Religion in the world of Game of Thrones

Differences between faith as imagined by George R.R. Martin and the Christian faith

Fellow Pilgrims,

I’m a fan of Game of Thrones. I respect that you may not be. There’s a lot of brutality there, and we all have to discern what we do and don’t want to read and watch. I think that the brutality in the Game of Thrones universe helps to see the painful truth of life in a world of sin. For example, if you want to understand patriarchy, watch the first two episodes of House of the Dragon.

George R.R. Martin (author of the Thrones books) is unusually vibrant in his imagining of religiosity, and, again, he has a knack for bringing sad realities into his fantasy world; the religions of Thrones show us something about how religion goes wrong. They also give us insight into how many people view religious faith.

image courtesy of HBO

Joyous differences between the religions of Game of Thrones and Christian faith:

The faith of the seven worships seven different aspects of the same god. I suppose Martin, here, was thinking of Christian faith in the trinity, but, besides the more obvious differences, faith in the trinity is not faith in different aspects of the same God. Faith in the trinity is faith in one God in three persons.

The Faith of the Seven mirrors the early church heresy of modalism, which denied that Father, Son, and Spirit are the eternal truth about the Triune God and demoted them from being persons to being something like “aspects,” different ways God works in the world. Modalism holds tight to God’s oneness, while denying the threeness of God in Father, Son, and Spirit.

The seven (father, mother, warrior, maiden, smith, crone, and stranger) are archetypes, not persons. The female archetypes are misogynistic, reducing women from persons to phases in the reproductive cycle.

The female archetypes are, well, female, and the male archetypes are male. The father of the seven is an archetype of fatherhood, known through fatherhood in a patriarchal world and focused on judgment and justice.

The Father who is the God of the universe, is not like this. The Father, revealed in scripture in eternal relationship with Jesus and the Spirit, is not an archetype of human fatherhood. He is personal. We don’t know him by looking around at human fathers. We know him as he is revealed as the Father of the Son in the Spirit. He’s not a father, because he’s like a powerful patriarch. He’s the Father of the beloved Son, Jesus, in whom we have seen the Father. And, of course, the Father is not a boy.

The faith of the seven is a state religion, used by sinful kings and queens as a tool for power. Christian faith can never be at home as a state religion. (Yes, I’m aware of historical counterexamples. I would argue that in them, we see a Christian faith that is not at home).

The old gods of Westeros are still worshiped in the North in the world of Thrones, despite the state religion. The old gods are worshiped in godswoods, where their presence is known in weirwood trees. The old gods are tied to nature, perhaps they simply are nature. The God of Christian faith is other than this world. God is the author of nature but cannot be identified with nature. The Old Testament has a thing or two to say about sacred groves.

The people of the Iron Islands have their own religion; they worship the drowned god. This god is violent and is identified with the sea; the people of the Iron Islands are seafarers and brutal raiders and their brutal god has been made in their image. The drowned god is a good example of a tribal god; that is, this god is national or local, for the people of the Iron Islands and not for other people. The God of Christian faith, on the other hand, is the God of all the nations, the One God of the whole universe, who makes all people in the divine image and longs to draw the nations in.

Worshipers of the drowned god may participate in a ceremony in which they are held under water until they stop breathing. Emerging from that watery “death,” coughing water out of their lungs, they are seen as having a special ruthless power. The words of the drowned god are “what is dead may never die.” This may seem rather like Christian baptism. Paul, after all, speaks of baptism as as kind of death in Romans 6. But Christian baptism does not end in and embrace death. Christian baptism is a sign of new life, of resurrection. The servant of the drowned god is dead. The one baptized in Christ Jesus is resurrected.

Westerosi religion also includes followers of the lord of light, a fire god, identified with the character Melisandre. The religion involves blood magic and sacrifices in the hope that people will be protected from the darkness, but the religion elevates darkness. Melisandre offers human sacrifice to her god.

The God of Christian faith is not a false god to be appeased by magic, nor is God fickle and in need of being fed with sacrifice. Those popular words from Micah about doing justice and loving mercy are a prohibition against blood sacrifice and confusing faith with magic:

“With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8)

The many-faced god (in Thrones, Arya apprentices in his temple in Braavos) claims the other gods as its own faces. This kind of coercive flattening of religious difference and refusal to respect the reality of such difference is a popular move (expressed in the idea that we all worship the same god), but Christian faith rests on the particular identity of God. Father, Son, and Spirit isn’t just another name for other gods. Father, Son, and Spirit is the name of the One and Only God. Father, Son, and Spirit is love.

Followers of the many-faced god, the faceless men, are assassins who see death as a gift, a release from suffering. Christian faith sees death, instead, as enemy, conquered in resurrection. Christian salvation is not release from this world but redemption of this world. The words of the many-faced god are “Valar morghulis,” all men must die, and those who worship said god end there, without resurrection. The many-faced god assists in suicide. The Christian God is Life.

Finally, we have the old gods of Valyria. They’re lost and mysterious and continue to underwrite the power of the key dragon riding family. This makes me think of the gnostic idea of special, in-group knowledge. One must have Valyrian blood, speak Valyrian, and call to dragons in order to rule.

Against that, the God we know in scripture wishes to be made known to all. The Christian God is not an in-group elitist. When God elects, God does so for the sake of others, for the sake of the world.

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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