The Definitive Christian Review of The Hunger Games

Okay, well actually it isn’t.  I’m just rather surprised at some of the negative reviews this book (and movie) has earned from some Christians.  Some of the reviews take aim at the supposedly a-moral, relativistic worldview of the author.  Well, in brief point form and in no particular order, here’s my take on the book.

1)  It’s not a Christian book and does not pretend to be.  Don’t expect it to be.

2)  The author has a gift for telling a story.  I found the book difficult to put down.  I read it in a day.

3) The book makes no mention of God at all.  God’s name is not even used in vain once (unlike in the movie — 2 or 3 times).  Like in The Cellist of Sarajevo, we have a world here without God — a world that can only be imagined (thanks to John Lennon for that insight!).

4) Nevertheless, the protagonist makes some decisions and takes some actions which are compatible with Christian ethics.  For example, Katniss offers herself as a substitute for her weaker, younger sister Prim.  She defends the weak and powerless in the Hunger Games.  Yet other decisions and actions seem more consistent with the atheist world in which she lives.  For example, her burning hatred for her enemies, mercy killing, and the whole fake romance thing.

5)  The story raises many important discussion points for parents to engage their children.  My twelve year old daughter read the book after me and we had an excellent discussion about it.  I don’t think this is a book that should be independently read by Christian young people, but thoughtful parents and teachers could use it as a starting point for some good teaching opportunities.

6)  Was the violence gratuitous and overly graphic?  That depends what you’re measuring it against.  Compared to the Berenstain Bears or the Hardy Boys, yes, it was way over the top.  Compared to Ehud’s exploits in Judges, not so much.

7)  It seems to me that comparisons with Nazi soldiers fall short because Katniss chooses to participate in the Hunger Games to save her sister.  She also hates the system and seeks to defeat it.  The means are not that praiseworthy perhaps, but what do you expect from a sixteen year old in an imaginary atheist world?  This is a point worthy of discussion with our young people:  from a Christian vantage point, what would you do in this scenario?  Defend the weak and helpless to the greatest extent you can in the Games or have yourself martyred at the outset for refusing to participate in the Games?  Tough call.

To conclude, no, this is not a Christian book and, on the whole, it doesn’t portray a Christian worldview.  But does that automatically mean that we can’t read it or discuss it?  I fail to see the logic in that — unless (and this is a big UNLESS) parents are disengaged or disinterested from reading anything that might appeal to their children.

Book Review: The Next Story

The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion, Tim Challies, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011.  Hardcover, 204 pages, $21.99.

This book is a must-read for those in leadership positions in our church and school communities.  There’s not a lot of careful thought going on about technology and how it relates to a Christian worldview.  Technology is often regarded as what theologians used to called “adiaphora” – things indifferent.  You say “potăto,” I say “potāto,” you use your Kindle, I read a traditional book – what’s the difference?  It may start affecting worship too.  Does it really make a difference if a church uses a projector in the worship service instead of hard copy books?  What’s at stake?  These are the kinds of questions that this book will help us address.

The author is a well-known Canadian author with a widely-read blog at Challies Dot Com.  He brings together an interest in technology, a steady set of writing skills, and a good grasp of a Christian worldview.  He’s also written The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Crossway, 2007) and this newer book can be considered an extension and application of many of the biblical principles found in that earlier volume.

Let me give you a taste of what you’ll find in The Next Story.  Sometimes pastors will mention the ancient heresy of Gnosticism and its matter-spirit dualism.  The Gnostics taught that physical matter is bad and anything spiritual is good.  Challies illustrates how this thought is being resurrected in the digital era with a contemporary twist.  Cyberspace now “gives us a place to be apart from our bodies” (101) and this is almost universally seen as a good and desirable thing.  Read the book to find out more!

Challies has helpful critiques of Wikipedia and Google in connection with the concept of truth.  He notes that Wikipedia represents a model whereby truth is reached via consensus.  Google, on the other hand, presents us with truth via relevance.  Both present challenges to the Christian view of truth.  This is all found in chapter 8 – the most important chapter in the book.  We all quickly and mindlessly go to Wikipedia for answers, but we have to be aware that it is sometimes inaccurate (e.g. the article on the Canadian Reformed Churches until recently stated that the merger process with the URC has been called off), yet, more critically, it can subtly influence how we regard the very notion of what is true.

Written in an engaging way with many helpful illustrations and anecdotes, The Next Story ought to be on your must-read list.  Most of the chapters also have questions for reflection at the end, a helpful feature for group discussions at book clubs and so on.  I’m just going to make one small critical notation in this review.  I don’t understand why the publisher put this book out without justified margins on the right side of the page.  Challies doesn’t do this on his blog and I’ve never seen a book published by a large house like Zondervan with that feature.  It not only looks unprofessional, it’s also distracting.  If the medium does relate to the message (as Challies rightly argues), then this should be fixed if there’s ever a second edition.

Abortion and Gelada Monkeys

One of Canada’s longest running radio shows is CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.  Each Saturday, host Bob MacDonald features a series of clips on different news items from the world of science, medicine and technology.  I’ve been listening to this program on and off since I was a kid.  It’s always interesting – and you can always count on MacDonald to bring in the “E” word:  evolution.  It’s a subversive approach to convincing the Canadian public of this doctrine, as if the sheer repetition of something week in and week out will make it true.

The February 25, 2012 edition of Quirks and Quarks took the evolutionary agenda one step further.  One of the segments was about gelada monkeys.  These baboon-like monkeys live in the highlands of Ethiopia.  They live in a harem structure – with one male gelada monkey heading up a harem of many females.  When a new male monkey takes over a harem, the females that are pregnant typically miscarry.  If they don’t, the new male leader will often kill the infants and newborns.  The theory is that the females miscarry in order to “cut their losses” and start over.  They typically are impregnated by the new male leader in a short period after their “spontaneous abortion.”  Of course, this is regarded as an adaptive strategy, something that has evolved for the advancement of the species.  Monkeys have allegedly evolved with abortion as a way to maintain and improve their kind.

The researcher, Dr. Jacinta Beehner, made it clear that that the female monkeys don’t choose to miscarry.  It’s something that spontaneously happens.  They don’t deliberately cause the loss of the unborn monkey in any way.  Yet, throughout the interview, MacDonald continued to speak about the female monkeys making a choice in the matter.  The expression “cutting their losses” was used repeatedly by MacDonald.  It was pretty hard not to read between the lines.  The Quirks and Quarks website makes it even more clear.  It speaks of female geladas spontaneously aborting their pregnancy, as if they have a choice.  We’re told, “Essentially they are ending investment in offspring in-utero that have no future.”  Hmmm….not too subtle.  Caveat auditor – let the listener beware!

(Originally published in the March 2012 issue of Reformed Perspective)

Canadian Senator: Give ‘em enough rope…

In early February, Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu caused a minor crisis for the ruling Conservative party when he expressed his opinion that the government could save millions of dollars by throwing a length of rope into the prison cells of convicted murderers.  The convicts could then choose whether to live or die.  The opposition made hay out of the comment.  In the view of the NDP, this was another peek at the hidden right-wing agenda of the Conservative government, an agenda that includes the re-introduction of the death penalty.  Prime Minister Harper disavowed the comments as being representative of the government and suggested that Senator Boisvenu was speaking out of his personal loss.  A daughter of Boisvenu was raped and murdered.  Senator Boisvenu himself later apologized for his statement and clarified that he is not an advocate for the death penalty.

It was a curious moment in Canadian politics.  The party which includes assisted suicide in its policy platform was the one most vocally indignant about Boisvenu’s proposal.  Remember Sue Rodriguez and the support given by then-NDP MP Svend Robinson?  It seems the right to choose to die in dignity does not apply to convicted felons – or is it the rope the NDP finds offensive?  Would they be more amenable to a syringe and lethal injection?  But this was politics.  This was more about exposing an allegedly hidden right-wing agenda of the Conservative party than about the government-encouraged suicide of convicted murderers.

Does Boisvenu’s proposal have any merit?  Who has the right to take away a human life?  Does a convicted killer have the right to take his own life?  According to Romans 13, the government bears the sword and it cannot relinquish that sword to the killer.  He unlawfully took a life before and with Boisvenu’s proposal, he will unlawfully take a life again – his own life.  Scripture teaches that the government is God’s avenger to carry out his wrath on the wrongdoer.  This proposal simply presented an easy way out of that calling.

This appeared in the February 2012 issue of Reformed Perspective.

Kim Jong-il and His Odd Mourners

This appeared in the January 2012 issue of Reformed Perspective.

The death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il on December 17 captured the world’s attention.  The bizarre lifestyle of the autocrat had long been the butt of jokes.  Still, his nuclear ambitions had kept the world on edge.  A number of years ago, President George W. Bush identified North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.”  Internally, Kim Jong-il held most North Koreans in a holding pattern of poverty and oppression.  There’s no point in even speaking about religious freedom in North Korea, because there is none.  It is one of the most awful places to live on earth.

How odd then that news broadcasts showed crowds of North Koreans mourning the death of Kim Jong-il.  News anchors and correspondents noted that the mourning seemed to be perfectly choreographed for the cameras.  There was little credibility in these public displays of grief.  No one could believe that North Koreans would actually be sad at the death of this evil man.

But it is possible that the grief was genuine.  There is a documented and well-researched psychological phenomenon known as Stockholm Syndrome.  When someone has been under the control of an abductor for a long period of time, eventually they may start to develop feelings of affection for their captor.  They may begin to feel protective of the one who has done this evil against them.  Perhaps what we saw in North Korea was the result of persuasion by threat of brute force.  But it could also have been a case of Stockholm Syndrome writ large.

At first glance, Stockholm Syndrome seems strange.  Developing a love for your captor?  But as believers, we know this happens more than we care to admit.  Paul wrote of the struggle that he experienced with the remnants of the sinful nature – “the law of sin” that held him captive (Rom. 7:23).  How hard it is to break free from the love of this evil!  Part of growing in grace means that we stop mourning for the death of our captor.