The movie Star Wars changed my life at the age of six and then again at nine and once again at the age of 11. Seeing that movie on the big screen for the first time turned on my hyperdrive of imagination about the struggle of good versus evil. 

You defeat evil by blowing up Death Stars.

I immediately identified with Luke Skywalker (it didn’t help that my mom sewed me a Luke costume that I refused to take off after Halloween was over). I spend the entire summers of 1978 and 79 practicing being a Jedi with my toy lightsaber in the front yard and using the force to summon squirrels (yes squirrels) in my backyard. I even wrote letters (yes, letters) to George Lucas asking for a role in the next Star Wars movie.

When the Empire Strikes Back, the sequel to Star Wars, was released in 1980, I skipped school and stood in line with my mother to watch it on opening day. I was shocked to learn that blowing up the Death Star didn’t remove evil from the universe. If anything, it egged it on.The Empire was striking back against the Rebel Alliance with a vengeance in the second film.

Two scenes in that film greatly disturbed my simplistic 9- year-old worldview about how to defeat evil.

The first came in a pivotal moment on the planet Dagobah where Luke was receiving training from the old Jedi Master Yoda. 

My hero Luke was struggling to harness the essence of the force. The more he tried to control it, the quicker it slipped through his fingers.

Yoda tells him “Beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side of the force are they. Easily they flow when we fight …” Luke asks Yoda, “Is the dark side stronger?” Yoda responds. “No. Quicker, easier, more seductive … A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.” Shortly thereafter, Luke notices a cave and has an ominous feeling. Yoda tells him that the cave is strong with the dark side of the force. Yoda encourages him to
investigate.

“What’s in there?” Luke asks Yoda.

“Only what you take with you,” Yoda says.

Luke immediately grabs his blaster and lightsaber as he heads toward the cave.

“Your weapons, you will not need them,” Yoda tells him.

“Is Yoda crazy?” I remember asking my mom. “Take your weapons Luke!”

Luke agreed with me and took his weapons anyway. 

In the cave Luke encounters his nemesis, Darth Vader, the embodiment of the dark side. Both Luke and Vader draw their lightsabers. Luke attacks and strikes down Vader. As Luke stares down at Vader’s body, Vader’s helmet comes open and Luke sees his own face staring back it him.

As a nine-year old, I had no way of processing what I was seeing. Luke was the good guy. Vader was the bad guy. How could Luke’s face be the one behind the mask?

Thirty minutes later, Luke battles Vader again, against Yoda’s wishes, on Cloud City. Vader is clearly stronger in the force than Luke and eventually cuts off Luke’s hand and has him trapped on the precipice of a huge airshaft.

In one of the most iconic lines in all of cinema Vader tells a defeated Luke, “I am your father!”

Before Luke could object, I was standing on my chair screaming at the screen, “Nooooooooo! It’s not true! He’s lying!” My mother couldn’t console me. 

To me, the face of evil couldn’t have the face of a father. Vader had to be a monster. There wasn’t any other way.

Luke flings himself down the airshaft and the movie ends a few minutes later with our heroes all beaten and bruised and me asking the question for the first time, “Is it possible that evil might actually triumph over good?”

The next few summers I had no idea how to “play” Star Wars anymore. But I was sure we’d find out in the third movie that Vader was lying, Luke wasn’t his son, and Vader would get what was coming to him.

The Return of the Jedi, wasn’t released until 1983. It was a long wait.

In the last film, Luke accepts the fact that his father is Darth Vader. Instead of trying to destroy Vader, Luke is convinced that his father still has good within him and decides to help turn him back to the light side of the force.

Luke voluntarily turns himself in to Vader hoping that this act of love would turn his heart. Instead Vader takes him to the Emperor telling him that Luke must turn to the dark side too. 

At the end of the film Luke ends up in an epic lightsaber battle with his father. Only this time the tables turn and he defeats Vader, cutting off his hand the same way Vader did to him in the Empire Strikes Back. 

While Luke is standing over a defeated Darth Vader, the evil Emperor Palpatine instructs him to kill his father and join him in ruling the galaxy. Luke takes his lightsaber and tosses it aside.

“Never,” Luke responds. “I’ll never turn to the dark side.” It is in this moment that Luke finally becomes a Jedi. He finally understands what Yoda was trying to teach him on Dagobah.

“You have failed,” Luke tells the Emperor. He was speaking the truth. Luke was loving dangerously now. The Emperor had no weapon to stop that. 

“If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed,” the Emperor says and commences to shoot force lightning out of his hands.

Luke writhes in pain on the ground. He had done the right thing. And now he was paying the price. 

Vader, watching his son in agony, sets aside his fears and musters what little strength he has left to save Luke. Now he was loving dangerously too. 

That heroic act by Vader will cost him his life.

Their story ends in a tender moment on the collapsing Death Star where Vader asks Luke to remove his mask.

“But you’ll die,” Luke says.

“Nothing can stop that now,” Vader responds. “For once I want to see you with my own eyes.” 

Luke removes the mask and looks upon his scarred, pale father.

“Now leave me,” Vader says.

“No, I’m not going to leave you,” Luke responds. “I’m going to save you.”

“You already have,” Vader says. “You were right. You were right about me.”

That was my first exposure to the idea of dangerous love. The idea that putting aside our fear and loving our enemies dangerously unleashes a force more powerful than anything that force can muster.

The rebels blow up a second Death Star a few scenes later, but something told me that wasn’t the real victory. Luke’s victory was deeper and more profound that anything that violence could produce.

It was life changing. If dangerous love can turn Darth Vader from an enemy into a loving father – it can do anything!

Of course, Star Wars didn’t invent the idea. Ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism have been wrestling with the idea for thousands of years. Gandhi actually created a word, Satyagraha, or “truth force” for it and used it to get the British to voluntarily give up their colony in India. The core of Christianity has Jesus Christ dying for the sins of all humanity – the ultimate act of dangerous love. It provided the philosophical backbone for Martin Luther King’s work in the civil rights movement leading to equal rights for African Americans in the United States.

The stories that we have told for centuries, orally, in print, on the stage and in movie theaters, outside of religious faith have extolled this idea as well. 

Dangerous love has been inspiring us for centuries. 

Yet somehow, when it comes to conflict, we are quick to follow the dark side. Yes, the dark side is easier, quicker and more seductive.

The book Dangerous Love helps us ignore the path to the dark side and follow the only force that can really change the intractable conflicts in our life: Dangerous Love.