Plan B

“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Confession time: I didn’t see any of the Star Wars films until I was eighteen years old.

 

Check out this absolutely gorgeous stained-glass rendering of A New Hope by the very talented GeneralBloodrain at newgrounds.com.

At that point, a friend of mine, who was exactly as outraged by my sorry ignorance as I anticipate some of you are upon having read that last sentence, took it upon herself to fit me for participation in human civilisation by sitting me down in front of episodes four, five, and six. And I enjoyed them, I did, but there nevertheless remained in me a firm sense that even if I were to watch them twenty times over, even if I were to familiarise myself with every detail of their lore, even if I were to reach a point where I understood even the obscurest meme relating to their content, they could never be truly mine. Other people had grown up with them where I hadn’t, and that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a fan, but it did mean I couldn’t claim a heart-and-soul stake in them, the way I can in Harry Potter and relaunched Doctor Who and Disney and W.I.T.C.H. and so forth. I could never own Star Wars the way other people could.

And then came The Force Awakens, and everything changed.

These new instalments of the franchise – these can be mine now. I can be on tenterhooks viewing them for the first time together with the rest of the world,¹ instead of knowing all the big spoilers before I witness them. I can be part of the conversation as it unfolds, instead of only retrospectively realising the context of oft-repeated references. I haven’t missed the party; I just arrived a little late, and there’s plenty more fun to be had before the end of the night.

On which note, please do go and see The Last Jedi before you read the rest of this post. In fact, the analogy I draw from it is so stunningly obvious anyway that you probably won’t have to bother with the latter, and it’s such a phenomenally good film that I would feel morally compromised if you were to exploit my weekly ramblings to spoil it for yourself. Well. Maybe that’s a bit strong. But still. Off you pop. Go on.

All right, now that we can speak freely, can I kick off by saying, how cool is Vice Admiral Holdo? And I don’t just mean the snazzy purple hair, either. Holdo stepped up to lead in the middle of a gargantuan crisis; devised a very clever plan and stuck to it; was calm and collected and determinedly, steadily hopeful even as the already-desperate situation deteriorated; successfully put down a mutiny; willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice herself for the sake of saving her comrades; and even right at the end conceived of and executed one more brilliant plan to protect them. (The Resistance cruiser smashing through the First Order’s flagship at lightspeed was definitely one of my favourite moments, against, it has to be said, some stiff competition.)

But of course, I didn’t feel that way about her all the way through the film. I’m usually pretty easily led by ostensible character portrayals, and this was no exception: as Poe grew increasingly suspicious of Holdo’s intentions, so did I. Just like him, I turned my nose up at her weak, unspectacular way of doing things. I didn’t trust her to do what was best for the people for whom she was responsible. I mentally cheered on the mutiny that sought to depose her. I pinned my hopes on Plan B – Finn and Rose’s attempt to disable the First Order’s lightspeed tracker.

I ended up feeling rather sheepish.

But the worst of it was, Plan B didn’t just fail to work: it also punched a serious hole through Plan A. If Finn and Rose hadn’t hired an unscrupulous codebreaker and entered the First Order’s flagship, said unscrupulous codebreaker would have had no opportunity to betray the details of Plan A to the enemy. The First Order would never have scanned for smaller ships, never have shot any of them down, never have followed them to the abandoned base on Crait. Granted, it would have been a shorter and less thrilling film, but, you know, working from within the world of the story, a lot of lives would have been saved. A lot of lives.

It wasn’t that Poe, Finn, and Rose disagreed with Holdo about the desirable end-goal: both parties were trying to protect the Resistance from being destroyed by the First Order. It was that they looked at the situation in front of them and couldn’t see how what Holdo appeared to be doing (and not doing) stood any chance of achieving that end-goal. They wanted what she wanted, but they didn’t trust her to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. They didn’t trust that Plan A would work, so they decided to try a Plan B.

Or, to use other terms, they didn’t trust that Isaac would come, so they decided to produce an Ishmael.

When God told Abram that he would have as many descendants as he could see stars in the sky, Abram believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. But then time passed – nearly ten years of it, if I’ve understood the chronology rightly – and it’s easy to see how Abram and Sarai started to think that Plan A wasn’t going to work. God hadn’t indicated any further details as to how he was going to achieve the end-goal – “maintain current course” – and they were surely running out of time. They wanted what God wanted, but they didn’t trust him to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. Sarai told Abram to sleep with her servant Hagar, and Ishmael was born.²

 

A whole lot of stars. This was taken in Arizona, apparently.

But Sarai and Abram’s Plan B wasn’t going to work, any more than Finn and Rose’s did: Ishmael was a child of flesh not promise, and on that account, though God blessed him, he wouldn’t – couldn’t – fulfil his promises through him.³ After all that, they ended up reverting to Plan A anyway. It turned out, funnily enough, that God did actually know what he was doing, even though Abram and Sarai hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as they would have liked.

Vice Admiral Holdo, as it turned out, knew what she was doing, but Poe hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as he would have liked, so he and his friends devised a Plan B. But more than that, he orchestrated a mutiny. He was on board with his leader’s end-goal, but he didn’t trust her methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods.

Or, to use other terms, he pulled a Jeroboam. (Yep, double whammy of Biblical analogies today.)

When God told Jeroboam that he and his line would (on condition of obedience) be established as king of the ten northern tribes of Israel, Jeroboam believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. And he duly took over the kingdom. But he didn’t trust that God’s way of doing things would achieve the security of his throne; he worried that if his people went back to Jerusalem, in the now-rival kingdom of Judah, to worship, as God had commanded them,⁴ they would end up transferring their allegiance from him to Judah’s king, Rehoboam. And so he flouted God’s instructions – those which God had told him he must follow in order to achieve the security of his throne – and built sites of worship within his own land.⁵ Golden calves, to be specific, which should ring a rather depressing bell.⁶ He was on board with his leader’s end-goal – that he and his descendants would rule Israel – but he didn’t trust his methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods. He orchestrated a mutiny against the ruler not just of one spaceship but of the whole wide universe.

The rule of his mutiny, like that of Poe’s, didn’t last very long.⁷ Indeed, Jeroboam’s Plan B – his golden calves – punched a serious hole through Plan A, namely that God would establish his rule. He was on board with God’s end-goal, but what he did to try to achieve it actually dashed any hope of its being achieved, not dissimilarly to how Finn and Rose’s attempt to save the Resistance actually ended up causing the deaths of large numbers of them. Banking on Plan B didn’t just fail to work, as it nothing had happened: it actually did far more harm than good. In Jeroboam’s case, the people of the northern kingdom persisted in his idolatry until they were conquered and exiled by the Assyrians.⁸ Mutinies against leaders who do, as it turns out, know what they’re doing, don’t solve problems so much as cause them.

Still, much as I’m a huge fan of Vice Admiral Holdo, she is, at the end of the day, just another fallible mortal being. As it turned out, she did know what she was doing, but we couldn’t know that for sure the way we can with God. Nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight, and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable: if God has put forward a Plan A, then no Plan B is ever going to be an even slightly decent alternative. On the contrary, it will do far more harm than good.

One variety of Plan B which I think we’re often tempted to bank on in the current cultural climate relates to the issue of how we go about convincing people that following Jesus is a really good idea. We’re on board with God’s end-goal – that the Church with a capital C will increase in number – but we look at the situation in front of us and can’t see how what God appears to be doing (and not doing) stands any chance of achieving that end-goal. Plan A – preach the gospel, no fancy trimmings – doesn’t seem to be doing the job. And so we tone down or dress up the gospel in such fashion as we think might render it more winsome; we obsess over peripheral details of the delivery of the message instead of core components of the substance; we try to bring about God’s promises by means of Ishmaels and golden calves, not trusting his methods but directly contradicting them, and consequently doing far more harm than good.⁹

All the same, the very reason we have to trust God’s Plan A – nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable – is the same reason we can rest in the certainty that all our Plan Bs (or Plans B?) and all our mutinies cannot scupper his ultimate Plan A to make a people for himself. In Holdo’s case, even though her plan was a good one, she, lacking perfect wisdom and righteousness, nevertheless couldn’t prevent the deaths of many of her comrades when factors she hadn’t anticipated came into play. That isn’t a problem God has. The ultimate Plan A stands firm in eternity, just as we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him before the foundation of the world, just as the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.¹⁰ Indeed, however we may be guilty of miscommunicating the fact, it remains true that, from eternity past, Jesus willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving us from every atom of our guilt, despite all the Plan Bs and mutinies by which we have made ourselves guilty. Holdo’s sacrifice of herself was one part of her Plan A; Jesus’ of himself is the very heart of God’s ultimate Plan A.

And with a Plan A like that, why would we ever want a Plan B?

Footnotes

¹ I saw The Last Jedi earlier this week in Grantham, taking advantage of the five-quid flat ticket price offered by the Reel cinema there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays: https://reelcinemas.co.uk/grantham/now/. I love the Reel because it’s small and cute and inexpensive and that’s basically everything I want in a cinema.

² See Genesis 15-16 for the details: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+15&version=ESVUK.

³ I’m looking at Genesis 17, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+17&version=ESVUK, and the end of Galatians 4, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gal+4&version=ESVUK.

⁴ In Deuteronomy 12, to be precise: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+12&version=ESVUK.

⁵ You can find the story in 1 Kings 11-12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+11&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Namely this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=ESVUK.

⁷ He himself was permitted a twenty-two-year reign, but in recompense for his wrongdoing, his heir Nadab was usurped and his family line annihilated: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+15&version=ESVUK.

⁸ As the scriptures make explicit: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+17&version=ESVUK.

⁹ Here’s a truly hilarious Lutheran Satire sketch along similar lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP8tTXKzObc.

¹⁰ I here allude to Ephesians 1:4 and Revelation 13:8. The clause translated ‘before the foundation of the world’ in the Revelation verse comes at the end of the sentence, so there has been some disagreement about whether to attach it to ‘the Lamb who was slain’ or to ‘whose name has not been written in the book of life’; the ESV plumps explicitly for the latter, but the former seems to me to have a stronger case as far as syntactical arguments go, simply by virtue of proximity. Maybe the ESV committee’s decision was made with reference to the Ephesians verse. Those among you who read Greek might like to take a look for yourselves: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV|version=SBLG|reference=Rev.13.8&options=GVUVNH&display=INTERLEAVED. In any case, God’s ultimate Plan A has clearly been a certainty from eternity past.