I noticed the Hunger Games is coming out on video, and I have been thinking about putting my two cents in the ring. My son and I went to see the movie when it was on in theaters. He had read the book and I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.
I know the movie doesn't follow the book exactly, but I understand that the premise is the same: young people are forced by the powers that be to participate in a game of survival where they must kill or be killed. This struck me as post modern ethics. What do you do when you can't escape doing wrong? Christianity can't help you because it's simplistic and outdated and thus can't survive when the hard questions whack it over the head. Or can it?
I think the Christian response is and always has been not to participate. There are examples of whole families and communities dying together because they wouldn't play along in the arenas of ancient Rome. The Romans booed the Christians because they wouldn't give the audience the blood sport it wanted.
When Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place that seems to be redemptive, until you realize that she will have to kill someone else's brother or sister to save her own. Thus, the Christian response would be to make the aristocracy kill you themselves. That way they can't pretend it's a game, "And may the odds be ever in your favor."
Now someone may say, "Well you can play your own game and thwart the aristocracy." They may want to see you run through by gladiators but what if that makes the gladiators feel their own gladius? Its only self defense after all. But we must remember that it's being artificially imposed.
What if your playing Galaga, and suddenly the game informs you that instead of alien bugs its going to be real people flying at you with deadly aim. I think we would have to turn it off and let the consequences be what they are. This is what makes the story unsatisfying. The Christian version was told in Quo Vadis whose author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.
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