Cultural Apologetics in Action: The Hunger Games
August 23, 2012 11 Comments
Cornelius Van Til often said that the Christian apologist should do his work with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. In other words, the Christian must be a part of the culture in which he ministers. By being aware of the cultural trends of his day, he is able to use topics that are of interest to unbelievers to introduce the gospel.
We should be willing to start anywhere and with any fact that any person we meet is interested in. The very conviction that there is not a single fact that can really be known unless it is interpreted theistically [i.e., with reference to God] gives us this liberty to start anywhere, as far as a proximate starting point is concerned…We can start with any fact at all and challenge “our friends the enemy,” to give us an intelligible interpretation of it. (Cornelius Van Til, Survey of Christian Epistemology, 205)
This is the work of cultural apologetics—taking that in which the unbeliever is interested and demonstrating how that cultural expression either reveals the truth of God or man’s suppression of the truth.
No young-adult novels have garnered more interest since the Harry Potter series than The Hunger Games. This trilogy, set in the future, is representative of a certain genre of literature called, dystopia. A dystopia is a vision of the future that is the opposite of a utopia. It typically features oppression by a totalitarian government, human misery and a complete lack of hope. Examples include 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (two of the most prophetic books of the 20th century). In fact, The Hunger Games is basically a teenaged version of 1984 (with elements of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Running Man thrown in for excitement). To date, over 50 million copies of the books have been sold.
So, how should Christians evaluate this cultural phenomenon? The response among Christians has been varied, which demonstrates the complexity of analyzing culture. Several excellent critiques have been offered including those by Doug Wilson, N. D. Wilson, and this one in World Magazine. Putting aside the questions of whether Christians in general should read the books, or more specifically, at what age should a Christian child be allowed to read them, the more fundamental question is how we should interpret them to begin with.
This is where cultural analysis gets challenging. Cultural expressions often have layers of meaning, and Christians using the same criteria discern different messages in the cultural expression. Do the Hunger Games books exalt violence or reveal its ugliness? Do they promote a situational ethics, wherein it is acceptable to kill those whom the protagonist deems to be evil, while sparing those that appear innocent? Is this a matter of a young person being placed in an impossible situation and being forced to make choices between the lesser of two evils? Does Peeta Mellark’s wounding, “burial” in a cave for three days, and reemergence represent a Christ figure?
The ambiguity of the situation in The Hunger Games is part of what makes this series so intriguing to so many. One cannot help but ask when reading them, what would I do in this situation? And further, what is the main message of the books?
From a Christian perspective, the lack of reference to anything divine or transcendent is stark. Panem, the post-apocalyptic world in which The Hunger Games takes place, is entirely a human world, and the overriding mood is one of despair. Here is a truth upon which believers can agree with the author, Suzanne Collins. In a world where there is no God, there would only be despair. I have used The Hunger Games in talking to teens to emphasize that point.
Additionally, morality in the books is arbitrary. Here is an example of the truth rising above attempts to suppress it. The reader feels moral repugnance at brutality and violence and approval at the virtue of Katniss, the protagonist, for sparing innocent lives. But why? In a world where there is no God, brutality is as virtuous as compassion (or more so, as Nietzsche taught). The apologetic value of this emerges when I can challenge an unbeliever to explain why Katniss should be applauded for mercy, instead of Cato for his viciousness. From a Christian worldview I can judge mercy to be good and brutality to be bad, but how does the unbeliever justify the distinction?
By presenting this challenge, a Christian can “push the antithesis” between Christian belief and all other forms of belief to show that what the unbeliever intuitively knows to be true can only be consistently held in a Christian worldview. This is the goal of cultural apologetics. Cultural expressions like The Hunger Games are replete with examples of truth and the suppression of truth that make them fertile ground for gospel opportunities.
In Part 6 we will look at examples of leading cultural apologists today, and see how they use culture to point to the truth of the gospel.