Star Wars: The Last Jedi isn’t about the victory of the faithful, but the kindling of faith.

As they often do in Star Wars movies, things look dire for the good guys at the start of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The remnants of the Resistance are on the run, but a First Order fleet has caught up with them, its looming Dreadnought warship casting a massive shadow over their humble transport vehicle. Although a force shield protects them for the moment, it can’t hold forever. Desperate plans are hatched, while a Resistance commander (Laura Dern) orders, “Maintain our current course. Steady on.”

Contemporary Christians might resonate with this scenario. Being a person of faith these days can feel a bit like being under siege. For the global church this is often literal, in the form of life-threatening persecution. In the West though, we tend to experience something more akin to cultural alienation. For some, this is related to the removal of religion from public life, a feeling that Christians have lost the “war on Christmas.” For others, the public and political figures representing Christianity in such culture wars seem so incompatible with the gospel that we’re not sure what the label “Christian” means anymore.

Whatever our vantage point, many people of faith feel a bit like those Resistance fighters, hunkered down in a debilitated transport ship, devising last-ditch efforts but fearing the worst. Should we jump in the escape pods (the Benedict option)? Surrender and try to live with “faithful presence” under the rule of the First Order? Or just go down blasters blazing?

That last option is the one a rash rebel fighter takes near the end of The Last Jedi. (I’ll tread lightly, for fear of spoilers.) In the midst of a final-stand battle on a mineral planet, where scratching the salty surface reveals ominous, blood-red earth below, this Resistance soldier suicidally attempts to take out a massive First Order weapon. He’s prevented, and thereby rescued, by a fellow fighter who tells him, “That’s how we’re going to win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.”

Steady on. Save what we love.

These directives also play out in the storyline involving Rey (Daisy Ridley), whom we first met in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and who now finds herself under the reluctant tutelage of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Distraught by the fact that his former apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) has turned to the dark side, Luke thinks it would be best for the “Jedi religion,” as he calls it, to end. But Rey argues otherwise: “Something inside me has always been there, and now it’s awake.” Rey is there to be trained by Luke, and possibly save him from self-imposed irrelevance.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi isn’t about the victory of the faithful, then, but the kindling of faith. And those are two very different things. As beings made in God’s image, we were not commanded to conquer the world (after all, God is already sovereign over it), but rather to steward his creation. Stewardship can be difficult outside of the Garden of Eden, amidst the brokenness of sin. The temptation is to recreate that original paradise by exercising whatever power we wield—by taking back Christmas or seats in Congress, no matter the spiritual cost. The Last Jedi asks instead: might we, and the faith we espouse, be better served by steadily staying the course, by living in love?