A Lesson from the Emperor--August 26, 2020

 

A Lesson from the Emperor--August 26, 2020

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." [Romans 12:21]

You can really learn a lot from a wicked space sorcerer, if you're willing to pay attention in the right ways.

Okay, I'm going to lay my late-twentieth-century-sci-fi-nerd cards on the table and share a Star Wars anecdote.  You don't have to have ever seen one of the eleven-and-counting Star Wars movies to follow this, I don't think.  But just to bring everybody up to speed, the ominous villains of the Star Wars movies are the evil Galactic Empire, headed most famously by the iconically masked enforcer Darth Vader, and above Vader himself, the mysterious berobed Emperor Palpatine.  The Emperor is not only politically powerful (he is the Emperor, after all), but is a master of the ways of the Dark Side of the Force, which gives him seemingly magical powers like shooting lightning out of his hand, telekinesis, mind manipulation, and a host of of other tricks up his long black sleeve.

Emperor Palpatine is particularly dangerous because he is willing to play the long game--he doesn't just think of immediate gratification or short-term wins, but strategizes for bigger victories even if they take years or decades to accomplish.  He is insidious that way, and I think that's part of what makes the Emperor one of the all-time great movie villains.

But most insidious of all, I think--and this is where there is a lesson to be learned for us non-Jedi folks--is that the Emperor is most interested in getting his opponents to give into hatred--to "turn to the Dark side," as they say in that Galaxy Far Far Away--which allows them to become his minions.  The Emperor wins if he gets good people to accept the ways of evil, even if he doesn't kill them.  The Emperor wins by getting his enemies to allow themselves to fight him on his terms--to use hatred and anger as their means of attacking him.  Because once they do that, they have already given him the victory.  There's even a climactic scene in The Return of the Jedi where the hero, Luke Skywalker, is finally facing down the menacing Darth Vader, and while the Emperor watches the battle of clashing light sabers, he starts encouraging Luke to kill Vader--and to use his hatred to do it.

That's the master stroke--and I can remember as a kid seeing that scene and having it blow my mind.  Why would the head villain be telling the good guy to kill the second-worst bad guy?  Why would the Emperor be willing to sacrifice his fearsome apprentice, Vader, to the hero we have spent three movies rooting for?  Because he knows that getting the hero to use hatred, fear, and anger means the hero becomes a tool of the Dark Side.  Losing Vader but getting a new recruit with even stronger powers would be a strategic win for the Emperor, and so he cheers Luke on to kill Vader, and to let the hatred flow through him, to feel the power of that hatred, and to channel the power of his fears.

And it almost works.

This, I believe, is the biggest danger to our souls here in the real world, too--to be so fiercely opposed to the ones we see as "enemies" that we are willing to resort to hatred, fear, and anger to fight them.  When we think we are fighting for good but allow ourselves to use evil as the means to accomplish it, we have already given the battle to the powers of evil.  And the powers of evil in the real world are at least as smart as the ones from Hollywood blockbusters--the Emperor is only that clever because real people in the real world have experienced that same cunning pull of evil.

That's why it is such a vital move that Paul makes when he tells the Roman Christians, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." He's not merely saying, "You need to out-muscle evil with your sheer brute force," but rather he's saying, "Don't let evil infect you so that you do evil things in the name of doing good."  It's about refusing to accept evil as a means.  It's about refusing to allow hatred, fear, greed, and ambition to become natural to us.  It's about refusing to resort to rottenness as a means to winning--because we know that once we have given in on that point, we have already lost the battle that really counts.  The Emperor knows that in the Star Wars movies, and so he knows it is a long-game win if he can get Luke to kill Vader by giving into hatred.  And the powers of evil right now know the same is true--if they can get us to be ok with hatred, to accept a strategy of fear, and to be willing to win at the cost of our character, then evil has already won.

That's also why the early church was so unswervingly committed to a policy of loving their enemies, from the days of Jesus himself on throughout the New Testament and early church (somewhere along the way this was forgotten or silenced, but that's probably a conversation for another day's devotion).  The idea of loving enemies doesn't mean you help your enemies do evil things, but it does mean that you won't do evil things to them as a way of fighting their evil.  It means we will tell the truth, so far as we know it, even when it may make people squirm--but we will not tell lies as a way of getting ahead.  It means we will advocate for what we think is right, but we will not sell out for the sake of getting power or influence.  It means we may disagree with people, but we will not allow ourselves to hate them.  It means we may speak directly and argue passionately for what we think is right, but with the willingness to be shown where we are wrong, rather than to ignore anything that doesn't already reinforce what we want to be true.  It means we can own where we think we are right, but also that we be willing to let others show us where we have failed or fallen short.  It means refusing to turn some group of people into scapegoats for others to be afraid of, and instead seeking the good of all. And it means once and for all being done with Me-and-My-Group-First thinking that is used to justify hating anybody who falls outside the boundary lines.  It means that every day, we are Luke Skywalker, having to make the choice of whether we will resort to evil means as a way of winning, or whether we will be wise enough to know that option smells of sulfur and would actually make us tools of evil itself.

All of that is what Paul has in mind when he writes, both to those first-century Christians and to us reading over their shoulders two millennia later, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  The moment we tell ourselves it's OK to nurse a little hatred or sell our integrity for the sake of personal or political advantage, we have already let evil win.  So don't let yourself play the game by the rules evil has handed you.  You do not have to accept those terms.  None of us has to listen to the Emperor's smiling lies.

You and I, we are free--free to love.

Lord Jesus, give us both the wisdom and the courage to know how to say NO to the strategies and tactics of evil, and instead to say YES to your path, all our days.