I'm Feeling Lost...

Let’s talk about ‘Lost.’ If you haven’t watched last week’s episode, I strongly suggest you stop reading this immediately. Also, if you don’t watch Lost, you will no doubt be lost if you continue. But for those of you who both watch Lost and are caught up, I feel the need to express my feelings about how strange the episode was. I’m not a huge science-fiction fan and I guess I’ve known subconsciously that Lost is a sci-fi series, but I’ve been able to successfully ignore that fact until this week. Things just got weird with the whole glowing orb of light coming from a cave that a stream flows into. I’m also still trying to figure out what exactly happened when Jacob’s brother (do we know his name yet?) came out of the cave as the smoke monster…I’m beginning to wonder if they will actually be able to close this thing up in the next 3.5 hours of television. It seems like a tall order.
The one thing, however, that caught my attention about last week’s episode was the idea of a ‘light’ inside every person that somehow originates in this one magnificent life that, if extinguished or contaminated, would somehow end existence. Maybe I’m stretching because I really want this show into which I’ve put so many hours of my life to mean something profound. Nonetheless I can’t help but think about the image of God that resides in each of us (Gen. 1:27). The first three chapters of Genesis are so difficult- seemingly impossible- to unpack, but the imago dei is something I find a little easier to wrap my mind around. So not only does the ‘light’ of the One who created us reside in each of us, but it’s also true that apart from God we cannot exist. You sometimes hear the Trinity called ‘Creator (Father), Redeemer (Son), Sustainer (Holy Spirit.’ Without the sustaining work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we don’t even have the opportunity to come into a relationship with God because we would not even exist. It’s only by the power of God that life continues to exist.
So now the writers of Lost have played around with the ‘predestination’ debate and the idea that we are all created and/or sustained by a single entity. I wonder what theological quandary they will take on next…