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Is Spoiling a Sin?

Is Spoiling a Sin?

Last updated on: December 18, 2015 at 9:50 am by Paul Asay

Is Spoiling a Sin? 2015-12-18T09:50:07-06:00 Paul Asay

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Jim McDermott doesn’t want me, or you, or anyone to tell him about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

In an article in America, the Catholic priest goes so far as to say that spoilers are a sin. Maybe not a mortal sin, but certainly some demerits on the spoiler’s karmic register. (Sorry for the mixed religious references there.) He writes:

We’ve just started the Year of Mercy. And I feel pretty confident spoiling Star Wars is not exactly what the pope had in mind, but still, could you just have a little mercy on me? Because my tickets are for Saturday night, and if REDACTED is REDACTED by REDACTED or REDACTED really is REDACTED to REDACTED I really don’t want to know until I get to see it for myself.

He’s not alone. Pretty much everyone is on high alert for spoilers with The Force Awakens. I’ve had people tell me they won’t read my review until after they see the movie, which is pretty much the opposite of how reviews are supposed to work. My daughter is so wary of spoilers that she’s refused to even watch any of the trailers.

Dealing with spoilers is tricky in my line of work. Over at Plugged In, where most of my actual reviews are published, we wind up spoiling a lot of stuff, which I kinda hate, because we’re all about tabulating and reporting content issues (sex, violence, etc.) It’s hard to write that sort of review about, say, Alien, without mentioning somewhere that “a horrible toothy monster bursts out of a man’s chest.”

Here I can be a little more cautious. (I don’t think you’ll learn anything critical in my Force Awakenspiece here, other than the guy in the mask is named Kylo Ren and he’s kinda bad.) But because I like talking about the spiritual dimensions of a given movie, I sometimes need to delve more deeply into plot points than I’d like. And as a writer who wants to be sensitive to spoilers but also likes to get, y’know, people to read what I write, it’s a tough balancing act: Do I publish something the day the movie comes out, when interest is at its highest? Or do I wait ’til Monday or even next week, when people have a chance to actually see the thing (but might’ve lost interest)?

And what does God think about spoilers, anyway?

(Writing with my tongue at least halfway in my cheek …)

OK, so I doubt that God is too concerned with movie spoilers. For Him, of course, there’s never been a twist that He hasn’t seen coming. And in a way, I guess you could argue that He’s spoiled His own cosmic story: Yeah, sin is awful, He tells us, but I fixed everything, and it’ll be just fine in the end.

But God, the ultimate storyteller, has shown a knack for twist endings Himself. The whole Jesus-died-and-rose-again shocked plenty of folks at the time, after all. And that’s just one example. He likes unexpected heroes, inexplicable phenomena and paradoxical twisteroos. And even while God’s given us a broad-brush look at the future, the Bible suggests He likes keeping some things under heavy wraps.

“It is the glory of God to conceal things,” we’re told in Proverbs, and He conceals quite a bit. When He gives the writer of Revelations a preview of coming attractions, God specifically tells him not to jot down certain things (Revelation 10:4). He doles out plot points in His own good time. (Colossians 1:26). But some things he doesn’t tell anyone—even His own Son (Mark 13:32).

And you know what? He suggests that we should know when to hold our tongues, too. Sure, God doesn’t like us keeping sinful secrets. But He’s no fan of a blabbermouth, either. “A gossip goes around telling secrets,” says Proverbs 11:13 (NLT), “But he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered.”

In this age of social media, it’s hard to keep much of anything covered. But for those of us who got to see The Force Awakens pretty early in its run, let’s be as considerate as we can be to those who wait a day or two (or maybe even a week or two). You certainly won’t hear it from me that Kylo Ren is really Jar Jar Binks’ great-great-grandson.

(awkward pause.)

Um, whoops.

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'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Gets Spiritual

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