A Road Less Travelled

My brother Jonathan has been telling me for a while now that I need to see the television show Lost. I kept putting it off because it’s a show that’s still running and I hate starting things that I can’t quite finish yet. My sister Adiel got into the act and told me that I would really like it. I held out for a while, but then she told me that Lost was in its final season and that I could watch it online (abc.com). I had just started into the first season when I got sick. Having nothing better to do I spent quite a lot of my sick days either sleeping or watching Lost. It really is as good as they both said it was.

The show is aptly named. The premise is that an international flight from Sydney, Australia to L. A. crashes on a jungle island. There is a large cast of characters and we learn about them through flashbacks of what their lives had been while they deal with what their lives are now. It’s elegantly done. There’s the day-to-day survival that must be taken care of and there’s also a mystery about the island they crashed on. The show is so aptly named because all of the characters are lost in the Christian use of the word. They are all searching for something and the Island, which is almost another character, offers to give it to them. The characters are looking for salvation.

Some are looking for forgiveness for past sins, looking to be saved from their guilt. Some are looking to be saved from the penalty of past sins, hoping to be forgotten by those who know what they’ve done and want them to pay for it. Some are looking for purpose, to be saved from a meaningless life. Some are looking for an escape from the well worn path their lives were running in, looking to be saved from old mistakes and kept from making them again. They all want something, they’re all looking for something which is why they were on the plane in the first place. And for each of them the Island offers a kind of salvation. But the Island is capricious. The Island is not their friend.

The Island doesn’t actually care whether the survivors are saved from what they carry. It offers salvation, but doesn’t actually care about the people it’s offering to save. If a character accepts salvation it only kinda sticks because the Island doesn’t have any power to change anybody. In one episode a character might confront his issue and maybe it’s resolved for now, but the next episode comes around he’s back to making the same old mistakes. Nothing really has changed because the people haven’t changed. The Island doesn’t have any power to transform and, even if it did, there’s no telling that it would.

Now, I don’t necessarily think J. J. Abrams, the creator of the show, intended to say what I see in it. Just so we’re clear on the point. And I’ve only seen the first two seasons so far. I’m told that the focus starts changing in season three. But, regardless, I do see this theme in Lost and I see it because it’s everywhere. Wherever there are people there will be people who are looking for salvation and putting their hopes in a substitute God. The gods they choose are weak and capricious, offering salvation, but powerless and loveless. The world is full of people flying here and there, running and chasing at the same time. They run til they can’t breathe anymore, but in the end they’re right where they’ve always been- lost.