Tag: forgiveness

lj-writes:

Some of the ways in which TLJ is a baldly, blatantly, aggressively Christian movie, in stark contrast to the very Jewish TFA:

• Pain,
  suffering, abject failure and loss, including the deaths of many good
  people, are held up to be ultimately positive lessons. In Jewish thought, in contrast, while good can come of suffering pain is not good or holy in of itself. The point in Judaism is to lessen pain and improve life, not to join in suffering.
• TLJ shows borderline obsession with “sin” and “sinners” as
  salacious and fascinating, hence the focus on Kylo Ren. (I use quote
  marks here because he is not just a “sinner,” he’s a criminal and
  abuser.) In Judaism, sin is not nearly as big a deal so far as I can tell. It is not a subject of fixation to the point of romanticization.
• The doctrine that everyone is a sinner is simplified
  down to moral equivalence between good and evil people and
  organizations. Of course Luke also had darkness in him because he too is
  a sinner, etc.
• Self-sacrifice is the ultimate virtue and
  washes away any mistakes one might have made, e.g. Luke and Holdo. It’s basically martyrdom in space. In Jewish thought, while martyrdom can be necessary, it is not something to be sought out and should be avoided if possible.
• TLJ’s emphasis on forgiveness, redemption, and patience is also very Christian. Rey is suddenly and
  uncharacteristically devoted to the idea of saving Kylo Ren, Rose gives
  Finn the speech about not fighting what they hate, which doesn’t even
  make sense on its face in the midst of a struggle against a genocidal force. In contrast, anger against oppression is an important theme in Judaism and you can see this in Finn and Rey’s anger in TFA. This is one of the ways TLJ marks a sharp tonal departure from TFA.
• On a related note, redemption for Kylo Ren as presented in this movie looks a lot like cheap grace, which German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as “preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance.” Significantly, Bonhoeffer was resisting the Nazi influence on the German Lutheran church with his opposition to cheap grace. Cheap grace is an alien and repugnant concept to Judaism–forgiveness is not an obligation even if the wrongdoer has repented and made amends.
• Yoda performs a classic smashing of the idols scene with a bait-and-switch book burning. By contrast I am told that book burning
  is unthinkable for Jewish people due to the great respect for scholarly
  traditions in Judaism. This is especially true for foundational texts like the ones Yoda pretended he was destroying: People have run into burning synagogues to save the Torah, which is a matter of not only scholarship but identity. The scene becomes all the more jarring when juxtaposed against the many purges and massacres the Jedi Order and their followers suffered, including in TFA.
• Crait has a very distinct
  red-on-white look reminiscent of the Crusaders/Knights Templar. In Jewish imagery blue is the color of supreme importance, and it is even more strongly associated with the good guys in TFA than in the previous movies.
• In TLJ lawful authority is
  not to be questioned, even if they are violent, seem untrustworthy, and look like they will lead to outright ruin. This is a rather un-Star Wars
  message, making it stick out all the more. On the other hand, unquestioning obedience to authority is anathema to Jewish people. They argue with everyone, including God. Especially God.
• (via kyberfox) “Godspeed, Rebels.” First of all it’s the Resistance, but… excuse me, God?? What? God??!!? Also, Kylo Ren asks Luke if he came to save his soul, another blatant and aggressive insertion of Christian concepts into Star Wars.

(I am so deeply indebted to @kyberfox and @attackfish for this list that giving individual credit for the ideas would be distracting. Suffice it to say substantially all the perspectives on Judaism and many of the points on Christianity are theirs.)

Note: Below is a submission that I was asked to add anonymously to this post. TW for sexual assault, aphobia, gaslighting, abuse.

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I was raised Catholic, and a small branch of my family is Jewish. I
probably know more than the average goy about Judaism, but not by a lot.
I am the survivor of a lot of sexual assault and harassment that took
place at Catholic school. I was 13, and the other kids wanted to know
who in the class I thought was hot, I said I didn’t think anyone was
(turns out I’m aroace, and yes, even the Catholics recognize that as not
being straight), and they took that as something that could be
corrected by force. They groped me, destroyed my possessions, scraped me
across a brick wall, and held me down to put makeup on me. In
hindsight, the worst part was that the teacher’s son would come over
from the high school on his lunch break, sit on my desk, and sexually
assault me during class while his mother taught and pretended nothing
was wrong. Then she would gaslight me about what he, and the other
students had done. The teachers knew what was happening, it happened in
front of them, and obviously the one I previously mentioned knew about
enough of it to gossip to her son so he would come join in. They didn’t
care because they knew I was queer before I knew I was queer, and this
is what happens to queer kids at bad Catholic schools. The teachers let
it happen, because they think it’ll turn you straight. And if not and
you kill yourself, no loss. You’re going to hell anyway.

They
would make me say that I forgave the boys who assaulted me. Because that
is a big part of being a good Christian, forgiveness.  It took me a
long time to realize that the only people who deserve forgiveness are
the ones who are actually sorry, and aren’t going to do it again. The
rest can piss off. That’s what TLJ missed, and what is so Christian
about it. Your abuser doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Turns out that the
teacher’s son who abused me was the product of rape himself, and other
adults in the community tell me that I should feel bad for her and him
because of that. I was supposed to feel sympathy for her, but she stood
by and did nothing while her son assaulted me. I am sorry that she was
raped and that’s why he exists, but that doesn’t absolve her of standing
by and watching him hurt me. She doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, and
neither does he. Kylo doesn’t deserve Rey’s forgiveness either. He has
done nothing but hurt her and the people she loves, and while he may be
feeling some regret, he would absolutely do it again (i.e. not wanting
to save the Resistance fleet), and therefore she owes him nothing. Not a
single bit of sympathy, and definitely not forgiveness. Sure, he has a
tragic past, but he’s still making choices as an adult to hurt people,
and be skeevy to a teenager a full decade younger than him. Rey has no
reason to feel like she owes him anything, unless she’s being subjected
to shitty Christianity. (I saw shitty Christianity because I know that
not all of Christianity is like this, but tbh a lot of it is shitty and
is exactly like this)

It took me years to realize this for myself,
and to realize that the only people responsible for my abuse were my
abusers and it wasn’t my fault. I’m seeing a therapist now, and was
diagnosed with PTSD, and things got better once I was able to talk about
it in a more reasonable setting than Catholic school. TLJ threw me for a
fucking loop though. Kylo is so much like the people who abused me. In
TFA it was empowering to see Rey interact with him because it was
obvious that there was this angry feral part of her that wanted to tear
out his throat. That anger was good. That anger was something I hadn’t
been allowed to have in Catholic school. I had to be meek and forgiving.
I had to be like Rey in TLJ where she says “Ben,” so quietly when she’s
trying to turn him to the light. What I loved about Rey in TFA was her
anger, and from what I read in the Old Testament and what I hear my
cousins talk about in the Torah, TFA Rey absolutely acts like a Jewish
girl from those stories. Her anger would have been a so much better
direction for the story line to pursue in TLJ, if her temptation to the
Dark Side was due to her (justifiable) anger at Kylo. But that’s not
what happened, because exactly as you said, the narrative took on a
distinctly Christian slant of forgiveness, even when that forgiveness
isn’t justified.

I am so glad that this movie didn’t come out
while I was still in Catholic school. Star Wars was my escape from that,
and if I’d seen a Star Wars movie where the heroine is forced into a
narrative of forgiveness towards her abuser, and Luke Skywalker is
depressed and hopeless and sacrifices himself in what really seems to me
like a suicide, I would not have gotten through those years because it
would have been the wrong message from one more source and I don’t think
I could have taken it.

Being able to pinpoint that there was a
Christian shift to TLJ helped me a lot in understanding why that movie
was so upsetting to me, so I’m sharing this in hopes that it helps other
survivors, and also maybe helps people who haven’t been through this
sort of abusive shit understand why the narrative of forgiveness in TLJ
is so nauseating.