying thought that there might be NO way to intentionally craft a story! I KNOW that the stories I've written in which I've TRIED to Say Something come across as heavy-handed polemics. What if the only way I can write publishable fiction is if I DON'T try to Say Something? What if I can only write good fiction when I'm not trying?

Gah!

I'll take a lesson here from my favourite writer, C.S. Lewis. In the essay, "Christian Apologetics" in GOD IN THE DOCK, he says, "What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more books by Christians on other subjects with their Christianity latent." I AM a Christian, my faith should be latent in every story. I understand that and let the Holy Spirit work through me.

But applying this paradigm more broadly, I might say that when I try to Say Something, I should instead allow it to say itself; to be hidden; to be LATENT.

Looking at my published work, I find that the pieces I've had published were stories where I didn't force the issue.

In the matrix of PLAIN GOOD STORYTELLING, I have to let the message speak softly for itself.

JESUS EMPEROR OF “DUNE®”: CHRISTIANITY AND HUMAN TRANSCENDENCE

The Third Gospel of SF is the belief that Humanity will someday become MORE than Human – we will transcend or “go beyond” Human. Numerous writers have shared this belief with readers:

In Isaac Asimov’s short story "The Last Question", Humanity merges its collective consciousness with its own creation: an all-powerful cosmic computer. In CHILDHOOD’S END, by Arthur C. Clarke, the destiny of humanity merges with some cosmic intelligence. In Poul Anderson's HARVEST OF STARS, an oppresive government justifies itself by its commitment to take humanity to the Omega Point. George Zebrowski wrote three novellas called THE OMEGA POINT TRILOGY. In HYPERION CANTOS, Dan Simmons used the Omega Point extensively. More recently, in DARWINIA, a novel by Robert Charles Wilson, the story is actually part of a virtual war inside an Omega Point computer. In TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, Charles Sheffield's main character finds that the only hope of saving his wife is for him to wait for the Omega Point.

Frank Herbert’s novel GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, creates Paul Muad’Dib, once the human son of Duke Leto Atreides, who has become a god: “You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to our history. This is the fund of energy I draw upon when I address the mentality of war. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human. -The Stolen Journals” (http://www.nightsolo.net/dune/god.html).

My contention here is that we don’t need science to become “transhuman”. We don’t need to “transcend” Humanity through an Omega Point or anything else. The entire Third Gospel of SF is an attempt to “do it ourselves” because…well, because we’re a “do it ourselves” kind of people. It’s as if we’re trying to justify being stuck at a two-year-old stage of development and refuse to admit it. We refuse to believe that God already made us to be beyond Human. (Psalm 8:5 “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” (KJV)) It was through Adam’s representative choice (there’s that “original sin” thing again! (I know that people don’t like the idea of original sin and I’ve looked at the arguments, but nothing I’ve seen or heard yet has persuaded me to drop the notion. Why is original sin such a hard concept to accept by people who live in a republic and regularly elect others to do things in their name – that they don’t agree with?)) Two-year-olds often stomp their feet and cry out, “Me do it!”

The newest entry into our search for transcendence comes in the form of the Kurzweil Singularity: "The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity." (http://singularity.com/)

God provided a means for us to transcend our fallen state – through the person of Jesus Christ. Through Him, we can leave the imporfect behind and return to perfection. By accepting His offer of representation before the Father, our relationship with God can be restored to what it was at Creation.

No Omega Point is needed: “a term used by Tulane University professor of mathematics and physics Frank J. Tipler…his Omega Point Theory, as the universe comes to an end at a singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe is capable of increasing at a sufficient rate that this computation rate is accelerating exponentially faster than the time running out…this theory requires that the current known laws of physics are true descriptions of reality, and it requires there be intelligent civilizations in existence at the appropriate time to exploit the computational capacity of such an environment. Tipler identifies this final singularity and its state of infinite information capacity with God.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point_(Tipler))

No Kurzweil Singularity. No technology to “enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives. In other words, we want people to be better than well.” (http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/) Living for 3500 years and experiencing war for that long. Transhumanism is not what Humanity needs to move to the next level. But we continue to seek in ANY other way: “People of faith are increasingly entering into dialogue with human enhancement advocates about the theological significance of the transhumanist project. So the IEET will be launching the Cyborg Buddha Project to combine our efforts and promote discussion of the impact that neuroscience and emerging neurotechnologies will have on happiness, spirituality, cognitive liberty, moral behavior and the exploration of meditational and ecstatic states of mind.” (http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?m=200703)

What we need is what God provided 2000 years ago – a Savior, who IS Christ the Lord.

WRITING ADVICE: Writing SHORT-SHORTS

I was nominated for a Nebula Award by popular SF writer Catherine Asaro ( http://www.catherineasaro.net/ ).

The nomination was for a short-short I wrote for ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT called "Warning! Warning!" (October 2005).

It was inspired by something that irritated me -- a label in both Spanish and English plastered inside the lid of my wheeled recycling tub, UPSIDE down when you're opening the can's lid; right side up when it's open. It read: "Caution: Owner may trip if lid is not closed." This was such a stupid warning that I knew immediately that someone MUST have tripped while rolling the tub with the top open and tried to bring a lawsuit against the company that made the garbage can. They probably won.

It SO irritated me that checked several other appliances and furniture in my house, finding to my horror that just about everything had a warning label on it. I wrote a short-short SF story carrying the absurd increase in "warning" lables to its obvious conclusion -- everything, everywhere on Earth and in space will have to carry some sort of warning label on it. In addition to being adhered to and engraved on objects, these warnings will be broadcast from a special "Warning Broadcast Network" as well as visually projected on to all surfaces capable of causing harm. In this future, mea culpa (Latin, "my fault") will be struck from the English language and everything will be the fault of "someone else".

Like essay writing, short-short writing has to come from a passionate heart. There's no time to develop character, so POINT becomes all important. What is the POINT of the short-short? Can you state it in three or four words? Are you passionate about the POINT you are trying to make?

Then perhaps you'll have a saleable short-short story when you're done!

CAPTAIN CHRIST OF THE USS ENTERPRISE (THE ULTIMATE PERFECTIBILITY OF HUMANITY)

“Roddenberry’s Star Trek gave us the United Federation of Planets, a meta-government that spanned human space. He envisioned humanity as ultimately perfectible. While perfection remained out of reach, the notion that it was even achievable seems, perhaps, hopelessly naïve and idealistic.” (http://sci-fi.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Star_Trek_-_Gene_Roddenberry)

Naïve it may be, but even today, the Second Gospel of Science Fiction is predicated on the firm belief that Humanity will be able to create a general society that is peaceful, poverty-free and refuses to embrace divisive religion. This Gospel wants nothing to do with God. It assumes that Humanity’s baser instincts are essentially tamable and that with basic research, technological development, philosophy, sociology and psychology as our tools, we will be able to create ourselves as a “new humanity”.

The Humanist Manifesto is a series of documents signed by tens of thousands of people who have set out to do just this. (http://www.americanhumanist.org/3/HumandItsAspirations.htm). Isaac Asimov was a signatory of the Manifesto II and his works clearly proclaim the idea that we can perfect ourselves and need no outside help – especially supernatural outside help. Others who have the same beliefs use their fiction (first and foremost) to entertain, but certainly somewhere down the list of “why did I write this story?” they harbor a desire to promote their belief in the ultimate perfectibility of Humanity.

My contention is that Humanity is NOT perfectible. The Bible notes this – some of the observations are made by verifiable historical figures whose wisdom has been passed down through the ages: “…the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives.” (Ecclesiastes 9:3) and “They are corrupt and have committed abominable injustice. There is no one who does good…every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 52: 1-3) are both examples of simple observation.

Some might contend that Humanity is no longer the same organism David observed 4000 years ago. A quick scan of msn.com or a newspaper; a talk with a retired person or an inner city classroom teacher or an organic dairy farmer in rural Wisconsin will present anecdotal evidence that “things haven’t gotten better since (FILL IN THE BLANK WITH A YEAR), they’ve gotten worse!”

They aren’t going to get any better as long as we leave ourselves in charge of the renovation. We cannot manifest our way out of a technologically more advanced slide into deeper and deeper sin. Satan will continue to take marvelous inventions and through his Human agents, pervert them to something ugly (“60% of all website visits are sexual in nature” MSNBC Survey 2000, http://www.blazinggrace.org/pornstatistics.htm). Any Democrat will be happy to relate to you the horrors of the war in Iraq; any Republican will be happy to relate to you the horrors of Vietnam. Some atheists might point out that 9,000,000 Muslims and Jews were slaughtered during the Crusades and 300,000 during the Spanish Inquisition in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth; some Christians might point out the supposed 61,911,000 in the old Soviet Union or the alleged 35,236,000 in China who were murdered in the name of communism by atheist regimes.

The manifesting has not gone well thus far.

We ain’t getting’ better, folks. Putting Christ on the bridge of the Enterprise won’t solve our problems either. We simply can’t “get better”. We aren’t ultimately perfectible – not on our own. Only when we surrender our broken spirits to Jesus – not the Christ of the Crusaders or the Republicans, but to the Messiah of this world can we become perfect IN Him.

Now I KNOW that’s going to irritate some of you…but this all the room I have today…

WRITING ADVICE: Writing with NARROW FOCUS AND BROAD APPEAL

While it may seem obvious, I learned the hard way that my essays had to have strengths that sounded mutually exclusive.

A few years ago, our family and friends were on a Fourth of July outing to watch a big-city fireworks display. It was windy that night and several times the fireworks were nearly called off. At ten-ish, they decided to appease the restless mob and the shooting began.

Moments after the first bombs burst in the air, hot ash and glowing cinders blown down by contrary upper winds, started to rain down on our side of the crowd. Few other people were there, most having gathered in the park. Spared the night fall, they were busy oooo-ing and ahhhhh-ing as those of us caught in the rain of debris sprinted for cover dragging, pushing and carrying little ones.

Incensed by the time I got home, I made to fire off a letter to the editor of the local paper. I wrote it, but after it cooled for a few days, a quick read-through made it seem trite, spiteful and (worse) whiney. I started again, this time pausing to reach back into history to compare our little episode with what some of the Colonists might have experienced as real rockets rained down on them during the first American war. Suggesting we all might enjoy the gift of freedom a bit more with our small taste of flaming ash in recent memory landed me a Guest Editorial in the paper rather than being relegated to one of a half-dozen Letters to the Editor.

Narrow focus coupled with broad appeal is a formula I should follow more often when writing essays.

JESUS WAS A JEDI MASTER!

For the next five pieces of PIE, I’m going to look at the Four Gospels of Science Fiction. By Gospels, I mean that I see four predominant paradigms appearing in the majority of SF/scifi stories. I’ll state my case, offer support from the chief apostles of each Gospel and then let the rest of you have at it. The Gospels of SF:

1) There is a force in the galaxy/universe from which Humans (and others) might draw strength to do either good or evil.

2) Humanity is ultimately perfectible and given time will create a rational, kind and peaceful society that incorporates all philosophies.

3) Humanity will evolve to a state where it will (or find a means to) transcend matter (though still manipulate it) and freely choose either a corporeal or non-corporeal existence.

4) There is nothing outside of nature and Humanity will learn to perfectly manipulate matter and will leave its “tribal gods” behind when it moves into space permanently.

(Obviously, there is crossover among the Four Gospels of SF. Rational perfection may lead Humanity to a point where matter is no longer necessary and we exist as beings of pure energy. The perfect manipulation of the material may lead to a truly Unified Field Theory and all forms of matter and energy may prove to be intimately entangled with Human consciousness. There are easily others that shade into and out of each other. For example, Isaac Asimov, a strict apostle of the Fourth Gospel occasionally allows room for the Second Gospel in some of his robots like R. Daneel Olivaw. To me, George Lucas is the primary apostle of the First Gospel, but has incorporated elements of the Third Gospel into the STAR WARS movies.
And that is where we’re going to start:

WAS JESUS A JEDI MASTER?

The Jedi Knights were members of an ancient monastic order who could use an energy field generated by the cumulative “life” of all living things. This allowed them to have great strength, long life, powers of the mind like telekinesis and telepathy, and a moral certitude beyond that of ordinary people.

Jedi Knights were chosen by other Jedi Knights – in Episodes IV-VI apparently by sensing a “force” in an individual…in Episodes I-III by how many midichlorians an individual had in their blood. Jedi Masters rose from the Knights by successfully training padawan learners, nomination by other Masters, performance of extraordinary deeds or by self-proclamation.

Many Christians have equated Lucas’ Force with the Holy Spirit, Anakin Skywalker with Jesus Christ and the Emperor with Satan. What does Lucas say? In a TIME magazine interview in 1999, he said, “I see STAR WARS as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down to a more modern and easily accessible construct…I put the Force in the movie to try and awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people – more a belief in God than in any particular religious system.” (TIME Magazine, April 26, 1999)

I don’t think that Lucas would mind imagining Jesus as a Jedi Master (if he believed in the Force as some do. His personal philosophy tends toward Buddhist), and there certainly are hints of the Christ story in STAR WARS, but as Lucas says, his “Force” is an attempt to distill religion down and make it more modern and easily accessible.

The question begs to be answered: “more modern and easily accessible” to whom? Jesus has already said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no one can come to the Father but by Him. Does Lucas imply here that because his Force is a sort of energy field made up of all living things, that to connect with the Force you have to have a specific disease (midichlorian infection). Does it mean that using the Force requires no commitment to anything other than “doing good”, that more people will follow the Force – because it has done away with exclusivity that requires no sacrifice of any sort?

I think this is exactly what the First Gospel of SF is aiming for. It creates a nice, easy “quasi-religious” religion with no one to really tell you what to do; no “right or wrong”; no rules to follow except for whatever you want to do. Certainly, if you want to climb to the highest heights, then some bit of sacrifice is required – ah, but the Earthly (or Tatooinely or Coruscantly) rewards are great!

To me, it’s eternal salvation for everyone who “does good” rather than salvation through the person of Jesus Christ.

To me, it’s dangerous because it requires nothing of most people. It doesn’t have any sort of morality except what you decide to have. It certainly doesn’t require sacrifice. Jesus was no Jedi Master. He is simply, Master and He requires that “you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.” (Luke 14:33). Somehow I don’t think that that would be acceptable to the apostles of the First Gospel of SF…