Lost Analysis in a Minute

If you know me, you know that I love Lost. I jumped into the show after the 2nd season. Our old ministry, Higher Ground (YES!) attempted the first of many Lost-athons. At this point, I feel like the only person I knew who watched the show was my good friend Molly. We had the Season 1 DVD, and we popped in the first disc and started. Three and a half episodes later, I was hooked. We never finished the Lost-athon, but I got the DVDs and prepared for Season 3's debut. I spend the morning after a new episode airs going to various recap and review sites, reading about whether these guys saw the same things in the episode I saw. I am consumed by the meta-analysis of the show. Best of all, I see so many spiritual themes, Christian and non-Christian, interwoven into the fabric of the show, in a nondemeaning way, that I think Lost actually DOES have the ability to reveal truth of the reality of God.

One of the best examples of this was in last night's episode, titled "Dr. Linus." If you don't know Lost, or you're waiting to watch the episode, don't worry. I will not spoil anything. Linz, I'm talking to you.

Although you should probably stop reading if you don't trust me.

One of the characters, Richard Alpert, has been an enigma for the past few seasons. We have seen him in different decades, but never aged--sometimes he's dressed as a business professional, sometimes dressed as Robinson Crusoe, but always the same dark guy-liner. What we know is that he's old. What we know is that he has a connection to the island that provides a central focal point of the show. What we know is that he has been a disciple of Jacob, another mysterious character that we are learning more about as we move to the series finale. In this episode, he made one of the most profound statements I think I've heard, as though a copy of "Purpose-Driven Life" had been Dharma-airdropped onto the island right into his lap. In a bout of desperation, Richard says, "Why do I want to die? Because I just found out my entire life had no purpose."

To me, this is the truth of the existence of a divine Creator who intentionally formed each of us. A life without purpose is a meaningless life not truly worth living. A life lived without purpose is called "existing." Things without a purpose can only simply exist. I stare at the paperclip on my desk, and I know it exists. It is useless in function and serves to only create clutter until it is used to join two pieces of paper together. It now has a purpose. Paperclips are not self-aware and created in the Image of God. The Bible tells us from the very first chapter of the first book that we, humans, were. A life lived on purpose and for a purpose does so much more than allow us to look forward to the future, make plans, or give us a reason to do something. Its so much more.

Purpose means that I have value. You have value. It means that life is to be cherished and respected. It means that we are not limited to being born, breathing air and then being turned into ashes when we die. Purpose is the only reason to have a morality or ethic. Life without purpose makes living well and thinking of others before yourself utterly pointless. If we are given 70 years to exist on this earth and then in a blink, we cease to be, death simply becomes another random function of a purposeless universe. We shouldn't care about suffering. We shouldn't care about injustice. What is the purpose of being nice or kind if the end result is that being cruel and selfish results in the same final outcome. The difference is that when the Creator of the Universe tells you that you exist to glorify Him and walk according to His truth, it matters how you treat people. It matters what you value. It matters that each person has intrinsic value and a purpose from that Creator just as yours. It means that in this life, as we struggle with our deficiencies and sins, unable on our own to ever meet our own standard for how life should be lived, the same Creator, wanting us to realize our purpose, sent His own Son to be the sacrifice required to restore us into relationship with Him and raised that Son from the dead in final victory over death; to redeem us and declare us to be righteous because we have no ability to do it ourselves. It is the reason why Paul declared that if this wasn't true, we were to be most pitied because we believed a lie and we are ALL still dead and just existing. Richard Alpert (and the Lost creative team) leads us to basically the same conclusion.

It means, as I mentioned in the I-268 Sunday Morning class in discussing The Parable of the Shrewd Manager, that understanding how much God values us, gives us the shalom, the peace, to withstand the temporary things of this life to fight for and use those temporary things, for the eternal things.

Don't look to Lost for perfect theology. But don't ignore the fact that even a show like Lost can bring us insight and raise the basic and most important issues of life.