Animals are Equal to Humans? A Star Wars Philosophy

The latest blockbuster is the current Star Wars VII episode, netting more than 1.3 billion to date. While it is entertaining, we need to always be asking ourselves what is the message which the writers are communicating. One thing is true of the dramatic arts: they are a powerful medium for communicating a message that is just below the radar of human perception. More specifically, there is a real possibility for a message to be delivered and openly received by an audience without any thought or analysis engaged in by the recipient.

People may walk out of a theater with new thoughts swirling in their minds that they have taken no time to evaluate. In fact, they may believe something to be true simply because it was presented in a powerfully moving, emotionally grabbing way that overpowers all the reasoning abilities that are sitting on the intellectual sidelines. There are many messages conveyed by the Star Wars franchise, but today, in tune with our study True Law is God’s Law, I would like to mention just one. It is this question, what is man?

The powerful message of that movie series is that man is but an intelligent animal, not unlike all the other intelligent animals that populate the galaxy and are engaged in the battle to control that galaxy. You have Chewy, injured and nursed to health by the hero, who later is injured and nursed to health by Chewy. I could cite many other examples that are used very effectively to persuade the audience that man essentially is an animal just as all the other animals.

At first blush, it might seem to be an idea with little to no consequences. However, the law of God before us would greatly disagree. Turn to Exodus 22:19: “Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.” This law deals with a subject of unnatural relations of the darkest sort.

Depraved Debauchery – Exodus 22:19 deals with the darkest form of sexual immorality. So dark that we might be inclined to skip over it altogether, but the Word of God addresses this matter, and so it is incumbent upon us to do so, as well. Our aim is to proclaim all that the Word of God says—no more, no less. It will help to examine this extreme depravity in light of the overarching law of God for this area of life.

• All sexual activity outside the bonds of Marriage is sin – Hebrews 13:4: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” So it is not just beastiality that the Law of God condemns; it is every sexual sin, every action that is outside the bounds of marriage.
• Sexual immorality is a sin against one’s own body – 1 Corinthians 6:18: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” The term translated in the KJV “Fornication” is the Greek word ‘porneia.’ It is the overarching term which covers every form of sexual immorality, whether it be between two persons who are unmarried, or two that are married to someone other and have engaged adultery, or two persons of the same sex, or this bottom-dwelling debauchery of bestiality.
• How does such debauchery ever come into a society? – Please read Romans 1:18-32. The downward spiral –
  • What begins with idolatry leads to sexual anarchy – everyone flaunting the Law of God which protects the very foundations of civilization – God’s Holy Institution of marriage.
  • It ends in a depraved mind – the word translated “reprobate” is the Greek word “adokimos,” defined as “rejected; by implication, worthless (literally or morally):—castaway, rejected, reprobate.” God has given them over to this state for the evil choices that have made and continue to make to reject all that is good and holy, righteous, and true. Having rejected God’s Law, God gives them over to their benighted depravity, and they become, in thought, word, and deed, given over to their wretched sin. Now we can see this pattern working itself out on the pages of history.
• The Modern idolatry of Evolution and the sin of ‘speciesism.’ “Definition of speciesism

  1:  prejudice or discrimination based on species; especially :  discrimination against animals
  2:  the assumption of human superiority on which speciesism is based.”

        So the belief is that you are just an animal and show favoritism to your own species, homo sapiens, and it is wrong for you to treat any other animals in this world as less than you are. You are an animal equal to all other animals, no more, no less. That is one of the messages of Star Wars.

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