GOOD STORY

Dear Spike:

Your mother and I were speaking today about the parable of the prodigal son. You’ll get to know this story, as it’s one of my favorite lessons from the Hebrew scriptures, but for the sake of background, here’s the tale in a nutshell (and with a few Lucasian twists...)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a rich guy had two sons. One day, the younger of the boys approaches the father with a proposition: “Dad,” he says, “give me my inheritance now and I’ll go off and make a fortune on my own on another planet.”

So the dad agrees and the son takes the first star freighter out of town. But rather than using the money to buy a moisture farm on Tatooine or opening a mining colony in Bespin, the kid blows all his cash on death sticks and green-skinned dancing girls.

After hitting rock bottom, the lad decides he’s had enough of the high life and decides to return to his father’s home, beg forgiveness and ask for a job as a servant in the old man’s bantha stables.

But when the father sees his son’s figure approaching, silhouetted against the setting suns, he runs out to embrace the boy and calls for his servants to go kill the fattened gundark. “Let’s party the way we did when the second Death Star was destroyed,” he says.

All of this leaves the older boy — who all the while has been a good and faithful son — feeling a bit like he just got taken to the cleaners by a Toydarian.

“My brother went off and wasted half your money,” he says to the dad, “and now you’re welcoming him back like a hero of the Republic? What about me? You never held a party for me!”

The father puts his hand on his oldest son’s shoulder and responds like this: “My boy, you’ll always be dear to my heart, but your brother had turned to the Dark Side. He was a Sith, but now he’s walking the path of a Jedi.

Today was the first time your mother ever heard this story. I thought she’d enjoy it and take from it the same lessons that I always had: That the capacity for forgiveness is vast and the love of a parent is absolute.

But that’s not what she gleaned from the tale.

“So basically what the story is saying is that we should just go ahead and have fun and be bad,” she said. “I like it. Good story.”

You’ve got an interesting religious education ahead of you.

On the one side of your cradle will be a father who spent more than a few formulate years in church, singing “Read the Bible, Pray Everyday (and you will grow, grow, grow.)”

On the other side you’ve got a mother who never attended church and would probably rather actually be sent to war than to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Fortunately, we’ve found each other somewhere in the middle. So while you’re not likely to escape Sunday school and evening prayers entirely, we’re not going to make you join Opus Dei, either.

And as for the prodigal son, the sermon on the mount, the fish and the loaves and the flood and the good Samaritan — we’ll let you decide what those things mean.

I’ve got faith that The Force will lead you in the right direction.

Love,
dad