From Brutality to Mercy: Imagining a Different Future

I’ve been thinking lately about how cultures change, and how rarely that change happens all at once. It came to mind while reading Game of Thrones, of all things, because the Dothraki are such an exaggerated picture of a culture built on violence, domination, and taking what you can by force. They’re almost a caricature of brutality, and yet even there, you can imagine what the very first steps of reform might look like. Daenerys doesn’t transform them into peaceful citizens overnight. She barely changes anything at all. But she plants a seed—a refusal to accept certain practices, a different way of leading, a small shift in what is considered honorable. It’s not a revolution. It’s barely a ripple. But it’s something.

And that “something” has been sitting with me, because it mirrors a pattern I see in Scripture far more than the instant, dramatic transformations we sometimes expect. When I look at the Old Testament, I don’t see God dropping a fully formed ethical system onto a people who are ready to live it out. I see Him meeting a community shaped by slavery, tribal warfare, and deeply ingrained cultural norms, and then nudging them—slowly, patiently—toward justice, mercy, and covenant faithfulness. The laws often look like steps forward rather than final ideals, not because God changes, but because people do. It’s a long arc, not a single moment.

Sometimes I think we forget that. We read a command and assume it represents the end of the journey rather than the next step. But if you trace the story from Genesis to the prophets to Jesus, you can see the movement: from vengeance to restraint, from hierarchy to dignity, from rivalry to faithfulness, from “do not do this” to “love one another.” It’s not that the early commands were wrong; it’s that they were part of a process. God was working with people where they were, not where they would eventually be.

And this is where Jesus becomes the center of the whole story for me. In His life, death, and resurrection, I see the clearest picture of who God is and what God has been moving humanity toward all along. Jesus doesn’t just teach a higher ethic; He embodies it. He shows what love looks like in a human life, what mercy looks like in action, what it means to treat every person with dignity. If the Old Testament is the long, slow shaping of a people, then Jesus is the moment where the shape finally comes into focus. He is the revelation that all those small steps were pointing toward. He is God in flesh.

That’s why the Dothraki example stuck with me. Not because I expect George R. R. Martin to write a sweeping cultural transformation—he probably won’t—but because it reminded me how reform actually works. It’s slow. It’s resisted. It’s generational. It starts with someone saying, “This one thing needs to change,” even if everything else stays the same for a long time. And over time, those small shifts accumulate into something that looks like a new way of being.

It makes me wonder how often we expect instant change in our own world, or in our churches, or even in ourselves, when the biblical pattern is almost always gradual. Maybe the question isn’t “Why isn’t everything fixed yet?” but “What seeds are being planted now that might bear fruit later?” And maybe part of faith is trusting that God is patient enough to work with us step by step, even when the steps feel painfully small.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear how this registers with you and how you’ve seen slow change—whether in your own life, your church experience, or the “thou‑shalt‑nots” you grew up with—and how Jesus has shaped the way you understand transformation over time.