And even so I’m not too sure how much I like the series. Funny how that works.

If you haven’t read the books, go away right now. I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about regarding the books, but there will be spoilers. I hate finding out how something turns out in a manner the author didn’t intend, I’d rather you don’t either, and I don’t want to whisper, so go away.

Right, like I said, I’m not really sure what I’m going to write. I was texting my friend Laurel who let me borrow the books that I’m looking forward to discussing them with her, but I still feel the need to work things out in my head, and that’s what I’ll be doing here.

First let me say that I won’t be going off about the violence of the books. I remember seeing a few headlines about this in the past. I never read them because I figured I might end up reading the books, so I’m not really sure what they were about, but they sounded condemning. I won’t be doing that here. If you have a problem with violence in books that star children, you should discuss Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow first.

This morning, as I was mulling over what I read as I finished the book last night, I thought I may as well start reading Orwell’s 1984 to cheer myself up. Yeah, maybe the world’s most famous dystopia would be a more cheery read. A story about one man and one woman’s ultimately hopeless and fruitless fight against a tyrannical state that does not end at all how you hope versus a story about a one-girl-sparked rebellion, that ultimately wins out, told through the lens of brutal child wars? I suppose that’s not really a happier story, but at the least I don’t remember getting so connected to the story in 1984.

I think that’s what made it an impactful and difficult read: that I was drawn in and empathized with the characters so much. At first I was thrown off by the first-person present-tense style of the storytelling, but once I got used to it, I think it was very much to the books’ advantage. I kept imagining myself sitting with Katniss around a low burning fireplace as she recounted to me her story. You could still see the scars on her body, the remembered exhaustion in her eyes, and the desperation in her voice.

Maybe it’s just me and how much I allow myself to get drawn into a story, especially one about a girl, not much older than my niece, who could seriously use some protection, but for a few days everything in my actual life seemed more gritty and desperate. There was a heavier weight on my shoulders walking to and from the bus. Well written, but I hesitate to say that I liked it because of that.

If I dig deeper, perhaps that pressing weight was because the love story highlighted short-comings in my own short-lived romance with a girl I once dated. Which is odd because it’s the romance piece of the story that I found the least well conceived. I kept finding myself thinking, This was obviously written from a female perspective. Peeta is too perfect through 2 1/2 books – pretty much the entire time he’s rational and in his right mind. What boy at, what is he, twelve when he throws her the bread, falls completely in love with a girl and never looses sight of that even the slightest? Everything he does and says is for her. While she is flighty, irrational, and honestly kind of how I would expect a teenage girl to act in her horrific situation, he is selfless, solid, and unbowed. It’s too much a fairytale. With so much realistic grit, this shows up too clean. Of course, maybe I don’t like that because it’s not what my relationship was like. I wasn’t selfless, I wasn’t a perfect romantic with just the right words at the needed time. That stings some. Am I overly cynical, or does Peeta actually exist?

But then there is Gale. The best friend for years. He knows her inside and out, he can predict her completely, words are almost unnecessary anymore. And because he’s passionate about a cause, he’s thrown to the wind by the end of the story and she assumes he’s so easily and cheaply cast her away for another lover. Isn’t it said you are supposed to marry your best friend? Honestly, I think Katniss ends up with the wrong guy. That didn’t play out right. Maybe by indirectly killing her sister he lost that avenue completely, but I get the feeling that that was just the final nail in the coffin to make sure we as listeners knew it was never meant to be. A convenient (and heart-breaking) final nail. Gale knew her, Peeta more or less stalked her prior to the Games.

While I’m doing a bit of gripping on storyline pieces I didn’t like, I still cannot understand Katniss’s decision to vote Yes for a final, symbolic, Hunger Games to punish the Capital for it’s 75 years of atrocities. Everything she has ever worked and lived for since her father died was to keep her little sister safe. She’s drawn to help those in pain as part of who she is in her core. Rue, Gale when in pain, the hospital in District 8. And yet, in the very end she votes to kill two dozen relatively innocent children, after just watching and being horrified by the merciless killing of dozens of children at the hands of the rebels. This is a 180-degree flip in her broken personality. Coming from a girl who grieved for the tributes she killed and their families, this just does not make sense.

Of course, none of that happens and perhaps she was just playing with Coin so she keep the secret of who she would really kill hidden until the end. But it didn’t read like that.

The hardest thing for me about her decision is it undermines so much that the book is working towards. Of course holding a sadistic, twisted version of gladiator games with children to keep the peace is wrong. That most humans’ basic nature would revolt from this is what the book is built upon. It constantly is serving as a warning to us (as all good dystopias do) to be vigilant to not even put a foot on the path to this possible future. It pushes that the entire time, through it’s characters wanting to stop the capital, Peeta not wanting to lose who he really is in the Games, and Katniss’s own refusal to play by their rules. She even is against destroying the mountain fortress near the end of the war. How can you convincingly tell a story trying to condemn such violence and acts of revenge by turning it all around at the end? It falls apart.

Please, someone tell me if I’m missing a piece of the puzzle.

The only piece that, depressingly, gives credence to Katniss’s decision to vote for one last Hunger Game is her Solomonic thought that “Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now.” (see Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Engaging books, thought provoking, a constant wringing of emotions (I need to shake it off so I can trust people again; it was just a story), but, in the end, Katniss has lost her humanity. I’m not sure a handful of pages of broad-stroke storytelling and a short epilogue and change that.

Earlier this month I was reading posts from Jeffery Zeldman of his perspective during and after 9/11/2001. He lives in New York and it was fascinating to read first-hand recent history accounts of the event. I also read an article that referenced other news pieces about what was happening in the week or two leading up to the attack. As vaporous as online content is, I know using a blog to record thoughts and events is hopeful at best, but considering it is my profession to work on the web and I own my own domain and website, it gives me a much greater hold over my content.

I’ve been told a few times that I’m a good writer, a fact which even helped me secure a web design job once. So I’m thinking of writing more, perhaps less deep so that I can do it more frequently. But so often I feel like sharing my thoughts on different topics or news items, and getting into this habit will help me.

Topics like how the web is changing so much and won’t be the same again. I love the coding practices and community of designers these days, but man, I really miss the simplicity of working on the web from 10-15 years ago. But really, that’s a much larger topic for me and would be best in person, so consider that a teaser to entice you to seek me out face-to-face. You can take me to coffee and we can talk about social psychology, Orwellian states, and being human. Yes, all of that from that above linked article on the end of the web as we know it.

With that intro to why I’d like to be writing a bit more, here we go.

In actuality, this whole rapture end-of-the-world business has been unsettling to me. Something is just wrong with the whole situation, and I’m not talking about the obvious. Sure, I’ve poked my fun, laughed at the jokes, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. It isn’t just the situation either, there’s something wrong with us.

Last night, I told a friend that I had thought about throwing an End of the World party, or at least a See-Ya-Later-All-Us-Christians-Are-OUT party, but that as amusing as it would be, it just seems a little, well, blasphemous. I’m a Christian, I believe Jesus. I suck at following his example, but I still believe in it. Which means I also believe that there’s more to life than this mortal coil. I don’t know how this so-called rapture will happen, or what the prophesied return of Jesus will look like, but I think it’s wrong to so blatantly scoff at the idea of it. I went to a birthday party instead.

As a Christian, I’m supposed to be looking forward to the return of Christ. I know 99.99+% of Christians believe literally in the Bible verses that say we don’t know when it will happen and it will be surprising. But I haven’t heard any Christians talk lately about how excited they are for that to happen. Instead, it’s laughter and derision. Sure, that’s because some guy who apparently knows the Bible better than anyone ever is predicting dates and hours. But I find in myself not a desire that he be wrong because it would show him to be a loony bin , but frankly, because I don’t feel ready for it. Remember that verse about the sheep and the goats? (Matt 25:31-46) Or Matthew 7:21-23:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”

Let’s be honest, verses like those are a little scary. Do I think I’m a horrible human being? No. Am I knowingly trying to use and abuse the name of Jesus for my own gain? No. Do I sometimes disconnect from the real meaning while I’m working audio / visual for an evangelistic performance tour? Yeah, it happens. Have I walked by the hungry, the needy, the thirsty, the sick, and ignored them while hoping they don’t look at me? A lot.

Selfishly and with earth-bound thinking there is still stuff I want to do. Places I want to see, things I want to accomplish. In that sense, I don’t feel ready. But in another sense, I feel like I’m failing my savior and my soul by skipping like a goat past the homeless guys under the bridge by my office. At best, it would be downright embarrassing if Jesus came back right now.

I could be, but I doubt I am, alone in this.

Which leads me to think: We’re doing it wrong.

But you know who is excited about the rapture? Who really cannot wait for it to happen? Atheists. And pretty much the rest of the world. Atheists are stoked for the rapture! They’re planning post-rapture parties and getting ready to loot the left over stuff. I’m pretty sure as much as they don’t believe in a god, they really want this one part to be true.

Because then we’d all be gone.

Wait, what? All the Christians are gone and the rest of the world throws a party?

We’re doing it wrong.

If we’re too busy making sure our pets are taken care of to the point that we are ignoring people, something needs to change.

Actually, as silly as it sounds, in a weird illogical logical way, that isn’t a horrible idea. If the rapture is going to look like the Left Behind series, wouldn’t a good pet owner make sure their animals weren’t left out in the cold to die when Jesus takes the owners home? But wouldn’t a good Christian care more about making sure their neighbors (in the broad Jesus sense of the word) were cared for, or better yet, came along with them instead?

This is the crux of the whole issue: the response that the “non-believing” portion of the world is having right now is shining a light on the fact that Christians as a population are viewed as crack-pots, not a loving and serving people that the rest of the world would miss. Think of it this way: when you move away, do you want to be missed and remembered by people? When you die, do you want people at your funeral because they will miss having you around? Apparently, when Christians leave, they won’t be missed. Yeah, there will be a goodbye party, but it’s not the kind you want.

Christians don’t love and care for people and the world enough that they will still want us around. The rapture? Good riddance.

Ouch.

This speech, however, caught my attention in a certain way. I know most presidents reference God in their speeches, pray, and say “God bless America.” President Obama has been no different, but today he seemed much more forward about it. Not only was he liberal in his mentions toward God, but it seemed a large portion of the speech was devoted to preaching the second greatest commandment, summarized as “love people.” My favorite quote from today was this:

“We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved – and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

None of the worldly pleasures matter, just love. Let me quote that again, “what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved”.

Two passages from the Old Testament were also quoted, one from Psalm 46 and another from Job 30.

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.”
– Psalm 46:4 & 5

I found this to be a very odd and enigmatic Scripture choice. It is rather esoteric. Because of that I decided to do a little digging, so I read the entire Psalm: God is our safety in hard times, and there will be bad times, but we need not be afraid. God is with us. Take note, He is in control.

I’m not a biblical scholar, but through a brief exploration of some study resources I was able to understand these two verses more. Through trying and difficult times God’s grace is still with His people. He is with them and will not leave.

The mere fact that this passage is poetic and not direct seems to imply more than a shallow understanding and usage of Scripture. President Obama and his script writers could easily have used the more blunt verse one, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Instead they chose depth. Perhaps they were also choosing something that wouldn’t seem so insensitive to those who only days ago lost loved ones, but I’m sure there are many other sensitive and more widely known passages that would have fit. Instead, there is one that sounds like his audience knows the Bible well. And for those who don’t, it makes you look a little further, explore a little more. I like that.

And so while the president is quoting scripture to us, maybe I will quote to him in return, in hope that it becomes true of him.

“Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.”
– Proverbs 16:31