Game of Thrones

THE NATURE OF dishonor and consequence are what these passages teach. For the average Bible reader, the front matter of the book of Hosea—specifically the first three chapters—disturbs the conscience. At the time of Hosea’s calling, God’s first words are: “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (1:2). Wow!

The writer of Hebrews proposes an alternate reality: Any reality worth seeing comes into view through faith in the unseen (see Hebrews 11:1). Prophet Isaiah sees what God sees through another portrait. Like believers today, empty rituals and defiled worship strain Isaiah’s eyes. Do we have eyes to see what the prophet saw in our context of racial intolerance and religious bigotry? Harsh judgment meted out in scripture is generally in response to an act of rebellion or for defaulting on a covenantal agreement. An aggrieved God enters our contemporary global vineyard asking Christians today, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” (see Isaiah 5:1-4).

The essential work of the guardian is to protect the investments. While we are not permitted to “psychologize” the prophet Jeremiah, we can still say that shame is evident. To say, “Why me, God?” rather than “Why not me?” is to be imprisoned by a faulty internal transcript.

Kimberly Winston 4-25-2016

Image via Keith Bernstein/HBO/RNS

Game of Thrones, the engrossing, sometimes disturbing, always exciting TV series returns for a sixth season Sunday night on HBO. The network is not releasing screeners, so it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to happen. But one thing you can bet on — the television show, like the books by George R.R. Martin they are based on, involve storylines with religious elements. Considering where some of those stories left off, religion may come further to the fore in the new season. Here’s a primer on a few of the religions of Westeros, the imagined, medieval-inflected world of Game of Thrones.

Kimberly Winston 3-08-2016

Image via RNS/ABC/Trevor Adeline

Seger, who said she has seen only trailers of the series, says there can still be a market for such shows among Christians, like herself, or Jews.

“A Christian audience can get hooked on exactly the same things that any other audience does: violence, blood, sex, etc.,” she said. “As Christians, we might want to be high-minded and enlightened but that doesn’t mean we are.”

Photo by Helen Sloan/courtesy HBO

A scene with Catelyn Stark (l) played by Michelle Fairley from HBO’s Game of Thrones. Photo by Helen Sloan/courtesy HBO

Is there anything morally redeeming about Game of Thrones? Does the hit HBO series even have a moral vision?

The show is certainly entertaining, almost addictively so, and as Game of Thrones wraps up its third season on Sunday, the ratings reflect that popularity: a record of more than 5.5 million viewers have followed the ruthless struggles for power among the teeming clans of Westeros, the medieval-looking world created by fantasy novelist George R.R. Martin.

That success has also guaranteed that the show will be back for a fourth year of mayhem and passion, swords and sorcery, despite this season’s many violent endings. Or, as one tweet put it after the bloody penultimate episode: “Why doesn’t George R.R. Martin use twitter? Because he killed all 140 characters.”

But therein lies the moral problem for some: The appeal of the series seems bound up in the senseless violence and amoral machinations – not to mention the free-wheeling sex – that the writers use to dramatize this brutish world of shifting alliances and dalliances.

That, in turn, has prompted intense debates about whether Christians should watch Games of Thrones at all, or whether the show’s only possible virtue is depicting how the world would look if Christ had never been born – or what it could look like if Christianity disappeared tomorrow.

Christian Piatt 6-05-2013
Starbucks cup, by EgoAnt / Flickr.com

Starbucks cup, by EgoAnt / Flickr.com

Anyone who listens to our Homebrewed Christianity CultureCast knows that we love Game of Thrones. The writing is complex and dramatic, and the characters are fascinating. What’s more, after the recent “Red Wedding” episode, we’re all too aware that no character, no matter how important or beloved, is safe.

The series, set in a fictitious medieval Europe, is also dark, exploitive, highly sexualized at times, and one has to stretch to glean any moral redemption from the episodes. As such, there’s a debate swirling online about whether Christians can or should watch such a show. Where’s the Gospel? How can we justify all the sex and bloodshed? Do we watch with the (possibly deluded) hope that things will incline toward virtue, even though the series creator has suggested no such intention?

Or should we just turn it off?

Now, there’s a constituency of evangelicals and Tea Partiers who claim that, since the coffee super-chain Starbucks supports same-sex partner benefits, drinking their coffee (and therefore inadvertently supporting gay rights, I suppose) is anti-Christian. So sorry, followers of Jesus, but that favorite frappuccino you look forward to every afternoon is off the menu. If you don’t want to make Jesus cry, at least.