Words Of Wisdom From Yoda And An Evangelical Blogger

[urroner]

Several weeks ago, I was listening to some social psychologist on the radio and she was talking about some of the reasons why people get angry. She said that they have fears and because of these fears, they make attempt to control those around them and when they can't control them they get angry.

For some reason, when she tied fear into anger, I heard Yoda saying the old fear leads to anger to hate to suffering bit and it just clicked what he really said. I even talked about the great prophet Yoda in the priesthood lesson i gave that day.

Well, today, I was floating around the net, looking for whatever and found this blog by an Evangelical blogger from a couple of years ago. It's all about defending your beliefs, but needing to do it in the right way and not letting fear take over. Good stuff.

Fear Leads to Anger: Unpacking Theological Belligerence

in it, he says

Let me put that in English: People fight about their views of God because they are afraid of the consequences of being wrong. Being wrong about God is fearful because it destabilizes their way of looking at the universe and their place in it. People tend to fight when frightened this way.

Let me put that in Yoda: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Show me someone who is expresses in anger his views of God, and I will show you someone who is deeply afraid of losing control of God.

He had me hooked there.

When I see someone who:

seeks theological conflict with fellow Christians,

or is quick to turn the temperature up at the slightest provocation,

or presumes to be right at every turn and has has an excessive need to display it,

I know I am dealing with a deeply fearful person.

The defense of belligerence goes something like this: “Read Paul and Jesus. They went after people. They fought for the truth as warriors in a fierce battle. Don’t bother me with your Yoda-esque, soft-minded, Oprah-laced, psycho-babble. We are following biblical teaching whenever we fight and contend for the truth.”

About Jesus and Paul. Jesus turned up the heat, to be sure—but against hypocrites, the religious leaders of his day who were disconnected from God yet acted as if they were God’s mouthpiece, those who were quick to pounce on others for not towing the line of an arrow-straight traditional theological system.

Belligerent, self-assured “defenders of the gospel” today have more in common with Pharisees than they do with Jesus.

The problem with taking this moment in the Galatian church as a template for being belligerent is that:

• The people you are going after on the internet or in other venues are not people you have invested in personally. Think of minding your own business.
  
• Not every theological disagreement is a “Galatians moment” where the gospel is at stake
  
• You’re not Paul.
  

If you want a model from Paul for how to handle theological disagreements, read 1 Corinthians. Talk about a theological mess. These yahoos were each following their own pet cult personality, treated the Eucharist like the breakfast bar at Denny’s, were engaged in all sorts of immortal activity, and even had doubts about the resurrection.

What does Paul do? Blast them? No. Denounce them? No.

He spends fifteen chapters going over ground they probably already should have known but couldn’t quite get right. And the whole tone is set in the very beginning of the book, where Paul says he is writing,

To the church of God at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sort of makes you want to not be belligerent.

When engaged in potentially threatening theological dialogue, rather than fear we need to chose to trust—trust that God is bigger than our arguments, our intellects, our sacrosanct theological systems.

BTW, what lead me to this article? I read the following verse earlier today.

Isaiah 41:10, 13

¹⁰ Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (We sang "How Firm A Foundation" today in stake conference.)

¹³ For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

[cinepro]

The actual quote makes no sense.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.

- Yoda, Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace

How does that make any more (or less) sense than saying:

Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to suffering.

Or...

Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to suffering. Suffering leads to anger.

Or any combination of fear, anger, hate and suffering. Any one of those can "lead" to the other, there's no logical progression. People feel fear all the time without feeling anger, and people feel anger all the time without feeling hate.

In the context of the original quote, maybe Yoda should have said "We can sense you are worried about your mother. This compassion is noble for a Jedi and is what separates us from the Sith. Go to Tatooine, we will, and bring her to Coruscant, and give her a job sweeping the floors of the jedi archives we will."

I'll also take this moment to point out that the whole stupid idea of Jedi's not having emotional attachments to others is absurd in light of Obi Wan's affection for Anakin in Episode III "You were my brother! I loved you!".

Hey Ben, whatever happened to "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose"?

Ben should have been like "Oh, Anakin is bad now so I'll go kill him." And then when Anakin was laying on the ground like a sentient charcoal briquet, Ben should have just calmly walked up to him, decapitated him (the preferred method of killing in Star Wars movies) and then walked back to his ship to radio Yoda that Darth Vader had been dealt with.

Edited June 3, 2013 by cinepro

[The Nehor]

I would disagree with one point. While some religious arguing is due to fear I would say that some people just love to argue and (usually) win. Religions attracts these people. Some are also afraid amd there is probably some overlap too.

And yeah, Yoda's quote makes little sense. Yoda in Episode 3 does not make much sense. We have to defeat the Emperor and Vader. Both Kenobi and I are both on the planet with the Emperor. We could go after the Emperor jointly and then grab a ship and find Anakin together........or we can split up and make it more likely we will lose one or both fights and thus fail the galaxy. Yoda picks option B for some reason.