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Getting Lost


lost.JPGI think most Americans think of television as intellectual comfort food. Generally, we don’t seem to gravitate toward programs because they’re wildly creative and different. We tend to like shows that are reliably the same each and every week.

Which makes Lost‘s success so counterintuitive.

If CSI is comfort food to much of America, Lost is the Indian-seafood pizzeria down the street. The show is just odd—like the crazy-dream-you-have-when-you-eat-too-many-burritos-for-dinner type of odd. Ask a Lost fan to describe the plot, and you’ll hear something about time travel and nuclear bombs and smoke monsters. If you’re a fan, you know all about this stuff. If you’ve never watched an episode—well, don’t start now. You’ll be—well, you know.

But Lost, oddly enough, is a hit—so much so that ABC’s asking advertisers to cough up $900,000 per 30-second slot. That’s close to the sort of coin the network asked for the Academy Awards.

What does the show owe its appeal to? Well, there are lots of things that come to mind, but the one that I want to call out here is its spirituality: In a television landscape largely devoid of shows asking the big questions—Why are we here? Is there a god? What is evil?—Lost is predicated on them. It wrestles with theology with the passion of Jacob grappling with an angel in the desert, refusing to let go.

This doesn’t mean Lost‘s theology is necessarily good theology—at least as far as traditional evangelical Christianity goes. The show offers echoes of most of the world’s most prominent faiths, and it’s hit some troubling chords at times. The jury’s still out as to where Lost will wind up, spiritually speaking. But it still has enough heft to have inspired a book titled The Gospel According to Lost (its author, Chris Seay, talks about some of the biblical themes at play here). And for viewers with an eye for theology, it’s been an interesting, thought-provoking journey.

I’ve been watching this show closely, and I’m curious how many of you have been doing the same. Are you tallying off each shattered mirror and obscure literary reference to the final episode? Do you have any theories about the island? About the nature of Jacob and the Smoke Monster? About free will vs. destiny? Or do you just want Jack, Kate, Sawyer et al to just get Lost already?