Anakin Skywalker and the Crisis of Faith

There’s been a lot of talk about Anakin Skywalker and why younger people—especially young men online—identify with a character who becomes Darth Vader.

Some people respond by pointing out that Anakin murders innocent people.

Well, yes. That’s the tragedy!

The prequel trilogy shows us how a good person can make terrible choices and become something monstrous. Pointing to Darth Vader as proof that Anakin wasn’t worth sympathizing with misses what makes his story tragic in the first place.

And I think the young people identifying with Anakin have noticed something important.

He was extraordinarily talented, given tremendous opportunities, and frustrated with the institutions that were supposed to guide him.

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

But I think there’s something much more interesting going on here.

I think Anakin Skywalker’s tragedy is, at its heart, a crisis of faith.

And I think that same crisis has something to do with the problems we’re facing today.

Yes, I’m going to talk about God, Marxism, generational resentment, family, and space wizards.

Bear with me.

The Grievances Are Real

Young people today face legitimate frustrations.

You can work hard, earn more money, and discover that you still can’t afford the things your parents or grandparents could afford.

Meanwhile, older generations tell you how easy you have it.

You have the internet! The gig economy! All these incredible conveniences!

And they’re right about some of that.

But having a smartphone doesn’t mean you can afford a house.

Both things can be true.

I think younger people are right to ask whether the institutions and generations that came before them have fulfilled their responsibilities.

But here’s the problem.

Having legitimate grievances doesn’t justify every response to those grievances.

Anakin was manipulated. The Jedi were imperfect. Palpatine engineered a war that compromised the entire Jedi Order.

But Anakin still made his choices.

He wanted to protect the people he loved. That’s good.

But he also wanted to remain a Jedi, marry Padmé secretly, and avoid the consequences of choosing between those things.

He could have left the Order. He didn’t.

He wanted everything.

And perhaps the Jedi failed to guide him properly. I wonder whether Obi-Wan understood more about Anakin’s relationship with Padmé than he admitted.

Maybe he should have confronted him. Maybe the Jedi demanded too much or indulged him too much.

I don’t know.

But I think there’s an important principle here:

The failures of your teachers don’t excuse your failures as a student. But your failures as a student don’t absolve your teachers of their responsibilities.

That’s something both younger and older generations ought to remember.

The Force Doesn’t Exist to Serve You

Here’s where I think Anakin’s real tragedy begins.

As I read Star Wars, the Jedi are supposed to listen to the Force and allow it to guide them. Their discipline requires humility and restraint.

The Sith have a very different understanding.

The Force is something to dominate. A tool for accomplishing their desires.

The Jedi are supposed to serve something greater than themselves.

The Sith want that greater power to serve them.

In Matthew Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith, there’s a remarkable passage describing Count Dooku preparing to fight Anakin and Obi-Wan.

Dooku draws upon the dark side until he experiences himself as the center around which everything revolves.

Think about that.

He’s the center of the universe!

To me, that’s idolatry. He’s effectively making himself into a god.

And isn’t that what Anakin does?

He wants to save Padmé. That’s understandable. But he wants enough power to guarantee that she will never die.

He wants to control life and death itself.

He’s unwilling to accept that there are limits to what he can accomplish.

Anakin certainly believes the Force exists. He uses it!

But does he have faith in it?

Does he believe that he should allow himself to be guided by something greater than himself?

I don’t think he does.

Anakin doesn’t stop believing in the Force. He stops accepting that he isn’t its master.

And I think that’s at the heart of his tragedy.

What Happens When We Replace God?

I believe Western society is experiencing a related crisis.

I’m an anti-marxist, and I believe Marxist and other anti-religious movements have contributed to the weakening of faith and traditional moral structures.

Marx openly criticized religion, and later Communist governments sometimes attempted to replace religious loyalties with devotion to the state.

That doesn’t prove every decline in American religious faith was engineered by Marxists. But I believe there’s been an ideological struggle over the foundations of Western civilization, and I think these movements have played a significant part.

There’s an old principle: if you want to strike the rider, strike the horse.

I believe faith in God has been one of the essential foundations upon which Western civilization has built so much of its greatness.

Weaken that foundation, and you weaken the civilization.

Now, I’m not pretending to be an academic.

There are people who’ve spent considerably more time studying these things than I have.

I’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about magical bugs battling monsters, boys trapped in video games, and space wizards.

But I’m a storyteller who thinks about things, asks questions, and has convictions that I follow.

And one of those convictions is that when people stop putting God at the center of their lives, they’re in danger of putting something else there.

Carl Jung observed in The Undiscovered Self:

You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.

Maybe the replacement is the state, an ideology, wealth, or pleasure.

Maybe it’s ourselves.

And if we’ve made ourselves the center of everything, why should we accept limits? Why should we sacrifice for anybody else?

I think this is where the family becomes especially important.

Marriage is a covenant. Parents have responsibilities to their children. Husbands and wives have obligations to each other that don’t disappear when those obligations become inconvenient.

I believe fathers, in particular, need to model strength through restraint, service, and self-sacrifice.

Not domination.

Children aren’t stupid. They see hypocrisy. They notice when their parents don’t practice the principles they preach.

And when we fail to live according to those principles, why should our children believe us?

That’s where the decline of faith becomes real.

Not merely in politics or philosophical arguments, but in the everyday lives of people who no longer understand why they should sacrifice for their families or future generations.

What Do We Owe Each Other?

I think younger generations have legitimate grievances. But I also think they’re in danger of surrendering to pessimism.

They see institutional failures and conclude that everything is hopeless.

And I think that’s a mistake.

You still have to live your life!

You still have to make the right choices.

Work. Build. Marry and have children, if you’re able. Raise them well. Leave something better for the people who come after you.

But older generations have responsibilities, too.

Why aren’t you teaching younger people how to navigate the world they’ve inherited?

Why aren’t you doing everything you can to leave them stronger institutions and greater opportunities?

It’s difficult to hear somebody tell you to walk a particular path when you can see that they didn’t walk it themselves.

Still, we don’t get to abandon our responsibilities because somebody else failed theirs.

We have to do what we can with what we’ve been given.

And I believe faith in God provides the foundation for doing that.

Because we aren’t the center of the universe.

Our duties don’t disappear because they’re difficult.

And our lives aren’t merely about maximizing our own comfort and pleasure.

Anakin’s Redemption

The beautiful thing about Star Wars is that Anakin’s story doesn’t end with his fall.

His children fight against the evil he helped establish.

Luke confronts his father and refuses to abandon the possibility that he can be redeemed.

And in the end, Anakin finally makes a different choice.

He doesn’t save Luke by becoming more powerful.

He doesn’t force the universe to obey him.

He saves Luke by sacrificing himself.

The man who wanted the power to prevent death finally accepts death to save somebody he loves.

That doesn’t undo his crimes. His victims don’t come back. The consequences of his choices remain.

But he turns away from evil.

And that matters.

Because we cannot always control what happens to us. We cannot always choose the world we’ve inherited.

But we can choose what we’re going to do with it.

We can serve ourselves, or something greater.

Bob Dylan put it plainly in Gotta Serve Somebody:

You’re gonna have to serve somebody.

I think that’s exactly right.

Everybody serves something.

And that’s the terrible irony of Anakin’s story.

He rejects the discipline of serving something greater than himself because he wants the power to satisfy his own desires.

And in doing so, he becomes the servant of somebody far worse.

Only when he rejects that master and sacrifices himself for his son does he become free.

So when I look at Anakin Skywalker, generational resentment, and the weakening of faith and family in our society, I keep returning to one question:

Whom are we serving?

People are arguing about politics, culture, economics, and Star Wars.

And I think they’re missing God.

Kohelet—Ecclesiastes—ends with words that bring this whole discussion into focus:

The end of the matter, all having been heard: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man.

Kohelet 12:13

I think that’s the answer.

And apparently, it took a discussion about Darth Vader to get me there.