Spiritual Reminders from Han Solo

At our church's Easter service this year, the pastor, using the movie franchise Star Wars as an example of an iconic story imbedded in our culture, asked three questions regarding the congregation's awareness and attitudes toward the well-known saga. The first question was how many people present had seen at least part of any of the six Star Wars movies. Everyone raised their hands. The second question - how many people felt they learned something by watching the movies – had about a third of those present with hands in the air. The last question – did anyone believe that the Star Wars saga did, in fact, actually happen – was acknowledged by no one, though I suspected my husband, who considers the original Star Wars film to be the greatest movie ever made, might be a little fuzzy in that area. He was sitting next to me, so I pinned both his hands down...just in case.

My husband and I saw Star Wars when it was first released in an old movie theater in upstate New York. We had been married one month. We sat in the balcony, and a hidden projector made clouds continually move across the domed ceiling of the theater, giving a surreal feeling to the movie experience. My husband loved the movie. I thought it was O.K., but in the years since, in the many rewatchings of the original movie and, of course, all those sequels and prequels that followed, I, too, have come to have my favorite lines and favorite characters in the Star Wars world.

On Easter morning, I was one of those people who raised my hand when asked if I felt I had learned anything from watching Star Wars. Perhaps “learned” is not quite the right word. “Reminded of something important” would be a better way to describe it. My favorite character, Han Solo, undergoes a conversion experience (of sorts) in the first movie. When Luke Skywalker comments to him that he doesn't appear to believe in the Force, Han responds:

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Of course, skeptic Han, traveling with the Star Wars cast of characters through their adventures, by the end of the movie comes to believe in something bigger than himself. Han, now a true believer, imperfectly walks his new “faith” out through the rest of the Star Wars trilogy.

Now, I don't pretend Han Solo is a spiritual giant or even a good Christian metaphor, but there are three Han moments in the Star Wars movies that always catch my attention and encourage me in a healthier faith journey of my own:

1. Han knows when the blame is not his to shoulder. He knows he's not God.

As a first born and innately responsible person, I have a tendency to take on responsibility for many things that really have nothing to do with me. And, forgetting I'm not God, I often blame myself and wonder what I could have done differently to achieve a better outcome. When the Millennium Falcon fails to make the jump to hyperspace (in The Empire Strikes Back), Han amazingly, yet confidently states “It's not my fault!” knowing that he's done everything needed to repair and maintain his ship. The present problem is out of his control. Of course, he takes the responsibility of fixing things again – it is his ship – but he knows everything that doesn't go right is not necessarily his fault. There are forces and people outside of his present moment that influence his world. Han's confident “It's not my fault!” reminds me it's O.K. to not beat myself up over the events in my life I'm unable to control, that I can go forward, trusting God is big enough to shoulder the responsibility of things beyond my purview.

2. Han has the faith to look beyond the statistics. He is not bound by the probable.

When C-3PO points out that the possibility of successfully navigating the asteroid field they have just entered is approximately 3,720 to 1, Han is unfazed. His reply? “Never tell me the odds!” We find ourselves living in a statistically-driven world, a world that tells us, and often limits, what can happen to us, what we can accomplish. “The five-year survival rate of stage two cancer of this type is 60%”, “Only 27% percent of college graduates are able to find work in their field of study”, “Less than 23% of born again Christians embrace Christ after their twenty-first birthday”... When I am faced with numbers not in my favor, my default is to cave in and say, “What's the use? Success here is highly improbable, if not impossible...” But then I hear in my head Han's dismissive voice - “Never tell me the odds!” I remember I worship a God Who operates beyond all odds, whose purposes and plans for me can never be thwarted by the unlikely or the improbable. I can lay aside the numbers and go forward with hope.

3. Han knows how to dream big. He has high expectations.

Luke Skywalker, trying to get Han to commit to carrying out Princess Leia's mission, appeals to Han's need for money. Luke tells him Leia is rich and powerful and his reward would be more wealth than he, Han, could imagine. Han's response? “I don't know...I can imagine quite a bit.” Luke's words are a faint echo of Paul's in Ephesians - “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (3:20) In Han's response, I hear a healthy desire to imagine large, not unlike the healthy spiritual desire C. S. Lewis challenges us to:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (From The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses)

In Han's response to Luke, I suspect Han is not one “far too easily pleased”. I find his response an encouragement to imagine large what God has in store for me, to be spiritually greedy, in a good way. I, like Han, am free to “imagine quite a bit”, knowing the most I can imagine still pales in comparison to the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to me in Christ Jesus...

One good solid hope is worth a cart-load of certainties. - Doctor Who (Tom Baker) Warrior's Gate