Finding God in the Hunger Games

(There is a phrase that 'you see what you want to see.' That describes this book since it tries to relate The Hunger Games to Christianity. In the series (books and films) there is no reference to actual established religion. There are no churches. There is no explanation as to what happened to eliminate religion and the churches but they just aren't there.)

The author says that the people of Panem have forsaken God. (Which God? The got of Christianity, the god of Islam or the god of any of the various other religions? Maybe the government of Panem eliminated organized religion in order to make its control over people even harsher.)

There are various things that the author gets right such as the class division, the presence of starvation and Katniss being 'deeply flawed' early on in the story.

Panem is punishing the people for a rebellion that took place years ago. That means that the sons and daughters of the original people carried that punishment forward to their sons and daughters.

Which the Bible seems to support. Deuteronomy 5: 8-10: ' “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, '

This isn't the only place where God was like President Snow. Exodus 20:5:5  'You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, '

Numbers 14:18: '8 ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ '

Later in the book the phrase 'God loves us' is stated which again has nothing at all to do with Panem since there is no religion in Panem. You look at the starvation and the deaths in the districts and the idea of the games and children killing children and a question naturally arises as if God loves us so much why are these things happening?

In chapter 10 the author says all life is precious to God. Natural disasters kill about 68,000 people ever year. World War II saw the death of about 70 million people. Over 900,000 people in America have died so far from Covid. Again, the question is why do so many died unnecessarily and God seems to do nothing about it.

The author says that Katniss dropped Gale in favor of Peeta. The reason she dropped Gale was that he helped design the weapons system that killed her sister Prim.

He tries to die in the disciples to The Hunger Games yet it's a fact that they hid while Jesus was killed. It was Mary Magdalene who was there with him, who watched where he was put into a tomb, who the next day brought the things necessary to put onto a dead body and who was the first person to talk to the risen Jesus.

The book is thus trying to tie in Christianity to the Hunger Games and it doesn't work. Neither would Islam, Shinto or any other religion as Panem had no established religion and there isn't any evidence of any 'unofficial' religion present.

The book, thus, is trying to make something out of nothing.

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