Seeds & Shadows

How should Christians engage with culture? This is the question that is driving our discussion in the LOST class that I’m teaching (moderating, really) at church. Should we disengage from the nonChristian culture and create our own subculture? Should we fully assimilate into the culture and uncritically make use of new media and art? Should we create a sanctified, copycat version of every hip trend that becomes the latest flavor-of-the-week?

These are vital questions, particularly at a moment in history when Christians are said to be engaged in a Culture War with Secularism on the one hand and embracing a new breed of Hipster Christianity on the other. But did Jesus call us into a war with Secularism? Did he call us to have a faith that is cool and ironic? Maybe he did, but I think there’s a better way.

C.S. Lewis thought of the story of Christianity as the fulfillment of all the great mythologies of paganism. It is where religion has become full grown, he said. Where the myth has become incarnate. If this is true, then all the myths of pagan cultures are seeds and shadows of the gospel, planted there by God himself to provide a way for that culture to understand and to testify to our own culture that his story is the great enfleshment of all pagan myth.

And if that is true, then it is certainly possible that God is still planting seeds within pagan and secular cultures today. Wherever the gospel has not been preached, God is haunting the dreams of the artists and stirring the minds of the philosophers. And if that is true, then Christians should not take an antagonistic stance against culture, but rather engage with the culture redemptively. Our eyes must be open to see the seeds and shadows of the gospel in our culture because it is there that God is about his work of salvation.

This is precisely what I see happening with LOST. Of all the crap on television these days, LOST stands out as a thoughtful examination of what it means to be human, to find forgiveness, and to answer the call to self-sacrifice. It is high-art in a medium that tends to produce low-art and non-art en masse. It’s in places like LOST that Christians can find the seeds and shadows of the gospel for a secular culture, if only we can learn to stop condemning the culture and learn to engage with it redemptively.

Jesus & Culture: A LOST Class

As a Sunday School teacher (for lack of a better term), I've wanted to teach two classes for quite some time now. First, I've wanted to teach a class on Culture, particularly how Christians ought to engage with Culture. Second, I've wanted to do something with LOST, because there are all kinds of spiritual themes in the show that would be interesting to flesh out in the light of our faith. Well, last Sunday we began the convergence of these two desires of mine in a class called LOST, Spirituality and Culture. We're taking a look at the spiritual themes of LOST and how Christians should engage with Culture, using LOST as the primary lens.

The first session went really well, I thought. There was a lot of discussion about the show (of course!) and how we, as both Christians and fans of the show, interact with it on a faith-level. The question of Jesus & Culture is an extremely important one, and it gets defined in various ways by various groups of Christians. (See also H. Richard Niebuhr's classic book Christ & Culture.) At one extreme you have Christians who take the stance that Jesus is against everything in Culture, which means no TV, no film, and no music. (Or at least, no secular versions of all this.) On the other end of the spectrum you have Postmoderns who think that Jesus (and the Bible) are just another voice at the table, a mere product of Culture.

My hope is that we can find a middle ground where Jesus is redeeming Culture, where we can find spiritual value in the art, film, music, etc. of the unbelieving world. This is a place where we are not afraid of the media of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but where we can view it critically and redemptively--where we come to a show like LOST not expecting a full gospel presentation, but rather an artful glimpse of the image of the gospel. If we can manage this perspective, not only will we no longer be so exasperating to a cynical and unbelieving world, but we'll find doors of connection and evangelism opening for us that never would have opened before. Who knows but that God would want to use a silly TV show like LOST to bring some people into his kingdom.

Finding LOST

C. S. Lewis had a bus. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof had a plane. The Great Divorce and LOST are essentially about the same thing: Learning to let go, to forgive, and to be forgiven. If Lewis were alive today, I'm sure he would have been the first to spot the story arc of LOST and the last to get bogged down by the details. The weird, scientific wonders of the Island were ultimately nothing but context. Only the characters mattered. It was always the characters.

Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke--all of them had to learn to let go before they could move on. They had to learn to forgive and to receive forgiveness before they could enter Heaven. (If you watched the finale, don't get caught up in the multi-religious stained glass windows. The risen Christ is by far the dominant religious imagery.) The "alternate dimension", or "sideways-flashes" were a sort of purgatory (much like the setting of Lewis' The Great Divorce), probably constructed by Hurley and Desmond to bring them together so that they could move on as a community. The reunion in the church was joyous because they had learned to let go, to forgive and to be forgiven. The sins and scars of the past were forgotten and healed in the church, all overseen by the risen Christ.

Unlike the Great Divorce, LOST is a happy ending. Through their travails on the Island, the characters learned that they needed to let go of the pain of their past. They needed to forgive those who had sinned against them. And they needed forgiveness for their own sins. The "sideways-flashes" were simply the consummation of what they experienced on the Island.

The funny thing about LOST is that it never needed an Island or a Smoke Monster or electro-magnetism or time travel to tell its story. It's a universal story. We live the story of LOST not on an Island full of unexplained phenomena but in the mundane reality of our work and home. And then God comes along and brings something impossible, something incomprehensible and unimaginable into our lives to teach us to let go of the past, to forgive, and to be forgiven.

LOST is a brilliant sermon, an epic exposition of Jesus' words in Matthew 6:14-15. "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." Forgiveness is the door to eternal life. The rest (the Numbers, Dharma, the Mythology) is just details.

More Lost Ruminations

Jesus acts like he doesn't owe me an explanation--like the calling is a sufficient act of grace in itself and I should be thankful simply for being chosen.

I wrote that a couple days ago and it's been haunting me ever since. And like I said before, I'm beginning to understand.

I understand now that, if Jesus had given me any more clarity and direction since Ember fell apart then my life would, once again, be centered around the calling. The mission, the task, would become my idol. My gifts and sense of purpose would be the primary source of significance in my life, rather than the one from whom those gracefully flow.

So rather than making my calling an idol, I've made the search to recapture it the idol. The quest and the question have become the center. Only persons can sit on thrones, and yet I have offered the throne of my being to a nonentity--a vapor and a nothing. A quest. A recapturing of old glories that, like the wildflowers in the high country of Tuolomne, have blossomed and faded in their time.

What a wretched state it is to idolize a nothing. What emptiness is found in the centering of a phantom. Oh, how I have been mistaken all these years! Jesus didn't call me to a task. He didn't call me to a plan. He called me to himself. No wonder he didn't give me an explanation--you can't explain love! What a wonderful act of grace is this, that he would save me from the mission in order to be loved! And then, to love.

Lost

Lost. I'm a fan. Of the TV show, not the physical or existential states of being. I've been watching the show from the beginning and I've always had this sense that it's inherently biblical, but I could never put my finger on it. After tonight's episode I'm beginning to understand.

If you haven't seen the show I don't want to give anything away. I will say, though, that predestination v. free will is a central theme. Cool, huh? And they've managed to hold a huge segment of the population's attention for six years!

Another major theme of the show, and the one that I really resonate with, is the concept of the unexplained calling. That is to say, certain characters believe that they have been called to the island but they don't know why. They don't know what they're supposed to be doing, and even as they begin to find out it's only like the slow opening of a spring flower to the sun. One of the major revelations of this season, though, is who exactly has been doing the calling.

Without getting into any detail (for the purpose of not spoiling it), I wanted to write about something that I was struck by in tonight's episode. One of the characters was shell-shocked. He was frustrated, at the end of his rope, because he had accepted the calling. He had said 'Yes' but he had never been told what the plan was. He didn't even know what his own role was supposed to be. He was just there, obeying and waiting... Waiting for answers... Waiting for the plan...

Sometimes I feel like that too. I've accepted the calling of Jesus, but the details are fuzzy. And he tells me to wait... But I get frustrated because I want answers. I want to know what I'm waiting for, and why it's taking so long. But Jesus acts like he doesn't owe me an explanation--like the calling is a sufficient act of grace in itself and I should be thankful simply for being chosen. And I am grateful for being chosen. But sometimes I regret saying 'Yes'...

That's the tension of Lost. That's the tension of my life.