



I know you’ve seen the video.

If you haven’t seen the video, you haven’t heard of the Internet—or more likely Candace Payne broke it earlier this week.

Her ridiculously hilarious dashboard recording in a department store parking lot as she dons an interactive wookie mask, has obliterated the view numbers for viral videos and made her a global phenom in a way that only social media can. She’s ubiquitous on planet earth right now.

It turns out Candace is also a devout Christian and heavily involved in her local church. Normally I’m not keen on jumping on such news about celebrities and I recoil at such stories, but she is important.

The world needs Chewbacca Mom right now.

The Church needs her too.

In a time when religion is marked by such anger and vitriol and raw-throated screaming, people need to see and be reminded that faith does not need to be something we bludgeon people over the head with. It does not need to announce itself or assert itself or prove itself or demand respect or exist at the expense of someone else.

It can just be and be evident.

Faith at its most pure is fully present in the simple joy of a living soul, in a life that radiates light and magnifies it.

It is in a humility and goodness that are self-evident; in decency that is contagious, in love that is viral.



Candace’s video has blown-up globally because it gives us something we are so very starved for regardless of our theological perspective: lightness and laughter. There’s no preaching, no proselytizing, no doctrinal debate, no religious language at all, and yet it is such very good news to so many people. The Church could learn a great deal from this.

I want to be Chewbacca Mom when I grow-up.

In a world of loud religion, I want a faith that does the quiet work of beautifully altering the planet.

I want a life that speaks eloquently about the hope I have without needing words.

I want to be an expectation-defying Christian to people who’ve been given so much bad news from and about us.

I don’t know Candace Payne and I’m quite sure she’s not perfect, but that isn’t at all the point.

What I do know, is that whatever faith in God is supposed to yield, it comes through the two tiny holes of a plastic wookie mask. It shows up in the eyes of a flawed, tired, ordinary soul who seems to have the joy of the Lord so many people only preach about.

I’d like people to see the same thing in my eyes.

Thanks Chewbacca Mom. The Force is strong in you.

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