Don’t worry – if you’ve never watched Game of Thrones, I won’t spoil anything for you.
I’m usually late to engage in pop culture phenomena. A few years ago, even though I had never watched a single episode of Game of Thrones, it seemed like I couldn’t avoid hearing or reading about it online or anywhere I went. As the series entered its fifth season, I sat down and binge-watched the four previous seasons so as the fifth season aired, my friends could talk about it without spoiling anything for me.
I was hooked on this fantastic tale of families fighting for rule over their kingdoms, manipulating events to get their way, and reacting to the outside pressures of the coming winter and various magical creatures. To my horror, just as I would get attached to a character, he or she would be killed off. It didn’t matter – I was still glued to my couch. What was it that I (and millions of other viewers) loved so much?
Most of the storytelling we see from Hollywood is told from a personal perspective – we get a lot of character development based on individual personalities and how those established characters interact with other people. Game of Thrones turned the perspective upside down by narrating from a sociological perspective. Sure, we still engaged with the characters, but we got to know them within the context of the external forces being put on them and influencing their lives. People would make decisions that we all knew weren’t “good,” but we empathized with them because of their situation, so we didn’t think of them as “bad” people.
In the last season, the writers started using a more psychological approach, drawing our attention to specific characters and their roles, and we lost the sociological perspective that we loved. By the third episode, one of the main story arcs had been eliminated without fully explaining several of the ancient clues that had been put in front of us for seven seasons. By the fifth episode, the other main arc wrapped up, leaving nothing but personalities to have conflict without any context at all in the final episode. Fans have been left bewildered at the rushed pace, incomplete development and narrow view of the characters, going as far as to ask for a remake of the entire season. Sociological writing is increasingly rare and difficult. It takes many more hours of screen time than simple psychological, black or white, narrative. It is difficult for us to use that kind of perspective in our daily lives, as well.
In the Gospels, disciples and religious leaders are shocked when Jesus befriends people on the fringes of society. Labels like “tax collector,” “leper,” “poor,” or even “woman” might as well have been “bad person” or “lesser person.” Jesus doesn’t see it that way, though. Jesus sees them as people within the context of a social system, reacting and living as human beings with governments pressing down on them, families casting them aside, and norms they could never overcome. Even the tax collector, who is willingly performing this job that most people see as villainous, is operating within a greater social narrative and Jesus accepts and loves him.
When Jesus talked about bringing God's heaven to earth, part of this was to create a kingdom outside of the current social system - to "break the wheel," so to speak. A kingdom in which we not only stop judging other people, but we also make it easier for people to make better decisions. Some churches get it all mixed up by focusing on the individual sins of certain people or the characterization of someone without looking at the context of their environment. Deep down we know this isn't right, even if we can't name why. Many people, like Game of Thrones viewers, get upset and turn away from the church as the Bible is reduced to short verses taken out of context. We know it is impossible to justify this kind of narrow view of God's law when Jesus was so clearly looking at a much larger picture.
Jesus' challenge to us is to love one another. No qualification. No matter the context. It is a difficult rule to uphold, but if we get beyond our narrow views of the people we connect with, we can look at them as a human being, just like us, who is part of a system that doesn't always bring out the best in people. We can be part of God's kingdom right now by doing our part to make a better place for people to live.