Pop Culture Fridays: What Lost Teaches Us About Community

I may be one of the 6 people left in America who hasn't seen an episode of Lost. The concept seems fascinating; there is no good reason I have missed the show. A combination of grad school busyness and a bent toward situation comedies is probably, at least in part, to blame. This far behind, I have had a hard time finding the motivation to catch up.

Still, the impact wasn't lost on me when reading Regina Nigro's analysis of how the show paints an important picture of community. In America Magazine, a Catholic publication, Nigro writes that the popular drama has reinforced the oft-neglected concept of interdependence. Specifically, Nigro suggests "The “live together or die alone” credo has been a steady refrain throughout the show’s run, underscoring what has become a central theme: the value of living in community."

The show not only presents discussion on this theme but bolsters the theme in its very structure. Nigro writes: "The significance of individual choice extends even to the show’s narrative style. "Lost” employs parallel storytelling (juxtaposing a character’s pre-crash flashback with a current island crisis), providing several points for meditation on the nature of good and evil, people’s obligations to one another, the power of love and the endless struggle between faith and doubt. Placing moral crisesin the context of a struggle for survival lends a sense of urgency to the choices made..."

She continues:"...While “Lost” is too nuanced for simple allegorical mapping, the island is essentially our world writ large. While we are not plagued daily by murderous polar bears, an ominous “smoke monster” or creepy forest whispers, the island setting merely makes the challenge of living in community more apparent. The consistent message is that treating each other with dignity, respect and love is paramount; and it is no coincidence that every second chance awarded is oriented toward living together, not dying alone."

In every discipline I've studied (theology, politics, journalism, etc.), it has become glaringly apparent that perhaps our greatest sin, both individually and socially, is the sin of self-absorption, irresponsible independence and isolation. Our politics fails when leaders only look out for their interests; our communities struggle when neighbor will not lift a hand to help neighbor; we cannot be an instrument of God's grace or truly experience spiritual communion when we are only out to please self. John Piper speaks of our trading God's glory for lesser things; this "exchange" comes in the service of our self-glorification and contentment.

What Nigro sees in Lost is a lesson for our everyday lives and for the larger-scale decisions we make. When we give up our rights to ourselves, we are not losing, we are rather gaining. We become embedded and ingrained in community rather than setting ourselves up for loneliness, despair, spiritual emptiness.

It has famously been said that no man is an island. Perhaps it is the very purpose of the men and women on this TV island to remind us of that.