Anger, Fear, Aggression, and Social Justice Knights

The Emperor’s Manipulation Through Anger and Hatred

Now, if you know anything about me or if you've watched my videos for any amount of time, you probably know that I like Star Wars, and I've liked Star Wars ever since I was a little kid. You know, I watch Star Wars movies, I play Star Wars games, I play with Star Wars toys with my kids.

I play Star Wars toys with my kids. So, but yeah, I love it. And when I was a kid, Return of the Jedi was my favorite movie. Now, you might think that that's kind of lame because a lot of people think that Return of the Jedi was the worst of the three.

I don't necessarily agree with that, although I can understand why people say it. But definitely, Return of the Jedi is the most straightforward out of the three. It's the one that's probably most kid-friendly out of the three as well.

Except for one part. Now, in the first two movies, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of things that only really adults will really understand in those two movies. But in the third movie, there's one scene that I was always confused about as a kid.

And it's the scene at the end when Luke Skywalker, he realizes that Darth Vader is his father. He's trying to turn Darth Vader to the good side. And he confronts the Emperor with Darth Vader. What confused me about this scene is that the Emperor, a number of times, talks about how he wants his hatred and his anger to flow.

And then at one point, he even talks about how he wants Luke to kill him. And I never understood what was going on there. Let me play you this. This is a YouTube video I found called Palpatine Delivers Some Hate Speech, which I love the title of this video.

Here we go. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you. Good. The hate is swelling. Give in to your anger. The hate has made you powerful.

So, there's the scene I didn't really understand as a kid. And I was always confused as to why does the Emperor want to have, why does he want Luke to kill him? Hold on a second. There's the Emperor and Darth Vader.

Anyway. But, and what my theory was that he wanted to become a force ghost, right? And so if, you know, he wanted to become like Obi-Wan or Yoda, and that's why he wanted him to kill him. But that's actually not what's going on here.

What's actually happening is what the Emperor wants is he wants Luke to be his new apprentice. And so he's trying to manipulate Luke by making him really seethingly angry at him, at himself. It doesn't matter what he's angry about.

He just wants him to be angry. And then he wants him to attack him, but he knows that Darth Vader will protect him. And what he's thinking is going to happen is that Darth Vader is going to protect him.

And then in that fight, Luke is going to end up killing Darth Vader. And in his anger and his sadness, because he's going to be sad that he just killed his own father, the Emperor is going to be able to use that confusion, that anger, that hatred, that sadness, and manipulate Luke into serving him.

That's what he's hoping is going to happen. That's what he's trying to do. And so here's the thing. This is the point of this video. Why does the Emperor do this? Why doesn't he just be straightforward about it?

Or why doesn't he just, I don't know, why does he even want Luke to be his apprentice? And the reality is that he sees something in Luke. He sees something that he can use to his advantage. He thinks that Vader is kind of on the outs, and Luke is the new hotness.

He's going to be able to use Luke's power to his advantage for whatever the heck he wants him to use it for. And he knows that people are easily manipulated if you can only get those emotions going, if you can get the anger flowing, if you can get the hatred flowing.

And then the sadness as well. These are all very powerful emotions. When you're angry, you know you're angry. When you're hating something, you hate it. When you're sad, these things have a tendency of taking over.

People are very malleable when they're experiencing these kinds of emotions. They're very easy to manipulate. And so he thinks his best chance to get this powerful thing that he wants, he wants Luke's power, he thinks the best chance for him to do it is to get these emotions all riled up within him.

That's what the Emperor's goal is. And so what you need to do is to watch out when people are trying to rile up emotions in you, especially anger, especially hatred, and especially sadness. Because lots of people who seek to manipulate you and to use your power in a way that benefits them, they will do it through anger, hatred, and sadness.

They'll try to manipulate you in that because they know that you're not thinking straight when you're angry. They know when you're really hating something, you're not thinking straight. And that's their doing, what the Emperor is trying to do to Luke here.

Hatred, the Fear of the Lord, and What God Hates

And so, but here's the thing, though. We got to understand that hatred is not necessarily wrong. Like I know a lot of evangelicals will say, well, God is love, you know, God's not hate. And that's true.

God is love. God is not hate. But God does hate certain things, and we ought to hate certain things. Proverbs 8 says that the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.

If you're a Christian and you don't hate evil, there's something wrong there. You need to hate evil. That's a powerful word, you need to hate evil. Proverbs 6 talks about things that the Lord hates, that God, Yahweh, hates these things.

Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discords among brothers.

God even hates people. It's not, it's not God hates the sin, but not the sinner. No, God, this says that there are people that God hates, a false witness who breathes out lies, one who sows discord among brothers.

That's an important one for us to remember, especially in these social justice conversations, because here's the reality. There are people out there right now who are seeking to be like the emperor and manipulate you, and they're trying to whip you up into a frenzy, get you angry, get you hating things, and they do it because they have, you have a power that they want.

They don't have the force, it's not like you're a Jedi or something like that, but no, you have power that they seek to use to their advantage. There's an entire legion of people, an entire group of people that wants to get you pissed off so that you put them in power and they get what they want, they get to do what the heck they want to do.

And so you got to be aware of people that try to whip you up into these angry frenzies, because there's a good chance that you're, they're trying to manipulate you when they do that. There's a whole group of people right now that want you to be for getting revenge against white people.

I mean, how much do you have to hate white people to do some of the things and say some of the things that are said about white people in our culture today as if it's just no big deal? Like, like there's that, ever seen that, that meme that has like the different things that a white person can do and how you can, how you can slander them?

Like, you know, white person, uh, doesn't, um, doesn't, uh, like, uh, you know, rap music. Well, then, then they're racist, but a person does like rap music. Well, then they're, they're trying to, uh, appropriate that, the, that, that culture.

Oh, white person goes on a missionary trip while they're trying to colonize white person doesn't go on a missionary trip while they hate black people. Like you really need to hate, hate white people in order to say that kind of stuff about them.

Because a lot of this situations here, no matter what a white person does, it's wrong and it's evil and they're oppressing you. People who think that way and want you to think that way are trying to manipulate you.

You have a power that they want and they're going to use, they're going to use you by making you angry, pissed off and getting you all frustrated and sad and all these things. Look, there's nothing wrong with emotions, but you need to be careful.

You can't think with your emotions. You need to think with your brain and your brain. Look, it's okay to be angry at evil. There's nothing wrong with that, but when you're angry, take that as a sign that I need to really think about this and make sure that I'm not just angry and someone's not just whipping me up into a frenzy and actually figure out what is going on because Luke Skywalker figured it out.

Luke Skywalker figured it out in the nick of time because as he's about to kill his father, he's about to kill Darth Vader, he hears the Emperor laughing at him with that evil laugh and he stops. He stops and he doesn't kill his father and he says, no, I'm not going to join you.

I am angry. I hate you, but I'm not going to join you. And that's when you can see that at that point when Luke just says no, that's when the Emperor's face gets downcast and that's when he kind of gets, he goes off the deep end.

But you see, that's the thing, you know, you got to take a look at who's trying to whip you up into a frenzy, who's trying to make you angry, who's trying to cultivate hatred inside of you. Because here's the thing, we've got one group that's saying, look, the church is not perfect.

The church has made mistakes. Many in the church have been racist in the past, but we shouldn't do that anymore. And we have one group that say, that's not enough. We need revenge and you need to give us things.

And that's that group right there is trying to whip you up into an angry frenzy because you have something they want. They want to be in some kind of power. Sometimes it's just money. They just want money.

And that's the reality. And so, you know, we can't, we can't give into that. We can't give into that. Even if we feel sad about, you know, brothers and sisters that think that they've been victimized and things like that, we don't, we want to, we want to help them.

You can't help someone by giving into their demands when their demands would actually hurt them.

Luke’s Refusal to Join the Dark Side

Your friends on the Indoor Room will not survive. There is no escape. My young apprentice. The Alliance will die. As will your friend. Break me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be.

Complete. Essentially what he wants is he wants Luke to be so angry about the situation or so sad about the situation that he doesn't care about the methods of how he uses to rectify it. That's how he got Darth Vader.

If you remember, Darth Vader was so angry that he choked out his own wife, right? And then he was so distraught about that, that he didn't care what the methods were or how he replaced his wife and how he fixed the situation.

So he just became as evil as possible, all with the hope that he could bring his wife back from the dead or something like that. And so that's what he wants. And so when, when you're angry, when someone's cultivating the anger in you, what you need to do is take a step back and say, well, hold on a second, I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm frustrated, I'm pissed off.

So let me make sure to do this according to what God says, because here's where the rub is. You get so mad about something that you decide to start taking shortcuts. Reparations are not biblical. Segregating worship is not biblical.

Affirmative action is not defensible according to scripture, but yet these are the solutions that we're getting from people who are angry about something that maybe it's legitimate to be angry about, but they're letting their anger take over them in such a way that they're more like Darth Vader and less like Luke Skywalker.

They're willing to take shortcuts. They're willing to use whatever means possible to supposedly fix the problem. But if you use means that are actually against scripture, like affirmative action, like reparations, like segregated worship, you will actually make things worse.

He's very arrogant, but he's wrong because using your hatred to kill evil, to destroy the evil within yourself and out there in the world will not bring you to the dark side. That's not how it works. He's wrong about that, and we see that in this movie because Luke is angry, but he doesn't let anger take over him, and that's the difference.

Anyway, hope this was helpful. God bless. You know, one more thing, actually, before we finish. This entire movie is the attempt to try to trick you into thinking that Luke Skywalker is actually going to be evil.

If you notice in the very beginning, you know, the first time you see Luke, he's kind of wearing these dark hooded robes, just like the robes that the Emperor was wearing. That's actually the first time you see the Emperor as well, and so it's like he's wearing the same clothes as the Emperor.

And then in the beginning also, when he's going to meet Jabba the Hutt, he actually does that forced choke move where he can choke you without even touching you, and that's a move that you've only seen Darth Vader do.

In fact, that's the only time you see a good guy use that move in the primary movies. And so it's, again, it's trying to trick you into making him, you know, kind of an evil character. In fact, he's also wearing all black, which is kind of a spooky sort of thing.

And up until the very end, when he actually is about to defeat Darth Vader, do you see that on the inside of his clothes, it's actually white? So it's dark on the outside, you know, black and evil on the outside, and then on the inside, it's the light that's coming through.

So I know that's not very subtle, but it's kind of an interesting sort of side bit, because the whole movie is set up for you to think that he's going to give in to this temptation to give in to his anger, but he doesn't.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you.