K-Pop Demon Hunters Film challenges theology of self-loathing with sparkling encouragement

Look to Jesus
Seeing his wonderful face full of
And what’s on earth is strangely dimmed,
In light of his glory and grace.

The K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH) trend has taken over my life forever! (In fact, without exaggeration!) Every time I open social media or catch up with a friend, comments about the film and its music somehow foray into all my interactions.

I watched the film at home with my roommate on a bad day for both of us, and as someone with deep love for subtle and complicated storytelling, KPDH missed the mark for me. While raving about its excellence, it was extremely difficult to break the news to people every other day.

But even as a certified disgust (not my friend’s words, not my words), there are now two KPDH songs that I play on a daily basis in my car. The first is “How Is Dows.” The Line stream “Fit Check of My Napalm Era” unfortunately gets me every time. The second song in the normal rotation is “Golden.”

The other day I went home from the supermarket with a friend from out of town and she was queueing up Golden. As we were speeding up the forested streets of Atlanta, we were shoving a damp breeze thrusts into our skin under the window, yelling the words of a song on the top of our lungs.

I grew up in a theology that emphasized emotional autofluorescence.

I grew up in a theology that emphasized emotional autofluorescence. I can remember many sermons that I should never trust myself, because my basic being was rotten at the core. Christian’s job in this framework is to spend every ounce of effort crawling raw idioms from the hell hole that never stops a supernaturally powerful draw from trying to lock you up forever.

Only the Bible should have been trusted (as “God’s Word”), but of course I was a child and could not trust myself to read it or hear it from God. So, most importantly, what the church told me. And the church said I would constantly betray the only one in this world that could not be worthy of love, trustworthy, and redeem me. My thoughts from now on were therefore that it was the work of my life to hate myself, name my infinite flaws, and feel the constant weight of my inherent evil.

This is about loving and being loved…is that so? Perfect Love – Full of fear.

This Christian invitation is to worship your abuser.

It is more widely accepted that this is a harmful orientation to God. This theological God is the one who tells you with his mouth that you are unconditionally loved while you have a branding iron on your back. This Christian invitation is to worship your abuser.

I know the testimony of friends, colleagues and acquaintances who have been formally diagnosed with some form of mental illness related to religious trauma they experienced during their last few years while accepting such a message in their childhood churches.

The heart of this damage lies in the relationship between low self-esteem and poor mental health. We see that the attack on self-esteem practiced in Asian American churches is exacerbated by cultural values ​​relating to face, respect, honor and shame.

We enter the opening line for Golden with Rumi, the central figure of KPDH.

I was a ghost
I was alone
かないます (Her)

We find a reason to keep ourselves a secret. In our secret, we feel unbearably lonely.

It breaks my heart that we can talk, sing and pray about unconditional love, as we drive our lives covered in evidence of our mistrust. It is us who create warnings and conditions. In the cacophony between the message of grace and the whispers of condemnation (heard through Pew, on social media, and from the conversations and pulpits in the back room), we find a reason to keep ourselves a secret.

In our secret, we feel unbearably lonely. Despair pushes many of us to leave our church. It is only to know that outside the walls there is a place where we are already loved, already justified and already chosen. To taste blessing for the first time from the very place you were taught is free, unbearable, and sad to kill you.

I was given a throne
I didn’t know how to believe it (hahaha)
I was the queen I was going to do so (aah)

I was taught to alk to those who taught me that I love too much. Confidence in itself was not a sin, but it was certainly considered a dangerously slippery slope of free pride. What our church needs is a more nuanced understanding of these differences. I don’t believe they exist on the same line at all.

I wrote a brief about my substance about this. I share the excerpt here:

To try to destroy the altar of pride, our theology has produced people who are caught up in self-loathing and anxiety. Same idol under a different name.

Humility by definition is a modest or low view of one’s importance. It doesn’t focus on the self, but it’s not devaluing. To be obsessed with, recognized or realistic about one’s own shortcomings, we inevitably consider the self to be both centrally important and shockingly low value. We are ruled by our inability to dominate, our lack, our inadequacy. That will be the only thing we see.

But I am not sure I have to make myself smaller for God. If so, what would it say about God? Do you care about worshiping great people only when I’m not? Or, in other words, do we believe that God only has relative greatness?

Pride and anxiety are fruits from the same tree. Similarly, I feel that confidence and humility are deeply connected. What they say about quiet confidence is true. The most confident people I know are those whose self-worth is essential. These are people who know what they are doing but have nothing to prove. I have to admit, but I am not opposed to self-congratulations, showing off a bit.

How do you move forward when you’re filled with shame?

However, this essay is not about confidence. My question is this: How do you move forward when you are filled with shame? There is a registration of embarrassment and is so normalized that it feels almost impossible to name it. Of course, we should hate ourselves. God ordained it…

But he hasn’t. I refuse to believe it. Not when creation is called good before it is called other things. It is not the time for us to endure the image of God. It is not when Jesus is enveloped in humanity just to get closer to us.

Ah, I’m finished with Hadin
Now I’m Sinin
As if I was born
Ah, our time
There is no fear or lie
That’s who we were born.

You can’t face something you don’t name. When I resumed treatment with the 2024 American Spring episode of depression, the most useful practice my therapist gave me was one of the fundamental neutrality. I was sitting in the corner of my laptop bed, trying to tell you how my day was, but it was just a mess in my room. I hated getting back there, but I hated myself for hating myself for knowing it wasn’t my fault.

My therapist asked me to imagine a river. I wanted to roll my eyes, but instead I closed it. She told me to imagine the leaves floating in the river at a gentle pace. She then told me to take each thought and place them on the leaves and simply see them floating.

She tried to see them, really look at them, and asks me to make sure they pass by. This is where you are, she said. This is what you’re thinking. This is your feelings. I know you want to move forward, but if you don’t acknowledge where you started, how can you do that?

It’s scary to live life with bare broken stripes on your skin. This fear is even worse when you lie about not deserving anything… being a demon*.

The point is Christ.

But I don’t think my stripes* are the key. I think the key is Christ.

It is through Christ that I proudly endure the stripes, especially in the church, wherever I go. Some may think I deserve death, but Christ gave me life. They might call me a non-believers, but I believe it. I’m here too, singing praise with you all. I’m hiding. Do you see me shine?

*For those unfamiliar with the KPDH story, the stripes on the human body identified them as demons.

Originally published by the imagination of the Asian American Christian Center. It was reissued with permission.

Mina Songley currently holds a Masters degree in Theological Studies from the Candler School of Theology. Her interests include Christian nationalism, globalization, gender and diaspora practices. She is also a Fellow of Candler Foundry and a deep love for public scholarships. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Princeton University.