A Ramble About Star Wars, Fandom, and Religion

So, the Rise of Skywalker has hit. I haven't seen it yet, we're planning on going Christmas night. I have been keeping up with leaks and spoilers though, and have been reading the reviews. Suffice it to say, from my limited understanding, if you were to go by all the reviews it's both a great movie and a terrible movie, depending on whose review you read (or watch on YouTube). What's really interesting for my purposes here, is that it's not the quality of the movie, the writing, or the visuals which the negative reviewers take issue with. It's that their expectations concerning storylines and relationships were not met. They took serious, and in some cases viciously rabid issue, when things didn't go the way they thought they should have. This was most frequently the case with, dare I say it, "devout", hard core Star Wars fans.

This isn't the first time a Star Wars movie has been panned by the fans. The Last Jedi also divided the fan base because of its seemingly "heretical" portrayals of Luke Skywalker in particular. But even before this, the Star Wars prequels drew fans ire as well.

What's really interesting about the prequel "fan hate" is that those were done by George Lucas, the creator and "auteur" of Star Wars himself. To this day, some twenty years later, there are fans that will refuse to admit the prequels as canon, regardless of George Lucas' direct involvement. Why? Because they did not adhere to the backstory which the fans thought was supposed to have happened.

The Disney Star Wars films, except for Rian Johnson's Last Jedi, have bent over backwards trying to cater to the fan base. But the fan base isn't one homogenous group. It's made up of individuals with their own "head canons" who have already determined what Star Wars is, and isn't, regardless of the actual creator's or writer's intents and results. It is very true that you cannot please all of the fans, because the fans themselves do not agree with one another, and have separated themselves into "denominations" of Star Wars fans. Some accepting all 9 movies, some accepting only the original trilogy, some accepting only the original and prequels, some damning the Last Jedi, and some praising it and accepting all 9 movies, Rogue One, Solo, the Clone Wars, and now the Mandalorian as completely canon. As several people have observed, Star Wars, in the last 42 years, has become a kind of secular religion and its adherents have become just as opinionated and divided as the rest of the world's major religions.

While Disney tried to cater to the fan base, what's interesting is that George Lucas never did. He locked down his shooting and sets so much that no one knew anything about the movies before they hit the theaters (granted, this was before the advent of drones and modern cell phone tech). The fans just had to wait and see what the creator delivered to them, and accept it or reject it as they would. And while George Lucas wanted people to enjoy his vision, their opinions didn't change the direction of the story he wanted to tell, or that he always wanted the Star Wars story to be one that kids could see and understand and enjoy (another point of contention among Star Wars fans, that it's targeted at kids).

God's a lot like George in this respect. He knows exactly the story He's telling and how He wants it told, and isn't going to change it to please the fan base, "any" fan base. I was reflecting on this similarity this morning because just like the Star Wars fans, religion in general, "God fans," and Christianity in particular, "Jesus fans" if you will, are divided among people who have viciously savage opinions about what the story is supposed to look like, and how it is supposed to go. Frequently, they look at the existing canon, and decide they don't like what was said and so totally ignore it, or decide it's not actually canon at all. At the other end of the spectrum, they continue to expand on it trying to please their own section of fan base and give them what they want, but end up angering other fans in the process. This was true with the God fans in the first century when God released His sequel to "The Prophets", "The Messiah," and it is true now as we're waiting for the impending finale, "The Apocalypse."

No matter how much we speculate, no matter how much we complain when we hear or see "leaks" that don't match the way we think it's supposed to go, God isn't going to change how He's going to unfold and wrap up the story. Denial isn't going to help, neither is trying to force events to occur to match what you think is supposed to happen (the religious equivalent of fan filming). When the auteur is done with it, He'll release it and He's not going to change it or tweak it because you don't agree. You can either accept what's happening, or you can reject it. But if you reject it, maybe you should really consider whether or not you're really a fan of Him at all, or a fan of your own fan fiction.

May the Force be with you this Star Wars movie... er, Christmas season!

A Ramble About Putin and Chess

I rarely if ever get truly political here, but I want to share my thoughts on current events and where they're heading. If there's ever been a locus for them, a central hub about which they're all spinning, as the current United States Speaker of the House has said, "All roads lead back to Putin."

Vladimir Putin started out as a KGB officer who was present during the fall of the Soviet Union. The events which transpired then, in addition to the decade of chaos in Russia which followed under Boris Yeltsin's presidency, affected him very personally. It is not a falsehood to call the man a Russian patriot if not a Soviet one. He became president of the Russian Republic about twenty years ago, and essentially never left regardless of the Russian constitutional term limits imposed on him. His rule over Russia was only briefly interrupted when one of his lieutenants was elected President and he took power as prime minister, but it was always understood that it was Vladimir Putin who was in control.

Since he took power in Russia, Putin has been manipulating things behind the scenes both domestically in Russia, and abroad. His express and apparent intention is the reclamation of territory and power for Russia which existed under the former Soviet Union. He has no interest in Communism, only Russian, and personal, glory. To this end, over the last twenty years, all institutions in Russia, including the press and the Russian Orthodox Church have become mere arms of the Putin led Russian government. Putin maintains a veneer of Russian Orthodoxy, while the Church and State ban every other expression of Christianity in the country as illegal. His government has blatantly attacked and seized territory from former Soviet states, including Ukraine and Georgia, which have been at least nominally independent nations for at least the last thirty. His government has been demonstrably behind assassinations of political rivals both at home and abroad, the silencing of dissident voices within Russia, and clearly racist, and discriminatory policies at home which he has attempted to export to other nations through the use of the internet and social media. His government has also demonstrably been behind the influencing of elections in Britain, the United States, and other European nations so that the outcomes favor his strategic short term and long term goals for himself and his country such as the withdrawal of the United States from NATO (something which the current US President has openly advocated), the dissolution of nuclear treaties with the United States, the removal of US forces from strategic places in Syria to assist Russian allies, the disruption of a US presence in South Korea as a deterrent to North Korea, the distancing of Great Britain (a key NATO member and military force protecting the rest of Europe) from the rest of the European Union and so on. His biggest win was when his strategy to use the United States' own simmering divisions to severely divide the populace using social media, plant a compromised businessman in the White House to act in the interests of Russia and not his own nation, and turn a previously anti-Russian political party into one which espoused Russian propaganda as gospel was wildly successful. If you don't believe any of this, all it takes is a perusal of news articles about Russia, Putin, and Russian actions on the world stage for the last five to ten years (which I've personally been keeping tabs on). Further, the foremost U.S. experts on Russia testified under oath things to this very same effect very recently. None of it is secret. All of it has been blatant, out in the open, and verifiable. Even the Russian state news broadcasts have been gloating about it (look it up).

Putin has been playing a long game of chess with the world since the Soviet Union's fall. That he thinks like a chess player is obvious. All of his recent achievements in the world stage can be seen as chess movements. Taking a pawn here, a rook there, oh look, he's got your queen now.

The thing about seasoned chess players, of which I am not one and I freely admit it, is that they always plot out there moves as many turns in advance as they are capable of, and they always have the endgame in view. While it seems Putin has already gotten almost everything his heart could desire, today, I saw a news article which had him saying that he could essentially wipe away the Russian constitutional term limits very easily. A reference to that his own term is coming to a legal end here sometime soon. And yet Putin has no intention of leaving office yet. If it were simply a matter of a corrupt politician just keeping power, it would be understandible. But Vladimir Putin is a highly disciplined man. Corrupt, yes, but highly disciplined and every move he's made has had a purpose.

So what is Putin's endgame? What unfinished business does he have which would keep him from leaving office just yet? What is his goal? If it would be merely to humiliate the United States in front of the world, then he has already accomplished it. And yet he remains. The game isn't finished yet.

It has been rightly said before that if Adolph Hitler had died before 1938 or 39, he would have been remembered only as a great German statesman and gifted orator who lifted his country out of the poverty of the Great Depression and post WWI reprisals to a prosperous, modern country and economy. We only remember him as an evil, anti-Christ figure because he didn't, and his endgame was allowed to play out costing millions and millions of lives.

Hitler was pursuing the Atomic Bomb, but the US got there first. Today, Russia already has a devastating nuclear arsenal which Putin is now legally free to rebuild without US or even world oversight. He now has tighter and tighter relationships both economic and especially military ones with China, Turkey, and other governments more congenial to dictatorship. His is openly pursuing and demonstrating new missile and weapons technologies which Russia is developing. His stated goals are the recovery of former Soviet territories and satellite states. Something he can't openly do with a unified NATO and a unified and powerful United States.

Yesterday, Donald J. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. No one expects the US Senate to remove him regardless of the evidence. But Donald J. Trump has been demonstrably only one of Putin's pieces in a very large, very long game of chess. Putin would have planned for the possibility of Trump only serving one term, one way or the other. Trump's first term is up in approximately one year from now. This means that, most likely, Putin's endgame strategy is almost in place and ready to be deployed regardless of who takes office in January of 2021.

The only real question now is how many lives are going to be lost before the world wakes up and realizes what it allowed to be unleashed once more.

A Ramble About "One Thing"

I was reading in 1 John 5:7-8 yesterday in the Greek, and something stood out to me. First of all, these verses don’t read the same in every Greek text. Over half of verse seven and part of verse eight are cut out in pretty much every version of the text based on the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. They occur in the Textus Receptus, and in the Latin Vulgate (though arguably not as literally rendered from the Greek as the rest of the Vulgate). Some translations acknowledge their existence by either putting them in brackets, or placing the missing parts in footnotes. Verse seven is of particular interest.

With the rest of the verse it literally reads, “Because there are three who testify in heaven, the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit, and these Three are one thing.”

The word for “one” in Greek, like most adjectives, comes in three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter depending on the noun or nouns it is describing. If the noun or nouns are masculine, the adjective will be masculine, if the noun is feminine or neuter, the adjective will match the gender. What caught my attention this time with this reading is that, while the nouns are masculine (with the exception of “pneuma” which is neuter), the word for “one” is neuter, referring, not to a person (proper names referring to people never take neuter adjectives), so to speak, but to a genderless object. The reasonable, and trinitarian, conclusion is that John is referring to God’s substance as opposed to His persons. The three persons, or hypostases, of God existing as one substance or “ousia.” Thus rather than understanding this verse as “these Three are one person” it should be understood as “these Three are one thing.”

Okay. Clear as mud? Good, let’s move on to the next passage where this same statement is made.

In the Gospel of John 10:30, Jesus tells those listening to and arguing with Him that, “I and the Father are one thing.” Again, the same gender and construction. Not “I and the Father are one person,” but “I and the Father are one thing.” In several other passages Jesus says without qualification that His teaching was not his own, but was given to Him by the One who sent Him. He says that nothing of what He said was His own, but was given to Him by the Father, and that He could do nothing from Himself. He says in John 14:10 that it was the Father remaining within Him that did the works. The picture developed in the Gospel of John of Jesus’ relationship with the Father is that it was the Father speaking, doing, and acting through Jesus to the point that if you had seen and heard Jesus, then it was no different from seeing and hearing the Father. Jesus’ submission to the Father was absolute to where you saw nothing but the Father from Him.

Now let’s go to the Gospel of John 17:20-24 where we next see this same usage of “one,” where Jesus prays for us, “And I don’t ask about these alone, but also about those who will believe through their word in Me, so that they everyone might be ‘one thing’ just as You Father in Me and I in You so that they also might be ‘one thing’ in Us so that the world would believe that You sent Me, and I, the glory which You had given Me, have given to them so that they might be ‘one thing’ just as We are ‘one thing’; I in them and You in Me so that they might be having been completed into ‘one thing’ and so that the world would know that You sent Me and loved them just as You loved Me. Father, those whom You have given Me I wish that where I am those would also be with Me so that they might view the glory of mine which you gave Me because You loved Me before the founding of the world.” (Emphasis mine)

Jesus’ prayer for those who believed and would believe in Him, all of us who believe in Him, is that we would be “one thing” with each other as well as with the Father and the Son just as He was “one thing” with the Father. The Father “one thing” with Him, and He “one thing” with each on of us who would also be “one thing” with each other. Just as Jesus remained in the Father, and the Father in Him, so He instructed us to remain in Him and He in us (John 15:4-7). Just as it was the Father you saw when you saw Jesus, so also it must be Jesus people see when they look at us both individually and collectively, and thus the Father. The Father in Jesus and Jesus in us, and thus the Father through us by way of our union with Jesus.

The practice of Christianity is total submission to Jesus Christ remaining in us that the life of Jesus might be expressed through us, not our words but His, not our actions but His. The goal of Christian practice is so that “if you have seen me, you have seen Jesus” because “I and Jesus are one thing” just as Jesus said, “I and the Father are one thing.” Not “one person” but “one thing.” This, above all else, is what is most important in Christian faith and practice, not happiness, not prosperity, not health; and anything which gets in the way of it must be removed and expunged from the Christian’s life.

The ultimate goal of the Christian life is to be “one thing,” and “one thing” only.

On Christ's Virgin Birth

As we're entering the Christmas season again, I'm posting an excerpt from An Unconventional Christian Theology (Allen Bair. Amazon: 2019) which I wrote on Christ's Virgin Birth. This tends to be one of the facets of Christian theology which many bring up as an issue or barrier to belief. In this excerpt, I hope to demonstrate both the possibility and the miraculous nature of this central teaching of the Christian faith.

Parthenogenesis or “virgin birth” is a process that has been documented in reptiles, birds, sharks, and other species which permits a female of the species to produce an offspring without a male contribution. In short, it occurs when an egg cell begins dividing on its own without the introduction of a sperm cell. With rare exceptions, if a viable offspring is produced, it is always a genetic clone of its mother. There are several mechanisms observed which permit this among those species.

To date, while technically feasible, it has not been formally documented in mammals in nature. In 2004, Scientists at the Tokyo University of agriculture successfully induced parthenogenesis in a mouse producing an offspring without the introduction of sperm or the male chromosome¹. In August of 2007, it was revealed that a Korean scientist had successfully created human embryos through parthenogenesis under laboratory conditions as a part of his research into stem cells and stem cell production².

Human parthenogenesis, according to one research article by graduate students in Brazil³, is not necessarily a rare occurrence but almost always results in benign tumors called teratomas. These teratomas may on the rare occasion develop in such a way to where “the basic human body plan is present”⁴ though non-functional and as such develop fat cells, hair, teeth, and in rare cases, limbs, malformed head, and “other structures”. The authors of the paper however offer the hypothesis that human parthenogenesis producing a viable offspring in nature does occur in extremely rare circumstances due to mutation resulting in the deletion of two maternal genes that would otherwise prevent it, but is not noticed because the offspring is otherwise healthy and normal. Human parthenogenesis then, resulting in a viable, normal human offspring, can be considered astronomically improbable, but not technically impossible.

What is more improbable is the human parthenogenesis of a male offspring. Biological sex is generally determined by one’s chromosomes, either “XX” for female, or “XY” for male. The gene which is responsible for determining whether or not a fetus develops testes is called “SRY” and is normally contained within the “Y” chromosome. SRY determines sex by switching off the gene RSPO1 which in turn switches on the gene SOX9 producing a male offspring. In female offspring without the SRY gene, SOX9 has been switched off by the gene RSPO1. This being said, what has been found is that it is possible for RSPO1 to fail during the developmental process, leaving the SOX9 gene turned on thus producing testis in the fetus as opposed to ovaries according to an article by Keri Smith⁵. In this article, the author reference four brothers from a family, all of whom had the “XX”combination of chromosomes, and none of whom carried the SRY gene. However, each brother carried a mutation of the RSPO1 gene.

For the sake of brevity, I have tried to spare the reader from any more intense technical details than what I have presented to make my argument. I encourage you to read the articles I have referenced and draw your own conclusions. But from the articles and sources I have read, while requiring a precise series of mutations occurring in order, that Jesus Christ could have been conceived both male and by parthogenesis is, while astronomically improbable, within the realm of what is known to be scientifically possible. In this scenario, Jesus would have physically been a male genetic clone of his mother, Mariam, with the XX chromosome but biologically male due to the failure of the RSPO1 gene at a critical stage in embryonic development. One consequence of this scenario is that, in modern clinical terms, Jesus would also have been technically considered intersex regardless of the completeness of His male physical anatomy. This argument is not made to devalue the Scriptural account of his virginal conception by the Holy Spirit in any way, only to demonstrate that the assertion by His followers that He was conceived by parthenogenesis is by no means impossible or absurd as some have accused. In fact, the series of genetic mutations required is so specific that I would argue it is more plausible God was involved in the process than not, much like the evolution of life on Earth and human beings specifically. Here I see the hand of God working through obscure, but natural processes to produced the result He desired; in this case, a Son.

There is a question to be had as to why God would go to the trouble of this. One hypothesis would suggest that the genetic Hamartia disorder I described in the previous chapter is passed down through the male chromosome. There may some reference to this in the passage in Genesis chapter six which says that the “sons of God” went in to the daughters of men and took wives from them. In this interpretation, “sons of God”, rather than referring to “angels” as is commonly interpreted, refers to the particular family group of humans that God took a special interest in by interacting with them directly and placing them in the garden, and who later ate the toxic fruit which they had been warned not to.⁶ In this scenario, without a male human chromosome Jesus would have been born without the human neuropsycholoigical disorder, Hamartia, thus making Him “sinless”.

The circumstances of His birth may have contributed to His death by heart rupture. Jesus died within hours of His initial torture and being nailed to the cross. Under normal circumstances, a crucified victim would die slowly over a period of two or three days from dehydration and asphyxiation. Because the day after Jesus’ crucifixion was a Sabbath, out of agreement with the Jewish leaders the executioners were ordered to remove the bodies before sundown, the start of the Sabbath. However, the condemned men would still be alive. This was the reason why the Roman soldiers were ordered to break the legs of the crucified victims in order to speed up their deaths, and were surprised to see that Jesus was already dead, thus the reason why they chose to stab His heart to confirm death rather than break His legs to induce it.

If he was, in fact, a male XX clone of His mother due to parthogenetic conception, this may have led to some physical weakness which a typically conceived XY male would not experience. A similar syndrome where the SRY gene is located on the male X chromosome instead of the male Y chromosome resulting in a male XX offspring can result in decreased libido, physical weakness, decreased stature, and malformed or hermaphroditic genitalia. While an argument can be made for decreased libido in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life through His own statements (see Matthew 19:11-12) as well as that He never married and, speculating, appeared to actively avoid marriage, He is very clearly identified as male in the Gospel accounts by His mother and all those who knew Him, thus suggesting no ambiguous or hermaphroditic genitalia. It is also recorded by St. Luke in chapter two of his Gospel that He was circumcised on the eighth day according to Jewish custom. If there was any ambiguity in His genitalia the circumcising Rabbi would have noticed. Also, His height as recorded by the image on His burial shroud indicates that He was of an average height for a Judean born man of that period. But that under extreme stress He suffered from hematidrosis and less than twenty four hours later died from what looks like stress cardiomyopathy where a typical man wouldn’t may seem to suggest that He might have suffered from an inherent genetic weakness in His physical system. Many people who are born with chromosomal disorders such as Down’s Syndrome also suffer from heart problems, for example. It could be that, due to His parthogenetic birth, He too suffered from a weaker heart muscle which could not endure the combination of extreme stresses He underwent during His torture and crucifixion and causing Him to die much earlier than a typical human being might.

I know there are some who may take issue with the idea of a physically weaker Jesus Christ in any way. However, it must be remembered that though fully divine, He is also fully human with every possibility that implies. It is never recorded that He was particularly physically strong or even “heart healthy” as it were. Consider in John 4 where Jesus was tired out after their journey and stayed behind to rest by the well whereas His disciples were still strong enough to head into town to buy food, and were concerned for His health when they returned trying to get Him to eat something. It is recorded that He attributed everything He did, not to His own strength or ability, but to His Father’s. It is also recorded that those observing the demonstrations of power He performed were constantly amazed, in particular, that they should be performed by Him. In this, I am reminded of St. Paul who writes in his first letter to the Corinthians (1:27-28, WEB):

“but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are: that no flesh should boast before God.”

It occurs to me that nowhere does Yahweh demonstrate this principle more than in the flesh and blood body of His Son who Himself stated that He could do nothing from Himself.

1Kono, Tomohiro, Yayoi Obata, Quiong Wu, et al. “Birth of parthogenetic mice that can develop to adulthood”. Nature. 428, 860-864 (22 April 2004)

2Minkel, JR. “Korean Cloned Human Cells Were Product of ‘Virgin Birth’”. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/korean-cloned-human-cells/

3Gabriel Jose de Carlie and Tiago Campos Pereira. “On human parthenogenesis”, Medical Hypotheses. 106 (2017) 57-60

4See previous, “On human parthenogenesis.”

5Smith, Keri. “Gene mutation turns girls into boys,” Nature. 15 October 2006, doi:10.1038/news061009-14

6 See chapter 3 of this work. In this way, those afflicted spread their affected genes to the rest of the human population through interbreeding. Accompanied by intentional extermination of other, different human groups this may explain why, by the time true civilization arose, there were no unaffected humans left on earth.