Choosing the Way of the Jedi or the Sith

      While dealing with a migraine yesterday, I sat and watched a Star Wars Old Republic fan film I had grabbed from YouTube called "Star Wars: The Gray Trials." It follows the story of a girl who was raised as a Sith apprentice who then, through a series of events, becomes conflicted between the Light and the Dark, the Jedi and the Sith.
     The fan film does much to highlight the differences between the Sith philosophy of making the Force serve them, believing that through wielding the power of the dark side they will be made free to do whatever they want and live however they want; and between the Jedi philosophy which was explained by the Jedi character Grenz. But the way he explained it stuck with me, because it was also the simplest explanation possible for being a disciple of the Way.
     She asked him, "So then freedom is a lie?" To which he responded, "Yep." Then he said to her, "We're all slaves Jaima, all we can do is choose which master to serve. I can either serve myself, or serve the Force. If I serve myself, then I'd be enslaved to my own desires, my own attachments." He then goes on to explain that the man he had been even just a year before wouldn't have helped her at all, and that, even in spite of the still rough edges he had, the person she saw now represented the growth from submitting to and choosing to serve the Force rather than what he wants. And he explained that he chooses to serve the Force because it is good, and by doing so he can make better choices than the ones his desires would lead him to. He then demonstrates this submission to the Force through the movie, making choices and doing things in contrast to what he would have desired to do, even forgiving Jaima when she cuts off his hand, and taking her as his apprentice. Why? Because he was in submission to and cooperating with the Force.
     In the Didache, also known as the "Teaching of the Twelve", a first century Christian catechism dating to about 70 CE, the very first sentence is, "There are two Ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two Ways." And Paul wrote in Romans, "What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be! Don’t you know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obedience, his servants you are whom you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered. Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were servants of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification, and the result of eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (6:15-23, WEB)
     Grenz wasn't wrong. The kind of freedom the Sith preached is a lie, as he said. You're either a slave to yourself, to your own desires, to your own passions, which ultimately leads to your own destruction, or you can enslave yourself to the Spirit of Christ, choosing to submit to and cooperate with Jesus Christ as His Spirit acts and speaks through you so that you make better choices, so that your own desires aren't in control but literally God Himself directs how you act and speak so that your words and actions are simply right instead of in error, because He is right. The Force may be fiction, but the Spirit of Christ is not, and the principle holds true and was the underlying foundation for everything Paul wrote, as well as John's first epistle.
     You're a slave whether you want to be or not, but you can choose which master you serve, and the consequences of the Way you decide to take. You can either follow the Way of the Light leading to Life, or you can choose to love the darkness leading to death and your own destruction. It's up to you.