Society, rebellion, repercussions

I’m highly effected by books.
Maybe cuz I have time to read 1 per year.

Over the past week, I’ve finished Hunger Games books 1 & 2 late at night, and found myself driven to prayer.

Because while post-apocalyptical stories can be crazy & exaggerated, Hunger Games has driven me back to The Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers. Mark of the Lion is historical fiction set in a Roman culture of sending people into the arena to feed appetites for extreme entertainment. That really happened.

Are we really so far from that?

I hope we are.

But I think it is helpful and smart to review the past, consider the possibilities in the future, and decide how we will live now.
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Hopefully not spoiling Hunger Games for anyone, I’m gonna tell you what my prayers have been.

Lord, what are the atrocities in my world that I’m overlooking?

Hunger Games is not the beginning of a story of oppression. It is an inspiring story of being fed up.

But prior to that…
In the 73 years that life went on while a small, palatable group of families had their lives ruined, there were tons of people thankful to not be touched by the oppression who did NOTHING.

So instead of just wondering about oppression in the world last night, I began to think about how smart the author of Hunger Games was in her design of this oppressive future.

The land is called Panem. It’s vaguely defined by regions, but each region is more defined by their contribution of resources (coal, food, etc). The name made me think of Pangea, the name given to the land mass of all our continents before they were separated by oceans. The entire world on 1 continent.

As oceans have become less of a barrier, we are functional one society. As the powerful democracy, we often define a country by their resources (oil, diamonds, etc).

Here are my questions:

When God reveals an atrocity to you/us, what is our response?

Do we hope it touches our life as little as possible, never hurting MY children?

Or do we admit that it is touching SOMEONE’s children, and that should end?