I'm probably the last person in "America" to finally watch the fantastically popular video series "Game of Thrones" which concluded in 2019. But that's what I've done over the last month. In a very belated effort (initially at least) to see what all the fuss was about, I watched all 73 episodes.
Like most others, I was hooked from the get-go.
However, because of my peculiar theological background, the whole thing moved my octogenarian self far beyond any superficial desire for cultural literacy. It turned my thought squarely to what many still call "God."
I mean the behavior of those playing the violent, sadistic game of musical thrones greatly resembled that of the God I and most others in the "Christian" west were taught to believe in. That's because the dominant understandings of God as king, judge, condemner, and punisher were solidified precisely during the period depicted in the HBO series.
Let me show you what I mean by first briefly recalling what viewers saw on "Game of Thrones," and then adding what the series revealed about medieval ideas of God. Finally, allow me to describe the alternative suggested by the insights of modern science - of quantum physics in particular.
My hope in doing this is to bring back from the dead a version of the divine that I at least find more worthy of belief, and helpful (if not necessary) to the project of saving the planet. The resurrected belief also holds promise of redeeming the rest of us from our age-old habit of unquestioning acquiescence while our "betters" repeat with impunity the atrocities depicted on HBO.
Game of Thrones
But first some reminders of what most of us witnessed in the series. It treated us all to kings, lords, and ladies beheading, castrating, and inflicting other forms of torture including skinning victims alive.
Then there were the endless sword fights and battlefield massacres - the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of armed men (and a few women) including spectacular giants, armored soldiers, terrifying ghosts, assaulting castles of various descriptions - wildly setting fires, swinging long knives, daggers, hammers, spears, and scythes, or launching flaming cannonballs, and shooting hundreds of arrows in deadly unison. Fire breathing dragons joined the mayhem to devastating effect.
Significantly, it was all, well, "biblical" in scope and carnage.
Even closer to the topic at hand, viewers witnessed supposed spiritual masters, witches, and military hierarchs supporting compulsory celibacy, slavery, shaming of women, and a sometimes-prudish morality also enforced by torture and death, along with solitary confinement to dungeons where prisoners were starved, and subjected to insistent commands to "confess."
And the reactions of both palace officials and commoners to all of it? Apart from the Wildlings or Free Peoples, the universal response was blind obedience. Everybody but the Wildlings accorded to the royal classes absolute power even if orders given were foolish, cruel, selfish, suicidal, sadistic, genocidal, lustful, or completely demeaning. Everything was justified for the sake of "the realm." Child sacrifice? "Yes, your grace, as you wish."
Thrones and God
My point here is that all those medieval practices shaped western ideas of God who ends up being seen primarily as a potentate just like the ones in "Game of Thrones" - or in the Bible. As such he (sic) emerged for western believers primarily as a king, a legislator, judge, condemner, and punisher. God ended up being a torturer too. According to resultant doctrine, he was prepared to commit to an eternal lake of fire (hell) unconfessed sinners who (for Catholics at least) ate meat on Friday, did anything sexual outside of marriage, or even missed Mass on Sunday.
Not only that but, according to the extremely influential Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the principal delights of those lucky enough to "get to heaven" would be their witnessing the torments of those tortured in hell. They'd take great pleasure in observing the agony of others.
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