Dr Paul Allen

The appearance of a new episode of the  Star Wars  film series is an important moment for Christian witness. To be sure, we can shrug our shoulders, since  Star Wars  is old news. Or we can enthusiastically introduce our grandchildren to what we might think is a beloved, harmless yarn. Or we can—and should—discover in the series an occasion to sharpen our presentation of the gospel message and help our children and grandchildren, and anyone else who might be interested, to understand the culture in which they live. In this famous and creative saga, which we must respect for its artistic value, we find many positive ideals—bravery, friendship, love, and spirituality, and others—which help explain the success of the series. However, in examining  Star Wars'  account of the mystery and nobility of human life, the Bible's answer, in comparison, emerges with incomparably more convincing power. The Star Wars Phenomenon Answering questions of moralit...

English: Stamp of Moldova; Mircea Eliade (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In 1832, when The Beagle docked in Southern Australia on the way to the Galapagos Islands , Charles Darwin witnessed naked Aboriginals dancing themselves into delirium all night long. You can now see this scene at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert, attended by sixty thousand hi-tech moderns, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. But Darwin, a notable father of Secular Humanism, was shocked, finding the native display “a most rude, barbarous scene.” Once ever so secularly humanist, moderns now find orgiastic sexuality and occult spirituality quite acceptable. Who or what produced this massive change in Western culture ? Many influential sources can be named: Darwin, spiritualized by Teilhard de Chardin ; the goddess worship of radical feminism; the occultism of theosophist Madame Blavatsky ; the political radicalism of Gramsci, Marcuse and Saul Alins...