[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched the full television series LOST, this blog post will spoil a lot of details for you.]

 

A little over two weeks ago LOST concluded its run on television with a much-celebrated series finale. The show, as most everyone knows, was full of mystery; and the finale promised to wrap up the plot. Naturally, the finale left some people satisfied, and others extremely unhappy (for example, Emily Nussbaum’s bitter response in New York Magazine). Personally, I liked it, but do think that it was lacking in some significant ways. The conclusion of LOST gives us a good window into how Christians engage culture because I’ve known a lot of Christians who enjoyed it. Furthermore, it was full of tensions over faith and reason/science, religious imagery, and biblical allusions.

 

First, LOST exposes the desire for easy cultural engagement. Several people I spoke with were disappointed in what they called Buddhist and pluralistic themes at the end. Yet, leaving the question of whether those labels are appropriate aside, I wondered what was expected. Many of us want to see a particular cultural artifact – a film, a TV series, a painting, a song – and be able to say, “Ah, that’s it! That’s the gospel.” We don’t want to retreat into the awful subculture of Christian entertainment; but then we’re often disappointed when various artifacts fail to point us back to Christ. Yet consider LOST. There were certainly Christological aspects to different characters – Charlie’s death in the Looking Glass, Jack’s battle with the Smoke Monster and sacrifice for the island, Hugo’s eventual acceptance of his role as the new Jacob, and perhaps even Locke’s baiting role.  The show certainly unmasked the darkness in the human heart time and again (even if it tried to say there was some good inside). Finally, the church at its conclusion was a beautiful vision of reunion and acceptance – perhaps what Locke meant way back in the first season when he said, “I’ve looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful.” The cultural engagement that many Christians seek is wholesale acceptance; yet such a course is a path to disappointment. Instead, we would be wiser to look for glimpses of the gospel in what is around us – realizing that it takes the brokenness of this world more seriously than any other vision of reality and offers a solution more radical than ever could have been imagined.

 

Second, LOST exposes the complexity of any cultural project – Christian or otherwise. The general disagreement about the success of LOST’s finale demonstrates that within any artistic medium there is a seemingly endless number of questions. The point is simple to illustrate by one question: what made LOST great? The writing of the characters? The acting? The scope and intricacies of the plot? The cinematography? The sound editing and technical accomplishment? The audience response? All of these details played into the greatness. Perhaps it could have been a better conclusion if all of those things had come together to everyone’s satisfaction; but such a thing is difficult to image. With a grid of Christian faith, we add another level of discussion, but also potential confusion. For example, those who were disappointed in the pluralistic themes of LOST’s finale were probably looking for something propositional in the finale. Understanding the sophistication of any particular medium is part of the wisdom needed to think as a Christian about life in the world.

 

If you’re a Christian thinking about culture – particularly about art – what are you looking for? Are you looking for a complete restatement of the gospel message? Shouldn’t we be wiser than that?