cup a joe

I'm not looking to give a full review here, but there is something in the meta story that got me thinking.  I'll try not to give too much of the story away, but fair warning - there may be spoilers here.  The backdrop of the world that Katniss, our main character, lives in consists of two societies - or world views.  The first and most prominent in most of Katniss' life is the Capitol.  The Capitol, in many ways, gives us a picture of capitalism gone to an extreme.  The residents of the Capitol live in luxury off the labor of the districts which surround it.  The districts produce and the Capitol consumes and the name of the game is to keep that model in place.  The districts are so under the control of the Capitol that they literally give their children up as human sacrifices for the entertainment of the residents of the Capitol, so as to keep peace.  Talk about the 99% - that is the picture that we have here.  To be a resident of the Capitol is to never know need.  To be a resident of the districts is to be in extreme poverty.  A vivid picture of survival of the fittest.

The other world view is that of District 13.  District 13 is the secret district, the one district that broke free from the Capitol, but at a tremendous cost.  District 13 survives underground - supplying all of their own needs, but continually living in a state of shortage.  Because of this, there are strict controls on consumption and on all areas of life.  The value of the individual is only as great as what they bring to the whole.  The more I read, the more I got the sense that this was a picture of Socialism gone to an extreme.  What is interesting is that the book doesn't pick one side or the other as the better - a more upright side.  In the end, they are both evil.  They both manipulate, murder and become corrupt.  The ending is so powerful simply because of this - there is no golden lining - just raw inhumanity.

Within this story, there is a vacuum.  There is something that is missing.  There is absolutely no spirituality in this world.  No religion, no spiritual beliefs, no magic, no nothing.  The only hope is in man.  There is a quote in one of the books (the second I think) on what their hope is.  One day they will have a republic form of government that the people choose, with representatives and all.  It worked centuries earlier - perhaps it will work again.  By the end of the story, Katniss realizes that the hope in her leaders is a false hope.  That man is corrupt.  That all is lost.  

It would be great to simply look at the society that The Hunger Games describes and simply dismiss it as fiction.  The distressing part is that we can see many of the unsettling characteristics of that society in our society in a somewhat less developed way.  Look at how we deal with the underdeveloped world.  Do we really care who makes our shoes, computers, TV's as long as they're cheap?  Are we not more interested in consumption then we are in justice?  And on the other side - have we not caused division in our society by vilifying those who's economic status is better then our own?  Are we not willing to sacrifice others for advancement of our own agenda?  This is the world that Katniss lived in and in many ways this is the world we live in.  The problem is that many of us are so close to this world that we don't notice it.

See, this is what happens when our hope falls into our own hands.  When we decide we can do it on our own.  The issues of the garden in Genesis are the same issues that we deal with today.  And as I read this book, I saw where this hope lead to - to death and hopelessness (it's scary that one of the main characters' hope at the end of the story is that we get it right in the next war and completely exterminate the human race - now that's hope for you!)  While I expect to see this world view outside of the church, the truly fearful thing is that it also lives within the church and that has been the wakeup call for me.

We are supposed to be different as Christians.  Our hope is supposed to come from somewhere else (from Someone else).  And even though we give lip service and say Jesus is our hope, our actions betray us.  We place our hope in political parties (or candidates).  We place our hope in our investments, in our jobs, in our educations.  We place our hope in ourselves.  We claim that we hope in God - but in reality, we hope in us.  I read The Hunger Games and was troubled by the lack of spirituality.  Then I looked at my own life and noticed a void that should not have been there. 

Jesus came and announced the Kingdom of God was here.  There is something important about that.  Something more then just a place to go when we die.  Something more then just the spiritual gifts.  Something more then just a club we join.  What should our lives look like if we lived like the Kingdom of God was here and we actually were citizens of that Kingdom.  How would we act?  How would we live?  Where would our hope come from?

I want to spend some time over then next year or two and really dig into that question.  One thing is for sure - if we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, then something in our lives needs to look different, to be different.  We should be living like a people of hope.  We just need to figure out what that hope really is.