Star Wars and Catholicism Part 2: Jedi, Sith, and the Power of Light and Dark

Welcome again to my ongoing post, Star Wars and Catholicism! This is part 2 of my post, and I hope that everyone reads Part 1, too!

All right, so in Part 1 we discussed the Force and Redemption in the eyes of Star Wars and the Roman Catholic Church. Now on to a little more complex topic in this: the Jedi and the Sith, and the darkness or light that they perceive.

The Jedi, in Star Wars, are powerful users of the Light Side of the Force, and were protectors of the galaxy in the Old Republic. Now, it is needed to be made clear that the Jedi came before the Sith did. Good came to existence before evil came into the universe. Just like in the book of Genesis in the Bible, God, the ultimate good, came before any evil of any kind came into the world. God existed before any evil existed!! When evil DID come into the world, it was chosen, not created, just as the Sith don't create darkness, they simply choose it.

The Sith are the warriors of the Dark Side, and choose the side of evil. They seem to be more powerful than the light-side-using Jedi, but are ultimately (seemingly, as we see that they return by movie #7) destroyed instead. There are Sith in this world too, and, just like Palpatine in  the original trilogy, they can hide themselves very well and will reveal themselves in a way that no one ever can understand or expect. Does this mean that they ever will ultimately win? Not so.

"Darkness is merely the absence of light," Albert Einstein once said. Just in this way, the dark of the Dark Side is merely the absence of the Light Side in any given force-sensitive. In a way, we are all like those force-sensitives in that we have a choice: we can either hide in the shadows of the Dark Side or we can live in the brightness of the Light Side.

Just because there is so much darkness in the world doesn't mean that the light is dead. Just as the Sith could not completely obliterate the Jedi, darkness can never completely destroy the light. As St. Francis of Assisi once said, "All the darkness in the world can never destroy the light of a single candle." Darkness itself cannot destroy light, just as the Sith cannot (at least completely) destroy the Jedi. We should take this as a sign of hope. Even in "Revenge of the Sith" there is hope by the end with the birth of Luke and Leia.

Please tune in soon for more! If you want any more questions answered about this comparison, please comment! Comments make my day!

May the Lord be with you,

Elizabeth

Life Without a Best Friend

Hello, everyone! Welcome again to "LIfe, Religion, and Fandom"!

This past week, I've had to deal with the loss of the best friend I ever had. No, she didn't die. We broke off our friendship rather stormily. I am not very happy about that, but over the past week I have calmed down somewhat and am now dealing with a few repercussions of this event.

I'm here to say that life without your best friend sucks, especially if you two have been friends for as long as you remember. My best friend and I have been friends since our freshman year of high school, and we have so many good memories and ties together. The same probably goes for you and your best friend.

There are a few things that you can do to be able to get over this seemingly impossible roadblock in your life. They are:

1. Find the friends that you do have, and try spending some time with them. This can help with the pain of losing a really good friend.

2.  Make a few new friends! Who knows? You might find a true friend in one of them, a better one than your old friend.

3. Don't vent on your lost friendship. No one likes to hear a complainer, and it won't help you to heal. I learned this the hard way.

4. Trust that life will bring you to a better friendship. Your past friendships are just that: the past. Focus on the future, and you will be able to heal.

5. Find your niche. It may be music, art, running, or even basket-weaving or carpentry. (Mine's music, and I have found it very helpful this past week.) It can help you forget the pain, even if it's just for a little while, and I guarantee you that there are other people here on this earth that have that same niche. This can help you on number 2.

I wish you all the best of luck if you are going through this situation! If anyone else has some relevant advice on this please leave a comment!

May the Lord be with you,

Elizabeth

Star Wars and Catholicism Part 1: The Force and Redemption

Hello again, everybody, and welcome back to “Life, Religion, and Fandom”! Today, we will be discussing Star Wars with religion, specifically the Roman Catholic religion.

Everybody knows about Star Wars, and most people know it has a different worldview (or galaxy-view) than the Roman Catholic religion. I’m here to show that the two can be compatible, especially when seeing the moral similarities in the two.

First, let’s talk of the most obvious thing to connect: the Force. The Force is explained by Obi-Wan Kenobi in “A New Hope” that the Force is the thing that holds the universe together and binds everything. THIS DOESN’T MEAN IT’S GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So many people think that because God is replaced with an impersonal Force that Star Wars is evil. God is the person that created the universe, and the Force obviously did not in Star Wars. This means that God guides the fate of the galaxy, and that the Force is just a way that he lets his power be shown, like the miracles that we have here on Earth (such as the Parting of the Red Sea, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, etc.).

Kylo Ren (aka Ben Solo), in “The Force Awakens”, is struggling to find the power of the Dark Side by asking the twisted remains of his grandfather’s mask to help him. Obviously no one told Kylo that Vader turned back to the light side of the Force before he died.

Looks like no one caught on to that either. By “that” I mean that the light side of the Force alone is not enough to save Kylo Ren. What Kylo needs is to realize that life is more than power, but under the guidance of Supreme Leader Snoke, he actually believes that power is the ultimate purpose in life.

We see Jesus being tempted with power in the Gospels after his baptism. He goes out into the desert and allows himself to be tempted by the Devil. The Devil tries to make people believe that the wrong things are the ultimate goal of life, such as power, importance, money, etc. Jesus, however, is able to combat this with the Word of God. He is able to save fallen humanity from its sins, just as those who turn to the Dark Side can be turned back to good.

We see this at the end of “Return of the Jedi”, when Darth Vader throws the Emperor down the shaft to save Luke. He then asks Luke to take his mask off so he can see Luke with his own eyes. When Luke says that he has to save Vader, Vader replies, “You have already saved me, Luke.” He has done a complete 180, and wants to die in the peace of knowing what his son looks like without the filter of his mask.

Pretty heartwarming if you ask me!

Stay tuned for part 2! Please leave any concerns or questions in the comments! I will reply to all!

May the Lord be with you,

Elizabeth

My Lucky First Post!! (Hopefully)

Hey, everybody! Welcome for the first time to my first real blog! I know I have an older one labeled "Big Sister News and Advice", but I'm not planning on using that anytime soon! This blog will deal with what is in the title: life, religion, and fandoms! I may use fandoms from all over the world, so don't be weirded out by the ones I may incorporate.

Please note that any items used on religion will be cross-checked with the authorities of said religion, and I will most likely use the Roman Catholic religion for my religion, as I am a Roman Catholic. (Yes, you may start cussing me out for being a Catholic, I don't care. I'm a Jesus freak and PROUD OF IT!!!) Please notify me if I have any inaccuracies in the religion section, especially if it's the Catholic religion. I don't want to teach heresies on my blog.

I will also use parts of some fandoms that were once considered canon but are no longer considered canon, so please don't become angry with me if I go off on a Star Wars Legacy book that's really interesting and deals with what I'm posting about.

Posts will come as often as possible, and I will be happy for comments, follows and likes!

May the Lord be with you,

Elizabeth