by Abigail | Feb 18, 2025 | Uncategorized
In Jan 2024, Crunchyroll launched Season 1 of a series called Solo Leveling. Based on a Korean web novel, the story is set in a fantasy version of modern-day Korea where portals allow magical beasts to enter our world. When the portals first appeared, certain humans discovered they had special abilities to fight the magical beasts. These humans became known as hunters.
Whenever a portal opens, the hunters enter to fight the beasts inside and close the portal. But hunters are not ranked equally. Some are extremely powerful, while others are so weak they can barely survive the fight.
Jinwoo has such a low power level, he’s earned the title, The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind. But he fights anyway, because his mother is in a magic-induced coma, and someone needs to pay for her medicine. And whether strong or weak, every hunter faces one limitation: they can’t change their power level. No matter how much they fight, none of them will get any stronger than they already are.
This is where Jinwoo’s story begins.
Although he has plenty of courage as a fighter, Jinwoo’s attacks are so weak that he nearly gets killed by the lowest-level monsters. But as long as he can survive the fight, he’ll get paid with the rest of the hunters.
Everything changes when Jinwoo’s team finds an unexpected extra dungeon within the portal they’re clearing. Enticed by the possibility of a bigger payoff, they decide to venture in. But it turns out to be trap. The next scene is both engrossing and terrifying as inhuman statues wreak havoc on the team, and what was supposed to be a routine raid turns into a bloodbath. Although Jinwoo is the weakest hunter, he is the only one able to solve the dungeon’s riddles and help some of his fellow hunters survive. In the end, too severely injured to flee, he sacrifices himself so that the remaining survivors can escape.
Just before his heart stops, he sees a strange message: Would he like to become the Player?
He accepts.
And just like that, everything changes.
In the next scene, Jinwoo awakens in a hospital bed. All of his wounds from the dungeon are gone. He soon learns what it means to be the player. He is the only hunter who is able to change his power level.
He can get stronger, and he does. He now has access to special portals where he can fight monsters alone, and he gets more powerful with every fight.
Season 2 started in Jan 2025. When last week’s episode dropped,there were so many people downloading it right away, it crashed the server. They brought the server back up, and it crashed again.
What makes this story so captivating?
Relatability
For starters, both the story and the character are relatable. People of the 2020’s find common ground with the idea of being surrounded by evil and feeling powerless to do anything about it. For many, it does feel like we’re stuck at a low power level. Who wouldn’t want to grow stronger and be able to fight back?
Watching Jinwoo go through this transformation is fun and inspiring. It’s also well-handled in the series. He doesn’t get strong right away, and even has to do daily, physical workouts, or the game sends him to a penalty zone. In his first solo fight, he’s not much stronger than he was at the beginning. He’s able to defeat the lowest level beasts for the first time, but the next ones still give him a run for his money.
During that first fight, there’s one moment where Jinwoo deftly flips a knife in his hand. It’s small, but significant. The old Jinwoo didn’t have even that much skill. It’s the first hint that something has changed, with a subtle promise of more to come.
Story Structure
The series also does a good job following classic story structure. Jinwoo’s situation at the beginning is one that you want to see him get out of. He’s likeable, but if something doesn’t change, he’s likely to die a pitiful death in some low-level dungeon.
The inciting incident is not only nailbiting and — seriously, terrifying — but it reveals more about Jinwoo that makes us want to root for him. He solves the puzzles, he’s chivalrous despite his weakness, and he’s as scared as anyone else but still has guts. All of this proves that he’s a character worth following.
After that, we enter a new world where Jinwoo no longer has to be weak. Although the inciting incident was something that happened to him, it was his choice that landed him where he is now. In the new world, it’s still his choices driving the action. He chooses to enter the solo dungeon and take on the boss when he probably isn’t quite ready. He chooses to keep getting stronger, but also decides to keep his rare power a secret because fame would get in the way of his goals. And just when it seems like he’s starting to figure things out, the story will throw in some new element that raises the stakes again.
Moral Complexity and Setting
It’s been said (probably) that power amplifies a person’s character. Bad character will translate to more powerful evil. Jinwoo demonstrated noble character in the beginning, but as he gains more power, the moral dilemmas he faces become more complex. He fights not only magical beasts but also murderous humans. His new skills carry a different weight when he’s forced to kill in order to save his own life.
The setting aids this complexity, because it has one very interesting character – the game. This faceless, godlike entity that is both setting and character is a constant reminder that Jinwoo is not in total control, no matter how strong he gets. Is the game a good guy, or a bad guy? Although it’s the reason that Jinwoo survived episode one, it’s also the reason that his life was endangered in the first place, and it serves as an unpredictable antagonist.
Throughout season one, Jinwoo strives to keep his unique power a secret—officially, he’s still ranked as a low-level hunter. But keeping his anonymity becomes more difficult as his power grows. This applies additional tension to the plot.
All of these story elements put together, plus some quality artwork and high-action fight scenes, create the kind of show that can crash a server.
Now that I’ve spent several paragraphs raving about it, a brief disclaimer: This is an adult series, and there are some bloody scenes on occasion, particularly in the beginning. It’s not a Christian show either, and there are some elements of game magic that are typical in a LitRPG type of story. This is one thing I myself am sensitive to, but Jinwoo fights with a sword and for the most part can’t use magic at all. For those characters that do use it, there are no spells, pentagrams, or witch hats, and it comes across more like superhero powers. But if you’re already a fan of the genre, you’ll find nothing objectionable.
by Abigail | Jan 17, 2025 | Uncategorized
When Satan wants to attack a person, he’ll often target the soul (the mind, will, and emotions — not to be confused with the spirit of a person.) If something happens that weakens our soul, it makes us vulnerable to this kind of attack. We’ve all been through things that weakened our soul, but if we’re alert to what’s happening in those moments, we can help protect ourselves from Satan’s schemes.
Here are four basic things that weaken the soul:
1. Trauma
This could take the form of an accident or injury, particularly one that requires a long time to heal. The healing process involves our whole being, because our mind and emotions must heal as well. Although a lot of attention is given to the body during the recovery, the life-disrupting aspects of such an event can take a heavy toll on the psyche.
2. Loss of Freedom
An injury that requires bed rest can leave someone with a sense that they’ve lost their freedom, because it’s not as easy to move about. Even when it’s not connected to injury, loss of freedom alone can wear down the soul. During COVID, most people experienced a loss of freedom in some way—being unable to go certain places or do certain things for a long time, and this contributed to the weight of that event. God created people to have free agency, and our souls suffer at time when we feel trapped.
3. Environment
An incident that weakens the soul doesn’t have to be an acute experience or a single moment; sometimes it can be a series of lesser events drawn out, which weakens the soul over time, as with the previous example during COVID. This can also apply to environment. Someone who lives in a hostile environment, whether it’s at work, at school, or at home, will eventually bear the impacts of that environment on their soul.
4. Significant Loss and Grief
Any significant loss—whether it’s the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, for example—will, of course, strike at the soul. This is especially true when it results in grief. Grief is a personality. There are grieving spirits that will operate during these kinds of intense events, and their aim is to prolong the mourning process—indefinitely, if they can.
Such events also share common characteristics, such as confusion. When the incident first occurs, there’s great confusion—things don’t make sense, the world has been turned upside-down. This is a very vulnerable time for the soul. Another common characteristic is change—the significant loss causes change, whether temporary or permanent, and this is something else the soul has to deal with.
It can be difficult to keep up our spiritual defenses when our souls are already dealing with so much, but it’s in these times that we need those defenses the most. When our souls are weakened, we can be more easily influenced to do things we wouldn’t normally do—go places we wouldn’t normally go, spend time with someone—sometimes anyone—that we wouldn’t normally hang out with. While these are natural responses to traumatic events, it can cause us to leave the kind of openings that Satan would love to exploit.
So what can we do about it? Here are five things we can use to build up our souls:
1. Run to Friends and Family
If we recognize that we’re in a vulnerable moment, we can protect ourselves by gravitating toward people that keep us steady—whether it’s parents, a spouse, a brother or sister, or close friends. It should be someone who knows us well enough to understand what we’re facing and help us avoid emotionally-based decisions that we wouldn’t otherwise make.
This is most helpful in the early stages of a soul wound, but eventually that wound needs to be healed. And that will require a spiritual approach.
2. Scriptural Declarations
We can use scriptures that talk about restoration, rest, peace and comfort, and read these out loud on a regular basis. Initially, we may not feel much different. But Psalm 23 says the Lord restores our souls—we’re not looking to only soothe the soul, we want to heal it. That’s a spiritual process that won’t always affect how we feel, especially in the beginning.
3. Listening to Teaching
Along with declaring scripture over ourselves, I recommend finding a spiritual teacher that you like to listen to and who comforts your soul—whether it’s because they’re funny or enlightening or thought-provoking. This can simultaneously soothe our souls and strengthen them spiritually.
4. Listen to Music
Have you ever heard that water particles will reshape themselves in response to sound? A constant layer of worship music in the background (worship that heals, not the sad, lamentations-type stuff) can create a spiritual atmosphere that will soak into the soul over time.
5. Fellowship
Continuing to spend time around other strong Christians on a regular basis will uplift our souls. I think the most effective version of this is at church, in the worship service. Bible studies useful too, and outreach/social events may help, but there’s something about being in a large group of believers that stirs our spirits and refreshes our souls.
by Abigail | Dec 7, 2024 | Uncategorized
Paranormal Research
It must have been a startling revelation for Americans of the 90’s when they learned that the government had been using paranormal research to fight the Cold War.
From 1975 to 1995, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Stanford Research Institute conducted Project Stargate, a program designed to research remote viewing and its potential applications for gathering intelligence.
For those who may not know, the concept behind remote viewing is that a person can “visit” distant locations with their mind, allowing them to describe something they can’t actually see. Movies and TV series have made paranormal research like this well-known, most recently with the Stranger Things series, where the character El is able to witness far-off conversations, or even visit the “Upside-Down” with her mind.
The people involved in this research had very academic names for it: “behavorial science,” “parapsychology,” and “psychic research.”
But they weren’t the first people to gain knowledge by extra-sensory means.
Jesus displayed this kind of “skill” on multiple occasions, such as when he told his disciples to go pick up the colt for his ride into Jerusalem. He not only told them where to get it, but described what kind of person they would meet and what he would be carrying. Not only did Jesus know details about a location he couldn’t see, but he knew future details that hadn’t yet happened.
Of course, Jesus didn’t do this by remote viewing. He knew those details in his spirit, through communion with the Father.
Those who practice remote viewing and similar psychic “skills” are also doing it through spiritual means, whether they know it or not. They are doing it through the occult.
In that sense, remote viewing is no different than using tarot cards and consulting mediums. It’s a way to obtain supernatural knowledge, but without God.
That means that the US government sponsored occultic activities to help fight the Cold War. In other words, instead of turning to God for help, they turned to the forces of darkness.
This didn’t only happen in the case of remote viewing. I’ve heard that in 1967, the US government made a pact with a demonic entity for assistance in defeating the Soviet Union. I haven’t been able to find additional details on that one, but I do believe it. 1967 was the same year that Roe v. Wade happened, opening the doors for child sacrifice in America.
What does this mean for a nation?
Individuals can and do make agreements with demonic forces, sometimes on purpose, sometimes unwittingly. When this happens, in order for a person to get free, that agreement has to be canceled and nullified. But when a person is acting on behalf of a nation, their decisions will affect the course of that nation.
The men who fought the Revolutionary War relied on God to bring them through. As a result, Revolutionary War history is full of stories about moments of divine providence which defy logic—fog that moved in at just the right moment, or decisions the enemy made that benefited the Americans. But somewhere between the 1700’s and the 1900’s, America’s leaders shifted, until they were looking for help from a totally different god.
When representatives of appropriate authority seek out psychic spirits to help their nation win its battles, instead of seeking wisdom from God, this creates as inroad for those evil spirits to begin interfering with that nation. This is called a breach.
The Fix
Correcting this problem relies on the fact that the spiritual realm operates on law and authority. When new leadership comes into an organization, they have the ability — i.e., the authority — to reclaim that organization’s purpose and dedicate its efforts to God.
For those of us who aren’t in such leadership positions, we can still pray for those leaders and intervene on their behalf. This isn’t just for the national level, either. We can exert our influence in our local communities, and that’s really the best place to start.
I believe that when we get to Heaven, we’ll be amazed to find out how powerful our warfare and our prayers really were. The Bible is full of stories about imperfect people who made a tremendous difference. So don’t sell yourself short 🙂
-AJ
