Why Emperor Palpatine Might Still Be Lurking in the Shadows
Have you ever seen the ending of
the movie Star Wars Episode VI: Return of
the Jedi? You remember that moment where the menacingly hooded Emperor Palpatine
seems like he finally has the upper hand over Luke Skywalker? He’s got Luke
right where he wants him: Luke is too weak to overcome Palpatine’s deadly Force
Lightning and is nearly finished off. But just when Luke needs his father most,
Darth Vader realizes his grave mistake of aligning himself with Palpatine and
sacrifices himself in order to defeat Palpatine. He proceeds to pick the
Emperor up like a hunk of firewood and throws him into one of the many
bottomless pits that inhabit the aptly-named Death Star (see Episodes IV &
V for more evidence that bottomless pits are a staple of the Empire’s
architecture). Darth Vader saves Luke from certain destruction, the Empire is
overthrown, and the Rebels win the day.
It’s
a great moment in cinematic history, but I’ve always wondered what happened to
Emperor Palpatine after he was thrown into the bottomless pit. He was one of
the most influential characters in the “Holy Trilogy”, and even though he was a
classically evil character I don’t believe he was irredeemable. What if – much like
his Sith apprentice Darth Vader – he was simply misled about the Force and
ended up on the wrong side due to unfortunate circumstances? Vader, himself a
Sith Lord, did some decidedly evil things (murdering children in the Jedi
Temple, killing his best friend Obi Wan Kenobi) and he was able to be redeemed in
the end. After all, the only things Americans love more than a chorus is a redemption
story; we all delight seeing people take full advantage of second chances. So
whatever happened to Emperor Palpatine? Some people probably finished the movie
and forgot about him; in their minds the Emperor is still falling right now and
will continue to live in some kind of terminal velocity purgatory forever. But,
as we find out in real life no pit is bottomless and no freefall is forever.
When
I was younger, I honestly never imagined that I would be in self-imposed exile
from the Church. I spent the first 18 years of my life in a church; I’m sure
it’s possible to count the number of Sundays my family was absent on one hand.
For a very long time, I held Christianity as my faith, and this had a strong
impact on how I viewed the world. My friends were Christian, my parents’
friends were Christian, everyone who I ever spent time with outside of school
was Christian. I don’t know if I ever believed completely in what the Bible –
the foundation of my parents’ Christianity – teaches, but everyone else around
me did believe so it seemed as though it must have been the truth. To begin the
analogy between myself and a certain Sith Lord, I thought I had it all figured
out and that I was secure in my standing with God. Doubt, in this case the
Rebel Alliance, was not big enough yet for me to take notice. My certainty in
my faith (or lack of evidence to the contrary) lasted all the way into my
teenage years, when reasons for doubt started to make themselves known to me.
I
grew up in a Church of Christ being taught that our God is a God of Love (a
phrase which makes me think of a cartoon portrayal of Cupid and a look of
innocence on his face as he spreads joy to humanity one heart-tipped arrow at a
time). As a teenager, I began to hear the question: if God’s main attribute is
Love, then why does the Bible describe him doing so many nasty things? Even
though I was not a very devout believer in my teens, I still read the Bible
from time to time. I would cherry-pick my way through it, hitting upon the
phrases deemed important by my youth minister and skipping over the more boring
or controversial sections. Even when I would land on one of these verses, I
managed to put a Godly spin on it to try to kill off any lingering seeds of
doubt. Over my high school years I read less and less of the Bible; in part due
to the ever-growing teenage desire to rebel, but also because some sections of
it did not sit well with me anymore. I began to think about the fates of all
the people who could not possibly hear the Gospel in their lifetime, and how
unfair it was for them to not be born white and middle-class like me. I still
did not dare to question further, for fear of provoking a loving yet somehow
simultaneously wrathful God that I understood less and less. The Rebel Alliance
that represented my doubt was growing stronger in the void.
The
Rebels finally made their move; I was pushed off the precarious ledge of my
faith and began my years-long fall into the abyss of true doubt. Two things
happened in my late teens that began my freefall: the first is that my older
brother – who had a long and often tenuous relationship with the Church
community – made his break from the Church upon graduation from high school. He
was no longer forced to attend services every Sunday and only did so from then
on when guilted into it by my parents. For the longest time Brian had served as
my role model; he was by no means perfect, but I looked up to him like any
little brother would. This event had a profound impact on me, and although
Brian was treated like the black sheep that left the Church because something
was wrong with him, I began to understand that maybe something was wrong with
the Church itself. The second life-changing event was when I started dating my
then-girlfriend, now-wife, and lifelong-best friend, Holli. She is one of the
most open-minded people I’ve ever met, and constantly helps me to push my
boundaries. Holli had not grown up in a Christian home like I had, and she had
been spurned by the dark side of religion multiple times in her life. Even though
she still had respect for Christianity, her experiences with the Church led me
to see my faith in a completely different light.
These
two events pushed me off my ledge; however, it took me some time to realize that
I had fallen at all. Once I began my first classes at Purdue, I realized Church
wasn’t really that important to me anymore. I went to a campus church – filled with
nearly a hundred of my college-age peers – for several weeks, but it was mainly
out of habit and I quickly fell out of the routine. I still went with my
parents on the occasional Sunday when I was home from school, but I didn’t
attend any church services on my own for several years. I’d like to say that I
had thought long and hard about my faith and had reached a conclusion, but
instead the truth is that I locked my conflicted feeling about the subject deep
down inside and hoped that they would never resurface. By my senior year of
college, Holli and I were married and she wanted to try going to Church one
more time to see if it was really something we wanted to be a part of. I
realized quickly that it was definitely not for me, but I continued going with
her until she realized the same thing. We wanted the sense of community and
fellowship that is easy to come by in a church setting, but we didn’t want any
of the religious nonsense that came with it. That was the last time I willingly
set foot in a church building.
By
that time I’d realized I didn’t want anything to do with religion, but I was
still unsure of what to believe about life. Even though I was very uneasy with
Christianity, I didn’t stop fearing that there might be a God somewhere who was
still watching me. This part of my freefall was terrifying; what if the Bible
was actually true and my non-belief was going to send me straight to Hell for
an eternity of torture? Even though I had completely stopped believing in the
existence of God, I felt that if I even said aloud the words “God does not
exist” then I would be immediately struck down (I’d prefer a flying ice-cream
truck to lightning). I’d believed in God and Jesus, or at least tried to
believe for the first 18 years of my life. Practically everyone I’d ever known
was Christian, and most of them would still consider themselves believers. Now
I was losing that whole part of my life because I couldn’t get with the program.
What was it that made me different from my family and friends? Why couldn’t I just
believe like them? I wanted to pretend to believe just so that I could feel –
even if only for a short time – like everything was back to normal. That
section of my freefall from faith lasted only about 6 months, but it seemed
like it lasted a lifetime.
I
eventually (and with much helpful prodding) stopped pretending to be religious.
I realized that I wasn’t like my family or my friends. I was different; I saw
Christianity as a charade. In my eyes, religion was something to be despised,
not rejoiced in. My freefall from faith finally stopped in August of last year.
While browsing through a bookstore with my wife (who was buying textbooks for
her last semester at Purdue) I found a book with a very interesting title: it
was The God Delusion by Dr. Richard
Dawkins. I’d been constantly searching for a different perspective on religion
since I made my break with the Church, and I found exactly what I was looking
for in the bookstore that day. Shortly thereafter I began watching Youtube
videos of religious debates, and I bought several more Atheist/Agnostic books. I
became ever more intrigued by the history of religion, and the effects it has
had on our country and the world. My entire worldview has changed significantly
in the last few years, and my newfound freedom of thought has coincided with a
chance for me to start a new life (with a new job in a new state). I have
survived my fall from faith into the depths and doubt, and have come out a
better person on the other side. I’d like to think that Emperor Palpatine had
the same opportunity.
