Picture a young, impressionable man in Egypt about 2500 years ago. He cheated a customer of his, and now he's facing the man in the market. He knows his thumb was on the scale, even as he lies straight to his customer's face, and he knows the man cannot prove a thing. He's scot-free.
His customer knows as much himself, and that he cannot press this young man any harder. But before he leaves he whispers, "Would I could see you in the Hall of Maat!"
The young man, let's call him Thoth, smiles and throws the man a sugared date as he leaves. When the man throws it back, he catches it and pops it in his mouth, thinking for just a moment how it look so very much like a heart.
He bites down on the heart in his mouth, and remembers Ammut.
His mouth becomes very dry.
His mind travels to that day, be it tomorrow or a generation away, when he will appear in the Hall of Maat. Every man dies, and every man appears before the forty-two gods in the Hall of Maat. In that hall, a man makes one profession of innocence before each god. The sixth confession before the Lion and Lioness god is that I have not made light the measure of corn. The seventh before Merti-f-em-tes is that I have not deceived. The twenty-forth before Nekhem that I have not been deaf to the truth.
Maat is "balance", and in the Hall of the Balance Thoth's heart will be weighed against a feather. His heart will be weighed after he has made forty-two negative confessions ("I have not...") to the forty-two gods in the presence of merciful Osiris. If he has told no lies during his confessions, his heart will be lighter than a feather.
Ammut, crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus, will watch the scales on that day. When his heart remembers this day, and it is heavy as a stone, Ammut will devour his heart and he will die forever.
Osiris was once human, and he pleads the cause of the humans who appear in Maat, but Osiris would have nothing to say for him unless he makes his crimes right again. But even then, what hope is there? Thoth would need to be ritually buried, mummified, and buried with the scrolls of the prayers of the dead to even know what to say to Osiris to persuade him to defend his cause. Burial was expensive beyond Thoth's wildest dreams and the books of the prayers he could never afford. Without the scrolls by his side as he entered the afterworld, he would never know what to pray to the gods. And what merchant could afford a book of the prayers?
Thoth was the god who recorded the trial of each human. Our young Thoth could write the divine Thoth's transcript already.
There was no hope.
====
This story was not given at the museum the other day, when I viewed the bodies of Egyptians who'd spent fortunes preserving their bodies. The stories I did read, though, stirred me deeply. These men and women were desparate to live forever, and willing to spend any amount of money to have that chance.
The bodies I saw were those of the rich, but all Egyptians shared the same fears and the same hopelessness. They lived as good lives as they could, and still went to their graves without certainty their many works and prayers could turn Ammut away. They hoped, but their hope was based on nothing more than the stories their priests told.
And that's the last line of questioning. Where did the priests get their stories? And before you answer that question, remind yourself the bible tells how the priests of Egypt were able to turn their staffs to snakes, call lice, and call frogs from nowhere. Would you believe a man who could do these things? Would you fear the stories he told you?
This story is something I imagined as I wondered what a laborer like myself would do in Egypt. I was raised Assemblies of God here in twentieth-century America and I cried myself to sleep many a night wondering whether God would reject me for my sins in the end. What if I knew the decision were in Anubis' hands and only my perfections could keep my heart from Ammut's maw.
====
I've often wondered whether the ancients could really believe the things our scholars say they believed. The three thousand year old bodies I saw this weekend declare the passion of the people whom they were.
I praise the Lord Jesus for the kind and gentle mercy He shows to us all.
06 September, 2012
03 July, 2012
Idols? They're a Personal Thing
A thought here about idols in America. Basically, we don't have any and we might be slightly better off if we did.
In Sunday School we were looking at Samuel and how he made Israel throw away their Ba'als and Astartes. The conversation turned and turned until someone said something that made America's problem crystal clear.
The gist was this. When you sacrificed some grain to Ba'al or did a dance for Astarte or whatever it is you did to gain their favor, you rather expected and even felt entitled to a good crop or a son or whatever you prayed for. And that's why God was so offended by those idols. Some Israelite would sacrifice to Ba'al, received rain from YHWH Who sends His rain on the just and the unjust, grow a nice crop, and tell all his friends how trustworthy Ba'al was. The Israelites really trusted Ba'al in his little sphere of the world. God would not share the credit for the things He did with anyone, imaginary or not, so He fought back.
In America, that could never happen. We put our trust in 401k or the Affordable Healthcare Act or the stock market or welfare or private enterprise. When one of those things fails us, we're disillusioned or depressed or angry, but we don't feel personally betrayed. Our systems and processes are not personal. They're not idols.
The same goes for everything else they call an idol in America: TV, rock stars, sports teams, movie stars, political heroes. We're a lot more likely to ascribe the success of our personal favorites to God than we are to praise them for delivering something to us we'd actually received from God. We don't personally trust personal idols the way everyone did three thousand years ago.
Instead, we don't trust anything beyond ourselves and our kind. Our science, our governments, our culture. We trust our systems and processes, and we are simply assured there's nothing relational to them at all. That ancient Israelite trusted a "someone" named YHWH or Ba'al with his crops. Either way, he knew something was beyond in the control of some other being to whom he could and should relate. The modern American buys a tractor, digs a well, irrigates, and handles pests using tools well within his control. As long as rain comes to someone, somewhere, he'll be able to buy water from his neighbors or the aquifer or somewhere and he'll be fine. And if not, there are a couple safety nets he can fall into. There's nothing personal, nothing relational, about it.
American pagans don't have idols any more, but they don't have anyone else to relate to either. And when we become converted, I think it's very hard for us to make the transition to there suddenly being an invisible Being in our lives Who cares for us and about us, to Whom we can relate.
I'm not quite sure what it all means yet, but it was an interesting discussion. I love Sunday School.
In Sunday School we were looking at Samuel and how he made Israel throw away their Ba'als and Astartes. The conversation turned and turned until someone said something that made America's problem crystal clear.
The gist was this. When you sacrificed some grain to Ba'al or did a dance for Astarte or whatever it is you did to gain their favor, you rather expected and even felt entitled to a good crop or a son or whatever you prayed for. And that's why God was so offended by those idols. Some Israelite would sacrifice to Ba'al, received rain from YHWH Who sends His rain on the just and the unjust, grow a nice crop, and tell all his friends how trustworthy Ba'al was. The Israelites really trusted Ba'al in his little sphere of the world. God would not share the credit for the things He did with anyone, imaginary or not, so He fought back.
In America, that could never happen. We put our trust in 401k or the Affordable Healthcare Act or the stock market or welfare or private enterprise. When one of those things fails us, we're disillusioned or depressed or angry, but we don't feel personally betrayed. Our systems and processes are not personal. They're not idols.
The same goes for everything else they call an idol in America: TV, rock stars, sports teams, movie stars, political heroes. We're a lot more likely to ascribe the success of our personal favorites to God than we are to praise them for delivering something to us we'd actually received from God. We don't personally trust personal idols the way everyone did three thousand years ago.
Instead, we don't trust anything beyond ourselves and our kind. Our science, our governments, our culture. We trust our systems and processes, and we are simply assured there's nothing relational to them at all. That ancient Israelite trusted a "someone" named YHWH or Ba'al with his crops. Either way, he knew something was beyond in the control of some other being to whom he could and should relate. The modern American buys a tractor, digs a well, irrigates, and handles pests using tools well within his control. As long as rain comes to someone, somewhere, he'll be able to buy water from his neighbors or the aquifer or somewhere and he'll be fine. And if not, there are a couple safety nets he can fall into. There's nothing personal, nothing relational, about it.
American pagans don't have idols any more, but they don't have anyone else to relate to either. And when we become converted, I think it's very hard for us to make the transition to there suddenly being an invisible Being in our lives Who cares for us and about us, to Whom we can relate.
I'm not quite sure what it all means yet, but it was an interesting discussion. I love Sunday School.
29 May, 2012
Mockingjay
I had strong feelings about The Hunger Games and shared them a couple weeks ago.
I didn't decide to read the last two in the series in order to blog review them,
but now that I have I may as well share some thoughts.
Up until the very end of the third book, I found the reading pleasant and the story engaging. By the end of Mockingjay, the series was just too heavy for me. I was seriously disheartened by the story, and never felt like the author made it worth that cost for me. My review would be that as a thrill ride, the trilogy meets expectations. As young adult literature, it's a poor offering.
Why? Simple. By the end of the book only a handful of characters have shown themselves unambiguously good, and they have been destroyed. Peeta is the best of the bunch, and by the end he's been destroyed and remade so many times as to be unsurvivable. The series does a phenomenal job of portraying the pointlessness of good.
From here, I'll be putting up big *** spoilers. ***
There were two big hooks on which the story hung, romance and politics. Let me take them in order.
The romantic money quote was Gale's, "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."
Gale is right, and the author's description of Katniss' self-assessment is consistent with the character's story arc. Katniss really is so mercenary through every the page of the story.
She suffers an army of doubts and guilts as each of her decisions hurts Gale, Peeta, and a legion of innocents along the way. Suzanne Collins adds Katniss' traumatic issues to her original poverty and loss issues, creating an insurmountable cluster of obstacles to her ability to love. Katniss grows further and further from being able to make those decisions necessary to build a family.
The portrayal is compelling and sad.
Why do this to a character? What's Collins' point?
In the last handful of pages Katniss gives a thumbnail sketch of how she and Peeta overcome the scars each bears. Katniss does not grow into the skills of inner survival within the story. The story is unrelentingly about scar layering on scar. Incredibly and pointlessly, the salvation of Katniss never makes it into the dramatic narrative. Suddenly it's the last chapter of Mockingjay, Gale is gone, and Peeta is inevitable. No choice. No struggle. Just a convenient end to turmoil. Katniss never crawls out of the deep crater into which Collins' story has blown her. She just sort of tells us about her twenty years of recovery as if emerging from it were a difficult but undramatic thing.
Politics holds center stage in Mockingjay (immediately behind the action, of course.) The rebel District 13 stands opposed to the tyrannical capitol, Panem.
Panem gave us the hunger games in the first place. Panem is debauched on the luxuries stolen from the twelve districts. Its citizens are weak in body, mind and character. Its leader is greedy for power in its purest form, and will do anything to make sure his people continually swim in the bread and circuses that are so key to securing his power.
District Thirteen is the mirror image of Panem. Its citizens know no pleasure, and are strong in body, mind and discipline. Its leader is also hungry for power and will do anything to make sure her people continually swim in the revenge dream that's so key to securing her power.
The mirror imaging builds steadily throughout Mockingjay until it culminates in the rebel leader's decision to either exterminate her vanquished foes or subject them to a hunger games populated by Panem's children. Collins labors mightily to move the reader from sympathy with the rebels to disgust with Panem, the rebels, and presumably all governments.
The money quote of the political story is Plutarch's. He delivers this whilst the rebels are dreaming of the peace and the new republic surely just around the corner upon the war's end. Katniss asks him whether he's preparing for another war. He replies, "Oh, not now. Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horros should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid being with short memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss." Plutarch being named after the great historian and being cabinet-head of the new nation, this quote is quite fitting. More to the point, it's hopeless and delivered in a moment of giddy happiness. The contradiction should not be lost on the reader.
Mayhap government in abstract is OK, but it'll never work in real life. Collins doesn't give us a money quote on the principles of governing (she does offer a vague hope in republicanism) but my impression is she wants to scream out to our children that the worst of us always rise to the top. At the very least, we should be very suspicious of any and every government ... and of any who would oppose government.
To say in giving us Coin she's given us no Washington is the deepest of understatements. Coin is as evil as Snow, and in every way. Before the book ends, Coin has attempted the murder of Katniss, succeeded at murdering Prim, killed hundreds of innocent children, and re-instituted the hunger games for exactly the same purpose as Panem instituted them in the first place. It also bears saying Coin is no Lincoln, and has no interest in reconstruction. Given the opportunity to give our children an incredible set of role models, Collins ignores every redeeming character of history.
Instead, she's given us the ugliness of the French Revolution without all the inconvenient restraints of reality. Robespierre and Napoleon couldn't genetically engineer monsters that hiss Katniss' name, smell like roses, and hardly knew how to die, nor could they invent parachuting presents with which to immolate children. What's more, I question whether even such monsters as Robespierre and Napolean would have done so if they could. Collins' leaders only regret that their evil is thwarted. She carefully mingles her mixture of fantasy and hyper-reality with her presentation of geo-politics. In the end, the conclusion is unstated, subliminal, and unavoidable. Leaders are the real inhuman monsters.
The message can actually be helpful - in its place and time. It reminded me the "helpful" intrusions of the TSA into our privates and the intrusion of thought police for our well-being are not to be blindly trusted. She has a solid point, but I question whether it's the point to be making to adolescents. And I'm sure the use of hyper-violence and the lack of any redemptive character are unconscienable in a book for teens.
America is still a republic, and government of some form is necessary. People do very poorly without some kind of objective justice system in place, and the despair this series promotes is an enemy of that cooperation needed to form a just society. The instinct to cooperation is much harder to build than that to selfish cynicism. If The Hunger Games contained any meaningful example of constructive cooperation, I missed it.
In the end, every character's arc shared one commonality. To the degree that character was strong and willing to be unscrupulous, he or she was a winner. To the degree a character was weak and/or good, he or she was a loser. I believe Peeta, Boggs, and Finnick were the best characters in the book. I hardly need to tell how they were rewarded for their decency. May the Lord shower blessings on those who decide to be like Peeta after all they saw him endure. And need I point out Katniss was a winner? A guilt-plagued winner, but a winner from start to end.
The author's stated purpose in writing this series was to explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age. I cannot imagine any value in this book, except to inflict a small piece of that damage on our children, and that without any redeeming counter-example to the destruction. It's an emminently readable series, up until the far too heavy ending, and that discourages me only more. Rather like the taste of fine liquor, once it's grown on you it seems hard to ever lose it again.
I wish our children didn't have such a taste for this fare. I wish I didn't.
Up until the very end of the third book, I found the reading pleasant and the story engaging. By the end of Mockingjay, the series was just too heavy for me. I was seriously disheartened by the story, and never felt like the author made it worth that cost for me. My review would be that as a thrill ride, the trilogy meets expectations. As young adult literature, it's a poor offering.
Why? Simple. By the end of the book only a handful of characters have shown themselves unambiguously good, and they have been destroyed. Peeta is the best of the bunch, and by the end he's been destroyed and remade so many times as to be unsurvivable. The series does a phenomenal job of portraying the pointlessness of good.
From here, I'll be putting up big *** spoilers. ***
There were two big hooks on which the story hung, romance and politics. Let me take them in order.
The romantic money quote was Gale's, "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."
Gale is right, and the author's description of Katniss' self-assessment is consistent with the character's story arc. Katniss really is so mercenary through every the page of the story.
She suffers an army of doubts and guilts as each of her decisions hurts Gale, Peeta, and a legion of innocents along the way. Suzanne Collins adds Katniss' traumatic issues to her original poverty and loss issues, creating an insurmountable cluster of obstacles to her ability to love. Katniss grows further and further from being able to make those decisions necessary to build a family.
The portrayal is compelling and sad.
Why do this to a character? What's Collins' point?
In the last handful of pages Katniss gives a thumbnail sketch of how she and Peeta overcome the scars each bears. Katniss does not grow into the skills of inner survival within the story. The story is unrelentingly about scar layering on scar. Incredibly and pointlessly, the salvation of Katniss never makes it into the dramatic narrative. Suddenly it's the last chapter of Mockingjay, Gale is gone, and Peeta is inevitable. No choice. No struggle. Just a convenient end to turmoil. Katniss never crawls out of the deep crater into which Collins' story has blown her. She just sort of tells us about her twenty years of recovery as if emerging from it were a difficult but undramatic thing.
Politics holds center stage in Mockingjay (immediately behind the action, of course.) The rebel District 13 stands opposed to the tyrannical capitol, Panem.
Panem gave us the hunger games in the first place. Panem is debauched on the luxuries stolen from the twelve districts. Its citizens are weak in body, mind and character. Its leader is greedy for power in its purest form, and will do anything to make sure his people continually swim in the bread and circuses that are so key to securing his power.
District Thirteen is the mirror image of Panem. Its citizens know no pleasure, and are strong in body, mind and discipline. Its leader is also hungry for power and will do anything to make sure her people continually swim in the revenge dream that's so key to securing her power.
The mirror imaging builds steadily throughout Mockingjay until it culminates in the rebel leader's decision to either exterminate her vanquished foes or subject them to a hunger games populated by Panem's children. Collins labors mightily to move the reader from sympathy with the rebels to disgust with Panem, the rebels, and presumably all governments.
The money quote of the political story is Plutarch's. He delivers this whilst the rebels are dreaming of the peace and the new republic surely just around the corner upon the war's end. Katniss asks him whether he's preparing for another war. He replies, "Oh, not now. Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horros should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid being with short memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss." Plutarch being named after the great historian and being cabinet-head of the new nation, this quote is quite fitting. More to the point, it's hopeless and delivered in a moment of giddy happiness. The contradiction should not be lost on the reader.
Mayhap government in abstract is OK, but it'll never work in real life. Collins doesn't give us a money quote on the principles of governing (she does offer a vague hope in republicanism) but my impression is she wants to scream out to our children that the worst of us always rise to the top. At the very least, we should be very suspicious of any and every government ... and of any who would oppose government.
To say in giving us Coin she's given us no Washington is the deepest of understatements. Coin is as evil as Snow, and in every way. Before the book ends, Coin has attempted the murder of Katniss, succeeded at murdering Prim, killed hundreds of innocent children, and re-instituted the hunger games for exactly the same purpose as Panem instituted them in the first place. It also bears saying Coin is no Lincoln, and has no interest in reconstruction. Given the opportunity to give our children an incredible set of role models, Collins ignores every redeeming character of history.
Instead, she's given us the ugliness of the French Revolution without all the inconvenient restraints of reality. Robespierre and Napoleon couldn't genetically engineer monsters that hiss Katniss' name, smell like roses, and hardly knew how to die, nor could they invent parachuting presents with which to immolate children. What's more, I question whether even such monsters as Robespierre and Napolean would have done so if they could. Collins' leaders only regret that their evil is thwarted. She carefully mingles her mixture of fantasy and hyper-reality with her presentation of geo-politics. In the end, the conclusion is unstated, subliminal, and unavoidable. Leaders are the real inhuman monsters.
The message can actually be helpful - in its place and time. It reminded me the "helpful" intrusions of the TSA into our privates and the intrusion of thought police for our well-being are not to be blindly trusted. She has a solid point, but I question whether it's the point to be making to adolescents. And I'm sure the use of hyper-violence and the lack of any redemptive character are unconscienable in a book for teens.
America is still a republic, and government of some form is necessary. People do very poorly without some kind of objective justice system in place, and the despair this series promotes is an enemy of that cooperation needed to form a just society. The instinct to cooperation is much harder to build than that to selfish cynicism. If The Hunger Games contained any meaningful example of constructive cooperation, I missed it.
In the end, every character's arc shared one commonality. To the degree that character was strong and willing to be unscrupulous, he or she was a winner. To the degree a character was weak and/or good, he or she was a loser. I believe Peeta, Boggs, and Finnick were the best characters in the book. I hardly need to tell how they were rewarded for their decency. May the Lord shower blessings on those who decide to be like Peeta after all they saw him endure. And need I point out Katniss was a winner? A guilt-plagued winner, but a winner from start to end.
The author's stated purpose in writing this series was to explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age. I cannot imagine any value in this book, except to inflict a small piece of that damage on our children, and that without any redeeming counter-example to the destruction. It's an emminently readable series, up until the far too heavy ending, and that discourages me only more. Rather like the taste of fine liquor, once it's grown on you it seems hard to ever lose it again.
I wish our children didn't have such a taste for this fare. I wish I didn't.
07 May, 2012
The Hunger Games
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, definitely stretches the mind. The author describes herself as continuing to "explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age," and The Hunger Games fits that bill. Here are my thoughts on whether children should be exploring these effects along with Ms. Collins. Expect large and small **** spoilers **** to follow.
When it became wildly popular a couple years ago, I was approached by several people who thought I'd probably enjoy it. They were right, and yet I decided not to read it. I'd enjoyed Steven King's The Running Man (the book was wildly different and better than the movie, clear down to what the running game actually was.) I was thrilled by Rambo: First Blood (movie only) and Loius L'Amour's Last of the Breed (a fantastic tale of a lone, hunted man trekking across Siberia and living by his wits and skills.) I like this kind of story a lot. I even enjoyed The Lottery, which exposed the evil of utopias built on unjust sacrifice.
I knew I should like this book, but I couldn't get past its backstory. A society enthralled with watching children brutally murder each other was not an imaginary world in which I wished to live. I took a pass. I didn't read the book until last week, when circumstances motivated me to overcome my aversion. Now that I have, I'd like to share the challenges I find in Suzanne Collins' work. I'll save you some suspense and let you know I don't recommend it.
The author surely serves up an edge-of-your-seat thrill-fest. And it's more richly imagined than I'd been led to believe. The book is not merely a rejection of a culture obsessed with reality TV. In Collins' world, 90% of the populace watches the hunger games solely because it's mandatory viewing. The bourgeios of the capitol, Panem, are rolling in the wealth stolen from its 12 outlying districts and they gleefully savor the drama of watching inferior children slaughter each other. The twelve districts, though, have a much more awkward relationship to the TV show. The government created the hunger games to palpably remind the districts Panem will kill and relish doing so should the districts attempt to repeat an earlier insurrection. Most of the people in the districts hate the hunger games the same way any sane person would hate watching their own children killed for propaganda.
The book is really about one child's formation and probably about revolutionary politics (I've not read the second and third books, but if the series doesn't end with an attempt to overthrow Panem I'd be mystified). Katniss is formed by a youth of extreme poverty -- the near-death-by-starvation and constant-weakness-through-unrelenting-scarcity breed of poverty. Katniss must grow up suddenly at age eleven when she becomes her family's breadwinner. Panem's theft of all her district's wealth leaves her in that awful position, and she deeply resents Panem. Her childhood as a whole shapes Katniss into a person who cannot form relationships easily.
The meat of the book takes place after she's thown into the life or death struggle which is the hunger games. One boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts are dropped into the wild and required to kill one another until only one victorious survivor remains. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to tell you Katniss survives. I knew that when I started the book, and it proved true. There are other spoilers I'd be happy to divulge if there are any parents out there who want a cheat sheet to understand what their children are reading.
The hunger games themselves change Katniss in two ways. Throughout the days of training and publicity leading up to the actual battle, through the weeks of conflict, and even during the closing ceremonies, Katniss is discovering she's loved by Peeta, the boy selected from her district. From the moment they're introduced to each other, Katniss can't make heads or tails of the his kindness. Nor can she understand her own emotional and chemical responses to his love. The struggle unbalances her, but in a milieu of the constant threat of death she has no time to work it out. Peeta honestly loves Katniss, but she is deeply disabled by her childhood. She's incapable of believing and rejoicing that she's loved. Instead, she interprets all his honest care and concern as some carefully devised survival strategy. Katniss is unable to receive Peeta's honest love.
The violence of the games also deeply wounds Katniss. She spends several weeks in the woods with death behind every shrub. Any of us who watch the evening news knows of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the author returns Katniss to civilization with a mondo case of it. Katniss's first trauma happens within seconds of the games' start. A boy coughs up blood on her because he was hit in the back with a thrown knife. It's a gruesome picture, and it's only the beginning. Before the hunger games are over she's killed a handful of children herself, and watched helplessly as another handful die. Death coming so suddenly charges every second, waking or sleeping, with rational, valid, deadly fear, and she's in the arena for weeks. Gathering food, for example, becomes doubly dangerous; a lack of food will kill her, but so might an ambush while gathering it. Every action or inaction might be the thing that kills you.
The author successfully holds us on the edge of our seats while Katniss faces real danger. The author also successfully portrays the scars Katniss will bear for life after her experiences. Katniss suffers survivor guilt when children she respects and enjoys die instead of her, but is surprised at her lack of joy over the deaths of her enemies. Katniss remembers some of the victory celebrations of previous victors, but finds no such elation in her own heart. Her enemies are just more dead children to Katniss, children who never should have been in the arena at all.
All this is consistent with Ms. Collin's stated goal, to explore the effect of war and violence on those coming of age.
I understand the story and follow its execution accurately. I'm not intrisically turned off by action or violence. I grasp the themes and the concepts the author invites us to digest. And with all this explanation up front, I recommend children not read this book.
Oliver Wendell Holmes' quote at the top of this post weighs heavily on my mind. Suzanne Collins evidently has decided children will profit from having their minds stretched by this brutal introduction to death. I disagree.
We introduce our children to sex. When children introduce themselves to sex, things are difficult for them at best and can easily turn unhealthy. Responsible parents manage this introduction with a degree of care, balancing the flow of information to match the maturity of their children. Handing a child The Hunger Games teaches violence and death to children on the same level as sending them off with a softcore pornographic novel to teach them sex.
Why do we withhold pornography from our children? Because it offers up what I'll call hyper-reality. It paints imaginable situations with imaginable outcomes that speak to our most elemental fears and lusts. Low quality pornography paints barely imaginable situations while the higher quality stuff approaches the believable, but whatever its quality the addictive power of pornography is in its hyper-reality. It condenses and distills the joy of sex into a thrilling ride. It invites the reader to believe for a few pages.
The Hunger Games is hyper-reality. Harry Potter is fantasy. The cruciatus curse, which causes an agonizing death by excessive pain, is simply not real. Les Miserables fits as reality. Gavroche is killed when he bravely runs out in the street to retrieve ammunition. Harry Potter portrays larger-than-life dangers that could never happen, while Les Miserables might really come to any of us some day but its dangers are life-sized. The Hunger Games portrays larger-than-life violence in a believable way. It's highly thrilling, but hyper-reality always is.
Reading The Hunger Games raised a lot of questions in my mind. Despair sells. Violence and chaos are now primary marketing devices. Relatively speaking, The Hunger Games is decent and upstanding in its handling of violence. The late Heath Ledger's character, the Joker in The Dark Knight, sets a hideous standard for the degree of random violence people will pay good money to ingest. Compared against The Dark Knight, Suzanne Collins' book is a nunnery of restraint in its depiction of each death, but then again The Dark Knight doesn't portray children killing children for as children's fare.
Stretching your hamstrings is a good thing, but done wrong it can lead to injury. Stretching the mind is what growing up is all about, but dangerous stretching can leave our children with injured lives. The Hunger Games sets twenty-four very human, very young peers to the task of brutally killing each other, and vividly shows us how they go about it. There's no way to spin that as constructive, or as a healthy way to introduce children to the realities of war and violence. There's no way this book can fail to stretch the young minds of its readers, and no way it can do so safely.
Perhaps, it's just darkest before the dawn. Perhaps, in the third book Katniss shows us the way to overcome the scars of war. Perhaps, Ms. Collins will show our children what Victor Frankl learned in Nazi death camps, that life is always worth living once its meaning has been grasped. If so, then maybe I can make room for her having gone so far over the line. The subject is and should be horrifying, so I doubt I could reconcile to it. Even so, I see no glimmer of Man's Search for Meaning peeking through from The Hunger Games. I'd have to see it to believe it, and I'd need someone to promise me it's there in the third book before I'd have any intrinsic desire to see it for myself, but the Internet is all about people telling me I'm wrong ... and ya'll are right pretty often.
Until that time, at age forty-seven I'm left with the image of the boy from District 9's blood splattered on my face and the orange backpack over which we fought. The image won't ruin my life, but I'm surely no richer for it.
Will our children profit more?
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, definitely stretches the mind. The author describes herself as continuing to "explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age," and The Hunger Games fits that bill. Here are my thoughts on whether children should be exploring these effects along with Ms. Collins. Expect large and small **** spoilers **** to follow.
When it became wildly popular a couple years ago, I was approached by several people who thought I'd probably enjoy it. They were right, and yet I decided not to read it. I'd enjoyed Steven King's The Running Man (the book was wildly different and better than the movie, clear down to what the running game actually was.) I was thrilled by Rambo: First Blood (movie only) and Loius L'Amour's Last of the Breed (a fantastic tale of a lone, hunted man trekking across Siberia and living by his wits and skills.) I like this kind of story a lot. I even enjoyed The Lottery, which exposed the evil of utopias built on unjust sacrifice.
I knew I should like this book, but I couldn't get past its backstory. A society enthralled with watching children brutally murder each other was not an imaginary world in which I wished to live. I took a pass. I didn't read the book until last week, when circumstances motivated me to overcome my aversion. Now that I have, I'd like to share the challenges I find in Suzanne Collins' work. I'll save you some suspense and let you know I don't recommend it.
The author surely serves up an edge-of-your-seat thrill-fest. And it's more richly imagined than I'd been led to believe. The book is not merely a rejection of a culture obsessed with reality TV. In Collins' world, 90% of the populace watches the hunger games solely because it's mandatory viewing. The bourgeios of the capitol, Panem, are rolling in the wealth stolen from its 12 outlying districts and they gleefully savor the drama of watching inferior children slaughter each other. The twelve districts, though, have a much more awkward relationship to the TV show. The government created the hunger games to palpably remind the districts Panem will kill and relish doing so should the districts attempt to repeat an earlier insurrection. Most of the people in the districts hate the hunger games the same way any sane person would hate watching their own children killed for propaganda.
The book is really about one child's formation and probably about revolutionary politics (I've not read the second and third books, but if the series doesn't end with an attempt to overthrow Panem I'd be mystified). Katniss is formed by a youth of extreme poverty -- the near-death-by-starvation and constant-weakness-through-unrelenting-scarcity breed of poverty. Katniss must grow up suddenly at age eleven when she becomes her family's breadwinner. Panem's theft of all her district's wealth leaves her in that awful position, and she deeply resents Panem. Her childhood as a whole shapes Katniss into a person who cannot form relationships easily.
The meat of the book takes place after she's thown into the life or death struggle which is the hunger games. One boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts are dropped into the wild and required to kill one another until only one victorious survivor remains. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to tell you Katniss survives. I knew that when I started the book, and it proved true. There are other spoilers I'd be happy to divulge if there are any parents out there who want a cheat sheet to understand what their children are reading.
The hunger games themselves change Katniss in two ways. Throughout the days of training and publicity leading up to the actual battle, through the weeks of conflict, and even during the closing ceremonies, Katniss is discovering she's loved by Peeta, the boy selected from her district. From the moment they're introduced to each other, Katniss can't make heads or tails of the his kindness. Nor can she understand her own emotional and chemical responses to his love. The struggle unbalances her, but in a milieu of the constant threat of death she has no time to work it out. Peeta honestly loves Katniss, but she is deeply disabled by her childhood. She's incapable of believing and rejoicing that she's loved. Instead, she interprets all his honest care and concern as some carefully devised survival strategy. Katniss is unable to receive Peeta's honest love.
The violence of the games also deeply wounds Katniss. She spends several weeks in the woods with death behind every shrub. Any of us who watch the evening news knows of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the author returns Katniss to civilization with a mondo case of it. Katniss's first trauma happens within seconds of the games' start. A boy coughs up blood on her because he was hit in the back with a thrown knife. It's a gruesome picture, and it's only the beginning. Before the hunger games are over she's killed a handful of children herself, and watched helplessly as another handful die. Death coming so suddenly charges every second, waking or sleeping, with rational, valid, deadly fear, and she's in the arena for weeks. Gathering food, for example, becomes doubly dangerous; a lack of food will kill her, but so might an ambush while gathering it. Every action or inaction might be the thing that kills you.
The author successfully holds us on the edge of our seats while Katniss faces real danger. The author also successfully portrays the scars Katniss will bear for life after her experiences. Katniss suffers survivor guilt when children she respects and enjoys die instead of her, but is surprised at her lack of joy over the deaths of her enemies. Katniss remembers some of the victory celebrations of previous victors, but finds no such elation in her own heart. Her enemies are just more dead children to Katniss, children who never should have been in the arena at all.
All this is consistent with Ms. Collin's stated goal, to explore the effect of war and violence on those coming of age.
I understand the story and follow its execution accurately. I'm not intrisically turned off by action or violence. I grasp the themes and the concepts the author invites us to digest. And with all this explanation up front, I recommend children not read this book.
Oliver Wendell Holmes' quote at the top of this post weighs heavily on my mind. Suzanne Collins evidently has decided children will profit from having their minds stretched by this brutal introduction to death. I disagree.
We introduce our children to sex. When children introduce themselves to sex, things are difficult for them at best and can easily turn unhealthy. Responsible parents manage this introduction with a degree of care, balancing the flow of information to match the maturity of their children. Handing a child The Hunger Games teaches violence and death to children on the same level as sending them off with a softcore pornographic novel to teach them sex.
Why do we withhold pornography from our children? Because it offers up what I'll call hyper-reality. It paints imaginable situations with imaginable outcomes that speak to our most elemental fears and lusts. Low quality pornography paints barely imaginable situations while the higher quality stuff approaches the believable, but whatever its quality the addictive power of pornography is in its hyper-reality. It condenses and distills the joy of sex into a thrilling ride. It invites the reader to believe for a few pages.
The Hunger Games is hyper-reality. Harry Potter is fantasy. The cruciatus curse, which causes an agonizing death by excessive pain, is simply not real. Les Miserables fits as reality. Gavroche is killed when he bravely runs out in the street to retrieve ammunition. Harry Potter portrays larger-than-life dangers that could never happen, while Les Miserables might really come to any of us some day but its dangers are life-sized. The Hunger Games portrays larger-than-life violence in a believable way. It's highly thrilling, but hyper-reality always is.
Reading The Hunger Games raised a lot of questions in my mind. Despair sells. Violence and chaos are now primary marketing devices. Relatively speaking, The Hunger Games is decent and upstanding in its handling of violence. The late Heath Ledger's character, the Joker in The Dark Knight, sets a hideous standard for the degree of random violence people will pay good money to ingest. Compared against The Dark Knight, Suzanne Collins' book is a nunnery of restraint in its depiction of each death, but then again The Dark Knight doesn't portray children killing children for as children's fare.
Stretching your hamstrings is a good thing, but done wrong it can lead to injury. Stretching the mind is what growing up is all about, but dangerous stretching can leave our children with injured lives. The Hunger Games sets twenty-four very human, very young peers to the task of brutally killing each other, and vividly shows us how they go about it. There's no way to spin that as constructive, or as a healthy way to introduce children to the realities of war and violence. There's no way this book can fail to stretch the young minds of its readers, and no way it can do so safely.
Perhaps, it's just darkest before the dawn. Perhaps, in the third book Katniss shows us the way to overcome the scars of war. Perhaps, Ms. Collins will show our children what Victor Frankl learned in Nazi death camps, that life is always worth living once its meaning has been grasped. If so, then maybe I can make room for her having gone so far over the line. The subject is and should be horrifying, so I doubt I could reconcile to it. Even so, I see no glimmer of Man's Search for Meaning peeking through from The Hunger Games. I'd have to see it to believe it, and I'd need someone to promise me it's there in the third book before I'd have any intrinsic desire to see it for myself, but the Internet is all about people telling me I'm wrong ... and ya'll are right pretty often.
Until that time, at age forty-seven I'm left with the image of the boy from District 9's blood splattered on my face and the orange backpack over which we fought. The image won't ruin my life, but I'm surely no richer for it.
Will our children profit more?
01 April, 2012
Eleven Pullups
Hello All,
I've started a new, autobiographical blog. I'm calling it Eleven Pullups, and am still cogitating about the subtitle. It'll be something remotely like, "Learning to Talk to God." It's going to deal a lot with exercise and with failing. If either of those subjects interests you, feel free to drop by.
http://elevenpullups.blogspot.com/
I've started a new, autobiographical blog. I'm calling it Eleven Pullups, and am still cogitating about the subtitle. It'll be something remotely like, "Learning to Talk to God." It's going to deal a lot with exercise and with failing. If either of those subjects interests you, feel free to drop by.
http://elevenpullups.blogspot.com/
Comment Moderation: My apologies
Sorry to the handful of you who made valuable comments out here, and I didn't notice. It turns out Google auto-enabled a setting that turned moderation on for any post over 14 days old, then didn't let me know. I've read all the comments, and appreciated them, though I don't think responding to them all makes sense. If you're interested in a dialogue, try me again. I've given Google an email address. :-)
13 March, 2012
The Lion's Jaw
I planted my feet in the imperial box, grabbed Caesar by the scruff of his collar, dragged him to his feet beside me. Turning, I presented him to the assembled Romans of the Colosseum. Facing the crowd now, I could see the bloody path I'd wrought to arrive at this place. Using nothing but the jawbone of Caesar's lion, and the strength of the Lord's right arm, I'd fought my way to the seat of power. Behind the carnage lay the marks made when I hit my knees and prayed for this deliverance He'd wrought.
I preached the story of my Deliverer to the stunned ears of Rome's rich and poor. Caesar imagined he was a god, but my God was Caesar of Caesars. I challenged the stunned crowd to tell me how I could possibly be standing here now, with the empire in my hands, if this Caesar were whom he pretended to be. And, jawbone ready behind Caesar's neck, I asked Rome to choose the impostor's fate - thumbs up? or the lion?
It was then, surrounded by 50,000 speechless Romans, I heard the Small Voice. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."
The spell of my fantasy was broken.
My knees still pressed into the sand of the Colosseum floor. The lion still roared through the iron grating. Caesar still ruled this place from his seat of splendor. I was still going to die.
And after that, the Light would shine. Still.
I preached the story of my Deliverer to the stunned ears of Rome's rich and poor. Caesar imagined he was a god, but my God was Caesar of Caesars. I challenged the stunned crowd to tell me how I could possibly be standing here now, with the empire in my hands, if this Caesar were whom he pretended to be. And, jawbone ready behind Caesar's neck, I asked Rome to choose the impostor's fate - thumbs up? or the lion?
It was then, surrounded by 50,000 speechless Romans, I heard the Small Voice. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."
The spell of my fantasy was broken.
My knees still pressed into the sand of the Colosseum floor. The lion still roared through the iron grating. Caesar still ruled this place from his seat of splendor. I was still going to die.
And after that, the Light would shine. Still.
17 January, 2012
A Way to Pray - Whisper a Secret
The perfect way to pray is the way you need to right now. Be it praise or lament, ecstacy or liturgy, the words in your heart are the perfect ones to share with your Lord. There is no perfect way to pray any more than there's a perfect way to talk to your Mom. Still, there are a couple things you can do or remember that can make your life on Earth a little easier.
The first one sounds ridiculous, but give it a shot anyway.
Tell God a secret.
I told you it would sound ridiculous.
God being omniscient and all, it doesn't make a lot of sense to "let Him in on" a secret you've been hiding. But I'm not thinking of a secret you're keeping from God. Tell God something you don't want your boss to know. Tell Him something you don't want your wife, your kids, or your Mom to know. Tell Him something you're glad your pastor doesn't know.
Sometimes we're tempted beyond what we notice, and one day our weakness carries us away. Sometimes we wear down under a heavy burden. Sometimes we're afraid. We all have our limits, and very few of us enjoy advertising them, but they are an important part of who we are. Whispering a secret out loud to God is an important part of letting Him love us fully.
Telling God a secret doesn't make the pain go away, but it opens a dialogue. It turns a subconscious burden into a conscious request we can lay at God's feet, and the Spirit accepts all such invitations. I've been happily shocked at how much richer my conversations are with God after I've intentionally spilled some beans. Once you've told God your secret, you'll find the Spirit enables your spirit to pray with it and pray about it with solid purpose and direction.
Set aside ten minutes. See whether you don't find yourself coming back for more.
The first one sounds ridiculous, but give it a shot anyway.
Tell God a secret.
I told you it would sound ridiculous.
God being omniscient and all, it doesn't make a lot of sense to "let Him in on" a secret you've been hiding. But I'm not thinking of a secret you're keeping from God. Tell God something you don't want your boss to know. Tell Him something you don't want your wife, your kids, or your Mom to know. Tell Him something you're glad your pastor doesn't know.
Sometimes we're tempted beyond what we notice, and one day our weakness carries us away. Sometimes we wear down under a heavy burden. Sometimes we're afraid. We all have our limits, and very few of us enjoy advertising them, but they are an important part of who we are. Whispering a secret out loud to God is an important part of letting Him love us fully.
Telling God a secret doesn't make the pain go away, but it opens a dialogue. It turns a subconscious burden into a conscious request we can lay at God's feet, and the Spirit accepts all such invitations. I've been happily shocked at how much richer my conversations are with God after I've intentionally spilled some beans. Once you've told God your secret, you'll find the Spirit enables your spirit to pray with it and pray about it with solid purpose and direction.
Set aside ten minutes. See whether you don't find yourself coming back for more.
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