Last night, Chandler let me know at about eight o’clock that he wanted to go see Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

“Tonight?” I asked, checking my watch. “It’s too late. Why not this weekend?”

“Today is the last day,” he announced. The Star Wars movie that many say was the best of the series was celebrating its 20-year anniversary with a one-week run in the theaters that ended last night. This would be our only chance to see it on the big screen, and I had a chance to do something fun with my son. So we went for the late show, even though it meant getting to bed around 3 in the morning. It was well worth it.

This highly entertaining movie turned out to be, at least for me, a study in the power of evil and how it can overtake a seemingly good man and turn him into evil personified to where he is capable of the most heinous of crimes such as murdering defenseless young children and fighting to annihilate those who were once his friends. As a viewer it’s painful to watch, because you become attached, early on, to the good person that he was, and you are pulling for him to resist the temptation.

His journey to the dark side starts innocuously enough with his intense love for his wife and his desire to protect her from death, but he is going to “have the devil to pay” for the dark power required to save her, and the deeper he goes into this, the worse it gets until he has lost all resemblance of who he once was. In the end, he is incapable of love since he has become its opposite. Noble reason; bad choice.

When his wife finally encounters the person he has become by giving himself over to the dark side, she backs away in utter disbelief; the love of her life and father of the twins she is about to birth has become someone else — someone she no longer recognizes. The one who wanted to save her, seals her doom. By the end of the movie, we find out the devastating truth, that Anakin Skywalker has turned into the feared Darth Vader himself.

This movie reminds us of how we must keep our guard up against evil at all times, especially when a worthy cause requires us to use compromising tactics. You cannot employ unworthy means to accomplish worthy ends.

When we try to accomplish righteous ends — no matter how worthy — through anything other than total reliance on the Spirit of God, the story always turns out bad in the end. How many things are like this right now? Noble reason; bad choice.

Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord. Zechariah 4:6