Perhaps, more than any other person, the responsibility for Darth Vader, the heartless butcher behind the deaths of billions of intelligent beings, lies with the Jedi Order. It was their example and actions that pushed their most promising student into the arms of a monster and plunged the entire galaxy into the darkness of Sith rule.

When Palpatine told Anakin that the Jedi were power-hungry, ineffective, dishonest, narrow-minded hypocrites, he did not do so to convince Anakin of these things. Anakin already understood them. Palpatine merely showed him that he was not alone in this realization. He offered a different way and Anakin followed Palpatine, and the Sith, because he could no longer bear to follow the path of the Jedi.

When Anakin had first come to the Jedi Order, they could not have hoped for a more eager student. Qui-Gon presenting Anakin Skywalker to the Jedi Council was literally a dream come true for the young boy. From the first time he heard some old Spacers talking about the Jedi Knights, Anakin had idolized them. To travel the galaxy righting wrongs and serving good captivated him. To his young mind they were gods, immortal and infallible. When he met the Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn, he believed that the Jedi had come to right the horrible wrongs he and his fellow slaves suffered. When Qui-Gon refused, Anakin could not accept it. His young, idealistic mind could not understand that ending the slavery of everyone he cared about was not on the agenda of the Jedi,  who did not want to risk starting a war with the Hutts.

Once the Council reluctantly accepted him as a Jedi, Anakin threw himself wholeheartedly into his new life. His peers may have already been training for a decade, but he was determined to make up the difference. Every demonstration and lesson was taken to heart. He practiced his saber technique endlessly, meditated on the Jedi Code, and dreamed of the day he would leave the Temple to bring hope to those who had suffered as he had.

The tension between what Anakin expected and what the Jedi stood for was minimal at first. He accepted unquestioningly that it was best for his mother to remain a slave on Tatooine. It would help him maintain his focus and avoid the evil of attachment. When warned against becoming emotionally involved, he faithfully trusted that such commands were meant to make him a more impartial guardian of justice rather than a more reliable soldier.

Anakin listened enraptured when the Jedi Masters expounded on the nature of the Force, teaching him to detect its tendrils in everything, to recognize its warnings. He studied the differences between the Living Force and the Unifying Force. It had coursed through his veins from his earliest memories, but now he was gaining a more rigorous understanding. His teachers dissected and probed the Force like a lab animal, cataloging its features and detailing how it could be used to gain an advantage in every situation. Anakin's immature ideal of the Force as his companion and guide was soon replaced with an image of the Force as a powerful tool for carrying out the will of the Jedi.

The first real split between Anakin and the Jedi Order began with a dream. The Force told him that his mother was in grave danger, but the Jedi responded with indifference. None of them had ever known their own mothers and, besides, it was only a dream. Yet Anakin could not sit idly by while his mother suffered. He finally defied his masters and went to rescue her, but it was too late. He had failed his mother because he had ignored what the Force was telling him. His training hadn't made him better able to save her, but instead had actually made it possible for her to die. It was the first time Anakin questioned if he really wanted to be a Jedi.

That was not the only area of his life where Anakin was struggling with his Jedi training. Having lived the ascetic life of a Jedi, Anakin's understanding of love was very limited, but he knew he had a special connection to Padmé Amidala …

Our world today runs on advertisements. Physical space is filled with billboards of all shapes and sizes. Newspapers and magazines devote an enormous amount of space to them. Ads support our watching of television and the internet-based equivalents. And, of course, many webpages delight in covering themselves in advertisements, hoping to collect a bounty for enticing visitors to click an ad.

With the rise of readily available computing power, advertisers find themselves more and more anxious to ensure that their ads are reaching the right people at the right time. Profiles of every web visitor are compiled. The content of every page is scanned to determine its topic. Computers behind the scenes are constantly computing which ad is best suited to the current situation. And sometimes they make a perfect match:

If you picked up the New Testament and read it without the benefit of being a part of the institutionalized church, you could get the impression that the ideas it presents are offensive, shocking, and hard to accept. That's only natural, given all the stories it tells about people's strong reactions to the Gospel. Jesus teaches and many disciples leave him. The religious leaders get so distraught about Jesus's message that they plot to murder him. People stirred up riots when the first disciples started spreading the Gospel. Even secular powers, including Ceasar himself, commanded the message to stop. Those Christians who continued to teach in the name of Jesus despite the threats were imprisoned and executed.

If you grew up inside Christianity, however, you know that actually the message is a nice, boring one about how to feel good. It's a message of how great we are when we do good things, and how horrible other people are when they do bad things. It's about finding out that God is mad about the same things, and at the same people, as you are. The Gospel message, in simplest terms, is that if you say the right prayer and are initiated into our group, you too can look down on sinners and feel morally superior.

It would be very strange to find Christians who reject this Gospel. Why wouldn't they want to work their way up the ladder of spirituality? Who wouldn't want to fit into one of these nice slots we've prepared for them? How could they not accept such a perfect system, fine-tuned over two-thousand years? What we have today is obviously a vast improvement over the messy and downright dangerous early days of the church.

Why would anyone want to be so strange?

Without further ado, I announce the launch of this website. Please enjoy it, but if it becomes addictive seek help. Do your best not to break anything, and if that doesn't work, let someone know so we can clean it up before anyone else notices.

Thanks for your attention.