I honestly believe that JJ and co. really didn’t think about this stuff. This is true, to an extent, of Lucas as well. George would just throw stuff in there and hope we didn’t notice the contradictions. With the new films it seems like the writers are going “hey, such and such sounds cool, let’s do that” without thinking about the lore or how it might look in context. Rey’s big victory at the end of TFA (when she kicked Kylo’s butt) was largely because someone told JJ that she needed a ‘big moment’. Okay, one ‘big moment’ coming up…

My preferred interpretation of the Force is the one presented in Star Wars and Empire - it’s an energy field that can be tapped into with serious discipline and training. That’s it.