“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I finally broke down and did it. I waited as long as I could. I really could have done it at any time, but I just didn’t want to at first. But then everybody was doing it. Just about literally everybody. And everybody was talking about it. And it was a cultural phenomenon. And I finally just had to see for myself. So I did it. It wasn’t very long. And it was better than I expected. It really was as good as most everybody had said. And there were just so many Gospel touchpoints. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch on that mark, but it touched on some truths that are really important to understand. If only it offered real solutions. Wondering what I’m talking about? I finally watched the international smash hit, KPop Demon Hunters. Let’s talk about it.

KPop Demon Hunters is about a fictional KPop girl band, Huntrix, who are secretly demon hunters. It’s kind of all there in the name. Using an opening exposition dump, we learn right out of the gate that hundreds of years ago, some people discovered that singing can create a barrier that demons can’t cross. This prevents them from coming into this world from the demon world in order to steal our souls to feed their master. Ever since, there has been a group of women who sing together to keep this song going. Their songs combined with the love of their fans, helps to keep in place and strengthen the Honmoon, this mystical barrier. The current set of singer-warriors, Huntrix, have grown so famous and so talented that their upcoming song is going to strengthen the barrier and seal it forever.

In an act of desperation, Gwi-ma, the chief demon, is convinced by one of his chief demon warriors, Jinu, to counter Huntrix’s deadly work by sending a demonic KPop boy band to steal the girls’ fans, weakening the Honmoon, and allowing the demons to destroy it. Thus the Saja Boys are formed. They immediately make a major splash and start successfully stealing Huntrix’s fans. Things are made worse when Huntrix’s lead vocalist, Rumi, begins losing her voice.

One key detail to note here is that while demons sometimes disguise themselves as humans in order to covertly gain access to us, the way you can tell who is a demon and who isn’t is by the patterns on their skin. Demons have tattoo-like patterns on their skin that flash occasionally, and as soon as you see those, you know exactly who you are dealing with. For the Huntrix members, you know who to destroy in order to send back to the demonic realm.

Well, as it turns out, Rumi has patterns. While her mother was a human, her father is a demon, and therefore, she belongs to the demons. Her adoptive mother, who was the lead vocalist of the band that kept the world safe before Huntrix took over the scene, was supposed to destroy her, but couldn’t. Instead, she trained her to be a demon hunter and taught her to hide her patterns from the rest of the world until they could seal the Honmoon forever, at which point her patterns would go away and she would be safe from the influence of Gwi-ma forever.

These patterns became for her a point of constant shame. They created an artificial distance between her and her demon hunter sisters, Mira and Zoey. She was ever having to hide from them. She never joined them in certain activities that might reveal her patterns to them, marking her as someone who needed to be destroyed. The strain was getting to her, and it was affecting her ability to sing.

She successfully kept everyone from knowing about her patterns until in a battle against the Saja Boys and the demon hoards they commanded, they accidentally got exposed to Jinu. But instead of exposing her, he helps her to hide her patterns so that she can continue the battle and rescue her bandmates. After the battle, Jinu invites her to secretly meet with him and eventually we learn his story.

Jinu is not a regular demon. He was a human who made a deal with Gwi-ma hundreds of years ago to receive a better life in the emperor’s palace than the misery he was living in before that. He tells Rumi that he made the deal to save himself and his family to look more noble to her, but the truth is that he made the deal to save himself and left his family to continue suffering in poverty. The shame of that betrayal has haunted him ever since. Gwi-ma makes him forever relive the pain only giving him relief from the torment when Jinu serves him faithfully.

As for the rest of the movie, Rumi and Jinu fall in love, he agrees to help her strengthen the Honmoon to rescue himself from Gwi-ma’s clutches so he can be with her, but eventually Rumi’s patterns get exposed to Mira and Zoey, causing Huntrix to crumble under the weight of the mistrust caused by the deception. Just when it looks like all is lost, though, the girls learn to love each other again, seal the Honmoon, and everybody lives happily ever after. Or, at least, they will until the sequel arrives with more danger for the world.

Honestly, the movie was better than I expected it to be. The music, which is the thing that drew everybody to it, really is pretty catchy. The Oscar for Best Song win for Golden, the main song in the film, was in part because of just how popular it was, but it really was a pretty good song. The animation style is really well done. The story is cheesy, but the excellent voice acting makes up for that. All in all, I’m glad I finally watched it. I imagine I’ll watch the sequel when that comes out as well.

What really caught my eye, though, was the way shame worked as the main tool Gwi-man used to keep his minions under his thumb. For both Jinu and Rumi, it was the shame of their pasts that proved to be the biggest obstacle for them to overcome. Jinu was constantly reliving his betrayal of his family. The shame of his sin was his prison. For Rumi, her patterns meant that she was an impostor with Mira and Zoey. If they ever found out about them, they would immediately reject her and even move to destroy her. This was a shame drilled into her head by her adoptive mother. It was passed on to her as an act that was intended to be loving and protecting, but it was tearing her apart from the inside. The shame of her perceived sin was a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode on her.

Friends, this is how our enemy operates. Sin causes shame. We see that immediately in the Genesis account of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. They each took a bite of the fruit from the tree that God had told them not to eat from and the very first thing they both did was to hide. They hid from each other and they hid from God. They were aware of their sin and shame was the immediate result.

That same shame is still very much around today. When someone sins, rarely do they do it out in public. Instead, they do it where and when they think no one is looking. They do it where they are sure they will be able to cover their tracks. Sin thrives in the dark, and we will do all kinds of things to keep that darkness in place so that not only can we keep our sin hidden, but so that we can keep our sin active. In our heart of hearts, we don’t want to give up our sin. That’s a big part of why we hate the light. We hate ourselves for our sin, but we hate the light that threatens to expose and take away our sin.

This becomes an echo chamber of sorts where our sin, left alone and untreated, does not tend to remain small. It grows to fill the space it has been given. And when gets to the point that it is pushing against those borders, we are left with a choice: expose it, or allow the darkness to expand so that we can keep it contained. Far too often we give into the darkness and let it consume more and more of our lives. Eventually, there won’t be anything left if we leave it too long. That’s Hell in a nutshell.

What is the solution for this terrible problem? This is where the movie unfortunately departs from the Gospel. The counsel the filmmakers offer is that we just need to embrace our sin, to own what makes us different and unique, and then everything will be okay. To put that another way, we just need to own our truth, reject the shame of our sin, and then we’ll be able to walk through life loud and proud. No more shame for us. Rumi’s decision to own her patterns and to keep fighting against the darkness anyway feels unearned and forced at the end. In one scene she is utterly defeated by it, and in the next she has done a complete 180. That’s just not how life works. It’s not how sin works. It’s most definitely not how salvation from our sin and our shame work.

We can’t remove our shame unless and until we remove our sin. Of course, we can’t remove our sin unless and until we get help. On our own, we are right where Paul is at the end of Romans 7. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” KPop Demon Hunters suggests that we can just rescue ourselves with the power of self-confidence and love, or something like that.

Yet as much as we might try to claim our sin and live it out proudly, that never really works. For starters, there are only a few sins that we can successfully do that with, culturally speaking. Right now, sexual sins (but only some of them) are being embraced by the culture. If you are struggling with certain forms of what was historically recognized as sexual deviancy, you can own that publicly and expect to be celebrated for it as a hero. Other sins have to stay hidden. But even if you claim your sin and start flouting it publicly, you’ll still know in your heart of hearts that it’s wrong. And because you can’t flout all your sin, you’ll still have that thing hiding in the dark causing you shame. It’s a vicious cycle that only ever leads to pain and frustration and, in the end, death.

The solution to all of this is found in only one place: Jesus. Jesus took our shame to the grave by sacrificing His life for us on the cross. Because He wore our shame, we don’t have to any longer. Now, when we put our faith in Him, we can experience the freedom He won for Himself and shares with us. In Him, as Paul gloriously declared in Romans 8: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.”

With our sin covered, we can walk fully in the light as He is in the light. We are made right with God in Christ and can stand before Him and the rest of the world with confidence and humility. We stand with confidence not in our sin, but as those who have been redeemed in Christ. We acknowledge our sin still, but the shame is gone because, again, He has taken it from us. We acknowledge our sin in Him because that gives us the opportunity to point to Him as the one who makes us whole in spite of our sin. And when we walk in Him, He helps us to sin no longer. Now, yes, that process takes a while to fully set in, but that’s the path we are on in Him. And that is a path that leads unavoidably to life.

KPop Demon Hunters correctly identifies one of the major problems with sin in the world and in our lives. But in the end, it just wallpapers over the problem and settles for the lazy, cultural solution of embracing our sin rather than actually dealing with it, rather than seeing it repented of, and ourselves redeemed and restored. This does a great disservice to viewers when the truth would have been just as easy to share. The filmmakers may have missed out on the truth, but let’s make sure that you and I don’t.