Whether you're reading the book series or have just watched the top-grossing movie, The Hunger Games is the latest craze to hit popular culture. It's a story that was geared towards teens and young adults but really transcends generations, capturing the imagination of readers and viewers everywhere. It's somewhat different than the usual Harry Potter fare in that it's quite dark. It's also packed with philosophy that easily morphs into theological discussion for people of faith.
I'm not going to spoil the story by talking about the narrative or any endings here, but I thought it might be fun to address some prominent themes and how they relate to our culture and consideration of God.
The Hunger Games is waist deep in issues of class and economics. Its world consists of a dozen outlying districts full of workers living in various levels of poverty. Each district is responsible for producing some sort of good. The value of that good determines the living standard for most everyone in the district. The central capitol controls the districts and is awash in wealth and luxury. When people from the districts meet people from the capitol they're all but alien to each other. Capitol dwellers live in complete ignorance of the source of their largess. They simply enjoy what others work for, throwing away more food each day than a district person eats over several.
Societies inevitably stratify people. That's a fact of life, all but unchangeable. No major society that's ever tried to equalize things has ever managed it. They only managed to shift the privilege. Our country contains many classes of people at various levels of wealth. That's not necessarily a problem in itself. We need to recognize, though, that the value of a person isn't defined just by wealth alone, nor are we to view people solely through the lens of what they produce for us. Jesus ministered with poor and wandering folks...treasuring them above all others precisely because the world didn't. He didn't judge by what people could give to him or how they could make his life easier, he simply gave to everyone he met regardless of his personal advantage or disadvantage in the process.
We'd be honored to have the President of the United States over for dinner. We should be just as honored to have the cashier from Dairy Queen. They're both God's children and if anything, the DQ worker might need a decent, balanced meal more.
When we only see people by their role in our lives--checker, house-cleaner, banker, or whatever--instead of seeing them as an extended part of God's family we echo the sin of the capitol-dwellers in the book. We spend our energy and love only on those closest to us, those like us in status and outlook, wasting much that's badly needed in the rest of the world.
There's also a bald economic component here. We're well-to-do compared to most people in the world. We should not get too comfortable with that inequity. Whatever God has blessed us with, it's meant to be shared. People without food, clean water, housing, jobs...whatever the imbalance may be, we do need to address it.
In the Hunger Games the solution to the problem of poverty is to select teenage representatives from each district and make them fight against each other to the death on TV for the amusement of all. The eventual victor (over 23 other victims) is rewarded with riches and fame forevermore...everything they could desire.
I can't help but think of the lottery system that so many people desperately buy into. Obviously that doesn't involve killing people but the reward process works about the same. Only one person wins. 99.999999% of the people who play remain poor. Somehow that doesn't matter because everyone hopes that they'll be the 0.0000001% someday. As long as that hope stays alive we figure there's a way out so we don't do anything to address the real issues surrounding poverty. As long as somebody makes it and we think we could be that somebody someday, we're content to let everybody else rot. If we do win, we're not spreading out that money to everyone who played. We're taking it and running to our new mansion.
I also think of the number of modern "starlets" who have become famous in recent years for doing nothing...no talent, no achievement, just famous for being famous and maybe showing some skin. Our young people are growing up with the message that fame and fortune cure everything. It runs on the same principle as the lottery but this time instead of buying a ticket you work to be thinner and get plastic surgery and torture your hair and put on revealing clothes. Not everybody will make it to that elite level of fame but somebody will, and it could be you!
I'm not certain, but those "starlets" don't look all that happy to me, especially in a couple years after the cameras move elsewhere. But again as long as the tantalizing apple of wild success hangs out there for a few, many people will happily play the game trying to grab it...much to their detriment and the detriment of those around them.
Jesus didn't just come to a few lucky winners or famous people. He made winners out of us all, adopting us into God's family. Everyone can call themselves blessed and beloved because of his sacrifice for them. We're not meant to make victors of a few and losers of everyone else. We're here to proclaim the ultimate victory that God won so he could wrap his arms around all of us where we were once divided.
The Hunger Games also deals with the issue of violence in the lives of young people. I'm not one who scrupulously avoids any depiction of violence. I have Mafia movies in my DVD collection. My son sometimes plays games on TV where cars crash into each other and knock each other off the road. I'm not always thrilled with the amount of violence we're exposed to in our popular culture, but we have to learn to deal with it and process it because it's not likely to stop anytime soon.
Dealing with it and processing it does not mean accepting it whole cloth, though. We teach Derek the difference between games/movies and real life. We don't let him watch anything with too much violence. Personally I find it funny that any movie with mild nudity would be considered completely taboo for kids but movies with people shooting the heck out of each other and TV shows depicting violent deaths are considered fine for all ages.
One of the main theses of The Hunger Games is that once experienced, violence leaves an imprint that doesn't go away. It also tends to beget more violence, even among its victims. We tend to shy away from people who have experienced violence, leaving this cycle unchallenged. When I first started working with people in the field of domestic violence long ago the statement that arrested my attention as a pastor was, "How many times have you heard a pastor or church stand up and say domestic violence is wrong?" It was true. At that point I never had, nor had I known anyone who had declared that publicly. We've since changed that, but it stands to reason that most folks haven't. If even our churches won't admit publicly that violence is bad for our society and has a bad effect on its victims, who will say it? We leave victims to struggle alone, walking in the wake of our silence. We consume violence in our entertainment without ever mitigating its effects by standing up against it--or even helping the victims of it--in real life.
When we see oppression we must speak and act. When we encounter victims of violence we must trust and uplift them. God does not call us to turn away when we perceive injustice, but to stand against it and work for a more just--and less injurious--society.
Whether economic, emotional, or physical, our world does damage to the people who live it in. Some of us experience it less, some more. Our response to this must be to hold each other closer, to pray more fervently, and to pick up those whom the world fells because of its unjust ways. The Hunger Games provides a decent depiction of what happens in the life of one woman when that doesn't happen. It's not necessarily a pretty tale, nor a happy one, but it's important for us to hear.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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