Last Sunday night could have been called “the end of an era.” For over half a decade, folks from different religions, nationalities, and continents were brought together in viewing the Lost series. It all culminated in the Series finale last Sunday. For those of you who tuned in and subsequently followed all the web talk afterwards, this was probably the most well-written, character-developed series that has ever been seen. That is a pretty bold statement, but I stand behind it. I wasn’t a follower of MASH, Cheers, or Seinfeld (at the time); but the support of Lost is overwhelming – over 13.5 million watched the series finale.
In the aftermath, there was much talk about the metaphorical language surrounding Lost. In fact, Jason Shapiro has created a newsletter called “The Lost Cause” and has analyzed the last episode down to a T. Kudos to Jason; it was a pleasure reading your review (if you’re interested in reading, just ask him at SixTen!). In addition, I read a great review by Joe Carter at First Things. As the last episode confirmed, Jack became the central figure in the story of the island. All the other stories of the characters were redemption stories stemming from the feature story of Jack. From a Christian standpoint, it was impossible not to think of Jack as a sort of Christ-like figure. His sacrifice at the end lent us to reflect on the sacrifice of Christ for his people. In that act, Jack embodied the nature of his own name: Sheppard. The way Christ is a good sheppard to his sheep, so also was Jack a sheppard to his friends on the island. But, indeed, even though these parallels can be drawn, some holes remain. Here is just some of what Joe had to say about Jack:
“In case that is too subtle, the producers also gave him a name with a Biblical allusion (the Good Sheppard), a father whose name screams God-figure (Christian Shephard), have him drink from a cup in the garden after submitting his own will to the higher purpose, give him holy wounds in his side in a fight with the Devil, and then have him sacrifice his life for both his friends and enemies. No doubt the producers would have called the character “Jesus Christ” had their lawyers not warned that the name might already be trademarked.
Although the show’s creators recognize the value in having a Christ-figure, they fail to understand the significance and purpose of the actual figure of Christ. They’ve seen the archetype used in movies (e.g., Neo in The Matrix) and literature (e.g., Simon in the Lord of the Flies) and assumed that merely having a Christ-figure in the story was enough to tap into a Jungian collective unconscious. But because they fail to appreciate how the death of Christ affects the metanarrative of history, they do not realize how their Christ-figure is supposed to affect the narrative of their own plot.
The theologian Herman Bavinck provided a basic outline of the Christian metanarrative that would be useful for filmmakers, writers, and producers to understand:
God the Father has reconciled His created but fallen world through the death of His Son, and renews it into a Kingdom of God by His Spirit.
Lost replicates many of these tropes (God the Father – Christian Shephard; the created but fallen world – the Island; death of Christ – the sacrifice of Jack; Kingdom of God – the afterlife in the church) but is unable to connect them because of an inadequate concept of sin.
While evil exist in the world of Lost, sin—when the concept appears at all—seems to be defined, as President Obama once claimed, as “being out of alignment with one’s values.” Sin is something to be corrected or forgotten, not a condition that must be redeemed by the sacrificial death of God. The result is that the two primary deus ex machinas of Lost are rendered irrelevant: Where there is no sin there is no need for either Christ or purgatory.
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This is where the producers of Lost miss the mark. The need for a Christ-like figure is only necessary if there is a definite presence of sin that warrants rescue. We see this repeatedly in the Old Testament when Isaiah prophesies about a Messiah who would “bear the iniquities” of his people. Jesus comes that we (Christians) may turn from our sin nature to have a regenerated life, or “life to the full.” But this is because we are born into a life of sin. A life that needs to be redeemed.
In Lost, this idea of sin gets watered down. Even with SmokeLocke, we turn from seeing him as the evil character, to actually sympathizing with him in the end when he’s slain right before reaching his boat. The concept of sin is never really brought to the forefront in the series. This is where we need to stop and reflect and come to this conclusion: Without the presence of sin, there is no need of redemption. Jesus didn’t come to this world because we just valued something different than him. He came because we were offending his holiness and glory, something that could only be redeemed through his death and resurrection. Here – at the cross – we see the seriousness of sin and the true love of a Father. When we put the gospel in clear view, there is no substitute or comparable.
I loved watching the Lost series and will probably never view anything like it again. Conversations, blogs and twitters about it could probably go on forever. But one fact is true: there is a better story that has been written where our God is the main character and we are the ones truly redeemed.
