Day 024 (Or: Are You a Man of Science, or a Man of Faith?)

Spoiler warnings, all around.

My relationship with LOST is kind of interesting. Am I one of those "obsessed fans"? Or am I just engrossed in a truly epic mythical tale? I guess it depends on how you look at it. In comparison to most of my friends, I probably spent the most time reading blogs, looking up clues, reading dissections, etc. But the fact that I DO do those things, makes me painfully aware of how much LESS obsessed I am with the story than most other people that are involved in the LOST online subculture. I don't attend events (Or even parties. LOST has been a date night for Kelli and I since season four), and I don't post on message boards. I just observe. I enjoy the conversation, the analysis, and the mystery.

But now it is all over. And as much as we are going to get about the myth that is LOST, we have received. The first night, after the finale had ended, I was confused. I was pretty sure that I wasn't pleased with how the show ended. I felt the sideways world was a cheap trick, and not entirely necessary, and definitely not worth spending half of almost every episode this final season exploring. It wasn't worth all the analysis, and it really didn't make much sense in the end. What was the point? I felt sort of cheated. But I had been engrossed in this story for so long that I wanted to have faith that there was some deeper meaning that I just hadn't come up with yet.

So I didn't say much about it for the next week. I just read, and read, and read. And some of what I read consoled me. Most affirmed what I had already been thinking, though. Somewhere deep down though, I just wasn't ready to give up on that story. There was no denying that the finale was thrilling. There was no denying it was brilliantly executed. There was just....something. It wasn't even that we didn't get answers to a lot of the big questions. I was fine with that. I don't want to know what made the island special. I don't want to know all the ins and outs. I just wanted the show to end well. I just....something. But What? What?

Then, on a jog the other day, I think I figured it out. Deep down, it didn't matter to me that we didn't get all the answers. It really didn't even matter to me that I didn't fully understand the significance of the sideways world. I guess I just wanted to know that there were answers. And that there was an important reason for the sideways world.

And that's when it hit me. And I have been completely content ever since.

I am Jack Shepherd. LOST was a story that forced us all to face the Jack Shepherd in all of us. Are you a man of science, or a man of faith? Can you be okay with the idea that you will probably never really know for sure all of the inner workings of that show? Can you be alright with the fact that you won't ever know everything? Can you submit to that? Even in Jack's death, he didn't know what the heck was going on. He just... plugged the hole, and then he died. But that was all he needed to know.

LOST's brilliance is found in the fact that we were unknowingly taken on the exact same journey as our hero. If you really think about it, if we had gotten all the answers, it would have been a contradiction as to the whole point of the myth of LOST. Heck, even if we had understood what they did decide to give us in the end, that would have been a contradiction. When LOST asked us way back at the end of season one whether Jack was a man of science, or a man of faith, what we didn't know at the time was that we were being asked the exact same question.

If you forget about taking the show literally, and look at it metaphorically, which I'm pretty sure is how the show is meant to be taken anyway, it makes a lot more sense. So what if the people that made it maybe didn't have answers to every question they raised along the way? So what? Forget about the storytellers, and look at the story they chose to tell. Within the context of the story, it makes perfect sense. If we were Jack, and Jack ended completely out of control and without answers, save for a contented knowledge of the guiding force that drove his life... why shouldn't our relationship with the story end the exact same way?

I've heard some anger about the stained glass window with all the different religious symbols all over it. And yeah, for a show that thrives in subtleties, I'll admit it was a little out there. But within the context of how I am challenging us to think about LOST, it makes perfect sense. This whole time, LOST hasn't asked us whether we subscribe to a particular doctrine (We'd be silly to expect it to.)... all it has done over and over is ask us, "What do you believe? Do you believe in something Bigger?" Because to understand the myth of LOST, you must believe in something Bigger. Something that guides us. Something that makes sense of all that we don't understand. Because we will never understand. We weren't made to understand.

As a Christian, the best I can make of the myth of LOST, sideways world and all, is to think of it as a metaphor for the Kingdom of Heaven vs. the Kingdom of Man. One world is full of truth and mysteries and doesn't seem real a lot of the time but actually contains ultimate Truth, and the other seems more real but in truth is manufactured. It's a theory that probably doesn't hold much weight when you really delve into it, but I am content with it until season six releases and I end my LOST hiatus, which started on May 23, 2010, so I can process the last six years.

So that's what I thought. What'd you think?