Lessons from the Lost

            There’s a lesson for Christians to learn from the Lost. In this case, it’s the television phenomenon called Lost, now nearing the end of its second season. Those who haven’t seen the show may feel a little lost by the plot description that follows, but don’t worry, those of us who haven’t missed an episode feel pretty much the same way:

            Flight 815 breaks in half and crashes on opposite sides of a mysterious island—a tropical paradise complete with polar bears, an intact slave ship from the 1800’s, a security device that sounds and acts like a Jurrasik Park T-Rex but looks like a cloud of smoke, and a mysterious underground complex in which an apparent doomsday device is prevented from destroying everything by the resetting of a count down with an Apple II computer. The boy is clairvoyant, the old guy gets out of his wheel chair and starts walking again, and the big guy has won a multi-million dollar lottery with numbers that curse his life and just happen to be etched onto the hatch of the underground complex. That doesn’t cover half of it!

            Lost is a mystery show. As such, its attraction is to those who get caught up in hours of speculation trying to solve the mysteries, puzzles, intrigues and bizarre coincidences presented in the story. My wife and I spent some time last summer looking at the numerous Lost websites and their postings of even more numerous theories predicting the events of season two: everything from aliens to angels to alternate dimensions. I found a different solution to the mysteries of Lost, something I learned from the Bible as well as from watching the series. Sometimes we need to stop trying to figure things out and just enjoy the mystery of the show, or the life God’s given us to live.

            Joseph’s life makes perfect sense—by hindsight. When he was thrown into the pit, sold into slavery, wrongfully accused and imprisoned for adultery, released and made the second most powerful man in Egypt—none of these events made any sense to him. For twenty or more years his life, especially the suffering he had to endure, didn’t make any sense. Only at the end did he realize that everything had taken place for a reason: to protect his family from death by famine (Genesis 45:4-8).

            Job’s story is even more extreme. Out of His admiration and love for Job, God proclaims his goodness to all His angelic creatures. Satan questions such high praise and asks to put Job to the test. What Job suffers next is horrendous: financial ruin, the death of all his children, and excruciating disease. Though he never rejects God, Job comes to the point of wishing he’d never been born (Job 3:3,11). And he screams for an audience with God, demanding the chance to defend himself (Job 13:15). Here’s the kicker: God finally does show up and speak to Job, but He never explains the reasons for Job’s suffering. We get to look behind the scenes and see the cosmic conflict that causes Job’s life to move in a direction he would’ve never expected. But Job never does, not in his lifetime, and neither do we for our own lives. Our lives are mysteries to which we may never learn all the answers. Strangely enough, that didn’t matter to Job. Somehow meeting God face to face was answer enough (Job 42:1-6).

            Solomon was the wisest man in the world. As such he avoided two mistakes: naively concluding without even trying that we can’t know all the mysteries and truths of God (and so not bothering with it) on the one hand, and believing we can figure everything out on the other. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes of how he explored all knowledge, more than anyone else, but found it wearisome, futile (Ecclesiastes 1:13-17). Still he did find answers: he knew God was there, that God was judge, that right and wrong mattered (12:13-14). But in the end he concluded that the best answer to the mysteries of life was living now: “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do…Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun…” (9:7-9) (see also 3:22, 5:18-20, 11:8-9). Work your job, love your family, eat a good meal. Solomon’s argument in Ecclesiastes is to learn the value of living in the middle of the “show,” enjoying the blessings God has given us, and surrendering our demand that all the mysteries be answered.

Like the TV show, Lost, our lives are filled with riddles and mysteries, clues and hints. But in the middle of the season (even the season that is the present moment of our lives), many of the answers are left hanging, and we need to have the patience and faith to wait and see how everything is going to play out in the end, knowing that Someone is in charge of the production, and His intentions for us are rescue and happy endings. Till then I do with Lost what I try (and often fail) to do with my life: I stop trying to figure all of it out and just enjoy the show.