Already, only less than a week into my resumption of watching Game of Thrones after an at least three month hiatus, I have had to deal with some expected objections. While the opposition hasn't been as fierce as it could've been, I have for years noticed that some Christians love to either condemn entertainment like Game of Thrones as evil or credit entertainment with causing humans to sin. Thus I am going to refute such stupidities. I am going to explain why it is not sinful to watch Game of Thrones.
God, at least according to standard evangelical theology, is omnipresent--and thus sees all, as he is in the presence of all. By necessity this would mean that God sees every sinful activity. Yet God does not and cannot sin (James 1:13). So it follows inescapably that according to the theology of the conservative Christians who oppose Game of Thrones there is nothing wrong with merely seeing sin. Never does the Bible condemn literature for containing accounts or descriptions of sins. If that were sinful, then the Bible itself would be a very sinful text, with its accounts of murder, blasphemy, incest, sorcery, rape, kidnapping, theft, and illicit torture, to name only some of the sins it contains! What the Bible does say is not to add to its commands (Deuteronomy 4:2).
There is nothing wrong with reading about or seeing, in a video game or film, any sin at all. Besides, any line drawn of which someone says "This violence/sex is too much" is purely arbitrary and subjective. Conscience is an unreliable guide based on subjective feelings, and social norms left to themselves are arbitrary beliefs in place because of mere consensus and not rationality. Neither can verify or falsify a moral claim; only verifiable divine revelation can do that. Whether someone likes this or not, logic proves the fallacious nature of using these as guides for moral beliefs and the Bible itself affirms that only it can reveal moral knowledge (Romans 7:7).
Creators of entertainment sin if they make entertainment with the aim of promoting evil or enticing people to commit it, but there is nothing wrong with audiences watching sins in films or reading of them in literature, whether sorcery or murder or adultery or blasphemy or some other moral offense--unless one partakes in the entertainment with the intent of celebrating the sins in some way (like watching erotic media about bestiality or incest or rape in order to get sexually excited). Some Christians selectively object to certain sins appearing in entertainment, particularly sexual sins (my parents definitely fall into this category) or violent ones, and even more legalistic ones might object to any portrayals of sexual acts of violence altogether, despite the fact that not all sex or violence is even sinful. If someone can't handle watching a sin without reacting illicitly on a mental level (by wanting to participate in the sin), then the problem lies in the audience member and he or she can stop watching if need be. But no form of entertainment can make a person sin mentally or with their body.
Now I will address the issue of sexuality in the show. The infamous nudity in Game of Thrones is sometimes purely nonsexual, like when Daenerys is found crouching nude with her newly-hatched dragons at the end of season one or when Melisandre (Stannis Baratheon's religious advisor), naked, gives birth to a demonic figure in a cave in season two. As for the actual sex scenes, they are not only nowhere near as frequent as some anti-GOT people might claim, but also brief, relatively non-graphic, and sometimes shot in a way that doesn't even show the full bodies of those involved. And sex is sometimes not even the only or main thing occurring in those scenes to begin with. There are fallacious teachers like Kevin DeYoung who, in addition to likely misunderstanding what the Bible defines as lust and sexual sin in the first place, will decry Game of Thrones without having watched a single episode and will even admit that they have not watched any of it, meaning anything they say about the show is based on unverified speculation or hearsay. And neither is a legitimate proof of a claim, meaning that to know what is even in the show one must actually watch it first.
Some Christians might compare several of the sex scenes in Game of Thrones to what can be found in erotic media online, but the truth is that erotic media isn't sinful just because it is erotic [1]; some erotic media can be legitimately consumed and enjoyed by singles and married people alike with no sin! The sexual phobias and legalism of some Christians do not reflect the actual teachings of the Bible. Far from it! Sexuality is just another dimension to human nature and is nothing to either worship or fear.
Since I referred to my parents a few paragraphs ago, I will use them as an example of something. They introduced me to the film Passion of the Christ. Much of the movie, as viewers can recall, shows brutal, prolonged, malicious torture of a very sadistic nature. The tortures of Roman crucifixion portrayed here are extremely unbiblical (Deuteronomy 25:1-3) [2]. And they actually happened in documented history, whereas Game of Thrones is fantasy fiction. Yet my parents had no problem showing this movie to me, although they would freak out at the thought of even short non-graphic sex scenes in a movie. They would even panic at the portrayal of nudity in film, despite nudity being neither sexual nor sinful in itself in any way. My parents, and all like them, have subjective, arbitrary, fallacious, selective, unbiblical criteria for claiming that a work of entertainment shouldn't be viewed.
Combine the political intrigue of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings with the moral degeneracy in the book of Judges, make a TV show, and you'd get something very similar to Game of Thrones. If some Christians don't want to watch the show, that is fine. But they violate a command of God's (Deuteronomy 4:2) when they impose their extra-Biblical preferences or convictions on others as if they had some objective moral authority.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-1.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-2_19.html
C. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-3.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html
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