I dedicated over a half a decade to watching one of the most ambitious and ambiguous serial narratives in modern times. I became emotionally invested in the moral lives of the characters. I waited through a painfully long hiatus to find out how the series—one of the great works of pop culture—would be resolved. Finally, I sat through the torturous finale waiting for the denoument to provide closure and resolution—only to have my dedication and patience rewarded with a frustratingly disapointing ending.
But enough about The Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica. Let’s talk about Lost.
The term deus ex machina is often used to refer to a contrived plot device that lazy storytellers use to solve an inexplicable problem. While the phrase is often translated as ” god from the machine”, a more accurate rendering would be “god from our hands” or “god that we make”, implying that the device of said god is entirely artificial or conceived by man.
The producers and main writers of Lost, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, created a deus ex machina in both senses of the term by hand-crafting both a god and an unnessary plot device in the form of the Christ-figure, Dr. Jack Shephard.
As the Wikipedia entry on Christ-figures explains:
In general, a character should display more than one correspondence with the story of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. For instance, the character might display one or more of the following traits: performance of miracles, manifestation of divine qualities, healing others, display loving kindness and forgiveness, fight for justice, being guided by the spirit of the character’s father, death and resurrection.
I reference this source because I suspect this is where Cuse and Lindelof derived their information on what a Christ-figure should be. The character of Jack not only embodies all of those listed traits, but telegraphs that he exemplifies them, and then, for good measure, has the other characters point this out too. Jack has such a god-complex that that other characters actually mock him for having a god-complex.
In case that is too subtle, the producers also gave him a name with a Biblical allusion (the Good Sheperd), a father whose name screams God-figure (Christian Shephard), have him drink from a cup in the garden after submitting his own will to the higher purpose, give him holy wounds in his side in a fight with the Devil, and then have him sacrifice his life for both his friends and enemies. No doubt the producers would have called the character “Jesus Christ” had their lawyers not warned that the name might already be trademarked.
Although the show’s creators recognize the value in having a Christ-figure, they fail to understand the significance and purpose of the actual figure of Christ. They’ve seen the archetype used in movies (e.g., Neo in The Matrix) and literature (e.g., Simon in the Lord of the Flies) and assumed that merely having a Christ-figure in the story was enough to tap into a Jungian collective unconscious. But because they fail to appreciate how the death of Christ affects the metanarrative of history, they do not realize how their Christ-figure is supposed to affect the narrative of their own plot.
The theologian Herman Bavinck provided a basic outline of the Christian metanarrative that would be useful for filmmakers, writers, and producers to understand:
God the Father has reconciled His created but fallen world through the death of His Son, and renews it into a Kingdom of God by His Spirit.
Lost replicates many of these tropes (God the Father – Christian Shephard; the created but fallen world – the Island; death of Christ – the sacrifice of Jack; Kingdom of God – the afterlife in the church) but is unable to connect them because of an inadequate concept of sin.
While evil exist in the world of Lost, sin—when the concept appears at all—seems to be defined, as President Obama once claimed, as “being out of alignment with one’s values.” Sin is something to be corrected or forgotten, not a condition that must be redeemed by the sacrificial death of God. The result is that the two primary deus ex machinas of Lost are rendered irrelevant: Where there is no sin there is no need for either Christ or purgatory.
The traditional Catholic concept of purgatory is a “place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God’s grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.” However, in the world of Lost, Purgatory (the flash-sideways world) is merely a place where the dead wait to let go of a past that they can’t even remember.
In the penultimate scene of the finale the God-figure (Christian Shephard) tells the Christ-figure (Jack) why he and purgatory were needed:
This is the place you all made together so you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time you spent with these people. That’s why you’re all here. Nobody does it alone, Jack: you needed all of them, and they needed you . . . to remember. . . and to . . . let go.
Despite what it claims, this scene actually negates the entire purpose of both purgatory and the character of Jack Shephard. If all that is needed is to “remember and to let go”, you don’t need either Christ or a place of purgation. You just need a coach and a Freudian psychoanalyst.
May 25th, 2010 | 12:14 am
I’m just happy that a mainstream, primetime show for folks between 18-49 had a story finale that was full of Catholic imagery in a very positive light.
Yes, they fell a bit into the trap of all religions being equal.
That ending must have driven atheists absolutely BONKERS!
May 25th, 2010 | 1:17 am
I think you are entirely off. The long road the Lost characters travelled together was no Freudian psychotherapy session. It was the long trials of purgation of spirit. Sin was a profound part of the show, as demonstrated through the pain that the characters caused others and their deep desire for redemption. Joe, everything you wanted from Lost mentioned in this post was there.
May 25th, 2010 | 3:59 am
I saw the alternate reality not as purgatory, but a timeless reality that parallels with true reality to figuratively represent the inner struggle of the survivors to let go of the part of their lives they lost when the plane crashed on the Island. This puts the entire show in perspective. The survivors struggled throughout the show to let go of their past lives, accept their fate, and move on in life. It’s most evident in Jack and Locke. Their lives on the Island, therefore, are a journey of self-discovery, to find their ultimate fate. And the monster is the figure that they all would, figuratively, become if they would reject their fate and exploit their lives for their own selfish purpose.
They all needed to give up their selves and accept fate. But throughout the show, they were so pre-occupied with getting off the Island and continuing their lives, they hardly stopped for a moment to consider there was a reason they were brought to the Island, that their previous “lives” were not worth salvaging, and that they were already experiencing a part of what they desired in their lives before the crash. Jack denied it until the final season. And in the fifth season, Rose and Bernard are figures that accepted their fate was to live on the Island and be with each other; and, as a rule, to distance themselves from what the others had yet to accept.
The alternate reality merely showed, figuratively, the desire they all shared to go back to their hum-drum lives before the crash, and how their lives on the Island eclipsed that. That is, the alternate reality didn’t really happen on a physical level, but a spiritual and psychological level in parallel with true reality as it was happening.
Well, that’s how I saw the ending.
May 25th, 2010 | 8:28 am
Is it really superficial of me to be thankful at this point that I never watched an episode?
May 25th, 2010 | 9:01 am
[...] Carter has a typically thoughtful review of Lost and the Christ-figure of Jack: In case that is too subtle, the producers also gave him a [...]
May 25th, 2010 | 9:16 am
I think you err by attempting to force the Christian metanarrative onto a 120 episode television show. The creators/producers/writers never intended to portray one isolated view. Best I can tell, they were shooting for COEXIST, and in many respects, they hit the target. Trying to force too much of any single story onto the show is bound to fail.
May 25th, 2010 | 9:17 am
[...] Joe Carter, The Unnecessary Christ of Lost (First Things) [...]
May 25th, 2010 | 10:12 am
By definition, anything in a work of fiction is “from our hands.”
What marks out the deus ex machina is that the audience can see that it is “from our hands” because the author hasn’t integrated it into the story.
May 25th, 2010 | 11:40 am
Just a couple thoughts.
- I don’t believe Lost is an allegory so much as a hinting. An attempt to give a taste of the transcendent, sublime… whatever the right word is for that perception that C.S. Lewis refers to when he and his brother made their diorama as children.
- The Island is in some sense Narnia.
- Perhaps the Christ figure is not Jack Shepherd but Christian Shepherd, who was not in his coffin.
- Hume stopped the supernatural, i.e. the miraculous.
- The supernatural on the Island was restored by Shepherd.
- The called out ones had to learn to work together, to let each one do his part, so that the whole body could achieve it’s purpose.
- Jack Shepherd was the shepherd of the group.
- The preservation of the Island was the preservation of the light, not rational light, but supernatural light.
- Lost was about the need for the re-enchanting of the world.
I reserve the right to extend and amend these remarks.
May 25th, 2010 | 11:48 am
[...] Carter: The Unnecessary Christ of “Lost” Comments [...]
May 25th, 2010 | 12:24 pm
the true Myth of Christ – cradle, cross, crown – doesn’t need reinterpreting by a fictional myth. Christology stands apart from all the myths of the ages. There is only one Christ figure – He who atoned for sin and He who rose from the grave to prove that He did.
May 25th, 2010 | 12:36 pm
Greg, I agree–Jack is not the Christ figure, Christian is. That’s why he opens the door at the end of the story, because only he can open it. I didn’t read the story as Christian allegory, so much as a story about the postmodern world. We are desparately threatened by–what?–our greed for life beyond what we have been given, and our culture of death. Bascially, two worldviews are offered in the course of the show: Christian and pagan, and the show repudiates the latter in favor of the former. What I liked was that it wasn’t that the characters embraced Christianity–they were far too lost for that! But the show demonnstrates the ultimate rightness and NECESSITY of the Christian narrative. So the crazy mother myth is the old way (she’s like Kali, creator and destroyer, symbolized by the crumbling statue), and the new way is represented by Hurley and Ben, when Ben says Hurley is a good choice because “you take care of people.” People–not killing at whim to protect “the source.”
Anyway, that’s my two cents–in sum, this was Christianity versus paganism, and Christianity (and the Christian shepherd) won the day.
May 25th, 2010 | 1:10 pm
While the christian metanarrative is evident in Lost, I believe that the last scene was a statement about pluralism. As Christian Shepherd told Jack that the this was the place they all made together, notice he was standing in front of a stained-glass window sporting a cross, a star of David, a crescent and a star, a yin-yang, and two others that I need to go back and look at. So it seems to me that the producers were making a statement that once we all get to heaven, it will become apparent that it took every religion to make a meaningful heaven.
May 25th, 2010 | 1:14 pm
MarkO, I think you are closest to the point. But I’m more with Tolkien on this one. While he claimed to hate allegory, he saw us all as pieces of the true story that could only happen once.
“..each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life. (Letters, 163)”
Jack could not be a true Christ figure because there could only be one of those. But we are all bidden to be a piece of that story.
May 25th, 2010 | 1:30 pm
Aimee:
I like your catch of the crazy mom as Kali the destroyer. I’ve been trying to understand the mom’s place.
But your point reminds me of Till We Have Faces, the priest there may have been wrong but he knew more than the philosopher, he knew that blood was required. The crazy mother didn’t know what the light was, all she knew was, it must be protected, but she knew that.
May 25th, 2010 | 3:20 pm
That’s a great point, Greg–yes. And she also is right, at least to a certain extent, about human beings. Till We Have Faces is a good point of comparison; so let me amend my comment: perhaps what I’m trying to say is that the worldview represented by the mother et al. is not enirely wrong, but it is incomplete and insufficient.
And I agree firstHat, you said it much better than I could.
May 25th, 2010 | 5:34 pm
I watched the final and maybe two other episodes, so I am by no means an expert on all of the imagery. But my take is, the writers created some amorphous blob of confusion but decent acting. Then they sat back and looked at all of the philosophical interpretations of their blob, and laughed all the way to the bank.
May 25th, 2010 | 8:58 pm
I watched every episode of Lost and I was just glad that there were Christian truths in evidence–maybe not perfect ones but enough for some watchers to become curious. Redemption: the lives of Sayid, Sawyer, especially Jack. Eucharistic symbolism: the healing water (Baptism?), drinking from the cup and being changed (Eucharist). Salvation: Jack’s unselfish sacrifice to save their world (the Island). God is Truth and where there is real Truth, He is manifest, whether it was intentional or not.
May 25th, 2010 | 11:49 pm
Funny…I just realized the double-entendre of the name of the show…”Lost”…much to ponder.
May 26th, 2010 | 12:16 am
For what its worth, I’m pretty sure that was a Unitarian church they were in at the end.
May 26th, 2010 | 6:10 am
Nick your post is worth absolutely nothing. You could not be more wrong. To quote Hurley, “Sorry, dude.”
The church at the beginning and the end of the last LOST episode is the chapel of Sacred Heart Academy for Girls in Kaimuki here on Oahu. The exterior shots are the grounds around the chapel.
The statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is right there where Kate and Desmond parked in the opening. That’s the real Christ figure in the episode. The show opens with Kate seeing the coffin and asking Desmond, “Who died?” Desmond says, “Christian Shepard”. Kate, “Seriously?” Desmond emphatically replies, “Seriously.
I had no idea such a beautiful religious space exited in Hawaii until our family attended the Easter Vigil Mass in the Extraordinary Form there this year from 11:30 PM – 2:30 AM. My family sat in the same pew as Desmond and Penny. A good deal of church architecture here on the island could appropriately be called – Our Lady of the Cinder Block. Not this place.
The chapel is a magnificent Art Deco jewel. Remarkably everything remains from the nineteen twenties except, of course, for the altar rail. The original high altar and crucifix are high quality. Sorry you didn’t get a glimpse of them but the characters did. Those angelic holy water fonts flanking the entry doors are real and not props. The pews (with kneelers) the actors were sitting in are there. They weren’t brought in to replace chairs. Choir loft with working pipe organ that you see above Jack and Christian as they entered the chapel is real not CGI. The stained glass windows are beautiful. The only thing the show removed from the chapel was a grand piano near the side entry (the door Hurley went through after speaking to Ben).
Very strange to see a place used as a TV program set that you’ve recently spent two hours worshipping in without any changes. So any LOST pilgrims out there now know where to go.
May 26th, 2010 | 11:05 am
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned which was, to me, the most significant aspect of LOST’s finale — the “heavenly” reunion of the “saints.” Now I fully understand that the show’s heaven is not the Biblical one, and the characters are not saints as there is no faith in Christ represented, BUT … within the LOST narrative, the depiction of this homecoming was startlingly beautiful. Granted, it’s only part of the future we anticipate (no reunion with God was portrayed!), but the images (and the truth that shouted from them) was something I have NEVER seen before on prime time television.
The best stories are always God’s stories. And what made LOST great, was that it told many of His stories (incomplete as they were) thoughtfully & beautifully, then projected them for a culture desperate to hear them.
May 26th, 2010 | 12:41 pm
Your summary is IMO way off, Jack is not a representation of Jesus, he represents Man.
The Island Represents The Fallen world we live in, at the start of Lost jack was in the dark, then His eye was opened and his journey began, By the end Jack was a Christian, He has been given faith and he became Christ like, But not Christ, There were a number of characters who at some point Eluded to Christ, Boone was the first one, Go back to early in s1 and watch for Jacks reference to people wanting to Crucify Boone for trying to save someone.
Locke who Saw the light early on said Boone was a sacrifice the Island demanded, then Boone was raised from the dead and was seen in visions as a Guide for Locke, who was at that point already a man of faith.
In the final It was clearly Christian Shephard who was the Christ Figure who was also the original Christ like figure who Died so that Jack (Man) could come to a place were the light would shine upon him and give him the transformation he needed.
All the characters represented mankind and many of the problems we have, But Jack as a single character summed up Mankind into a single Character, just as Hurley’s character was a representation of the shows Fans.
In the final as Christian Shephard’s coffin arrived at the church, it was no accident that the camera panned up focusing on a statue of Jesus & It was also no accident that it was Christian Shephard who opened the doors into the light.
There is so much more I could say, But I think its still to early to try and sum the whole 6 seasons up, Many people are going to try hard to find answers to the sc-fi elements from the Island, But altimetry they will struggle because IMO those sc-fi elements represent the vial over the world, they represent the lie of the enemy to distract people from the truth & the light, they are the work of the dark force on the Island who in later seasons became Flocke but earlier had Impersonated Christian and others in His attempt to mislead and deceive those Jacob had called to receive the light of the world.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:33 pm
SpOOky, I agree. And you reminded me that while some might argue that the whole “rememembr and let go” sounds a bit new-agey, that could not be farther from the truth. In fact, as you point out Jack is an Everyman, and it in the medieval play Everyman that we are taught that nothing comes with us to the grave except our good deeds–not friends, no memory, not goods, etc.. Everyman, too, jounreys through his life remembering, in allegorical fashion, and then lets go of it all before he lays down and awaits death. Of course, Jack does have his community,it’s not a perfect parallel. But the comparison to morality plays holds nonetheless.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:52 pm
I’m not convinced Jack is the Christ figure. I think Christian Shephard may be — which is why he is apparently resurrected, and finding his body is a thread throughout the show.
Jack and everyone else are Christ-like. They sacrifice — as Jack did — but they also hurt, suffer pain, grow, and find redemption. Christian Shephard isn’t really presented as an object of faith, so maybe Lost fails there. But not all analogies need to be comprehensive. Looking at Biblical Christ-analogies, we see for example that both David and Solomon are types of Christ, but in different ways. David as a conquering king, Solomon as a king of peace, etc. In fact all the Biblical types of Christ only ever show one-facet of who he is. It’s the sum picture that helps reveal the full (but still partial) presentation.
I think it’s significant that the Christ-event seems to be the main underlying theme of the whole show.
May 27th, 2010 | 9:48 pm
[...] can read his whole review on Lost here. It’s very good. Another point about humanity… they really wanted to stress the [...]
May 29th, 2010 | 11:09 pm
[...] Death, and the Resurrection By B Treece [While Joe Carter has given an excellent Roman Catholic critique of Lost and its recent finale, I'm here to give a more specific, evangelical angle. [...]
June 4th, 2010 | 8:23 pm
[...] Joe Carter is both insightful and skeptical: Although the show’s creators recognize the value in having a Christ-figure, they fail to understand the significance and purpose of the actual figure of Christ. They’ve seen the archetype used in movies (e.g., Neo in The Matrix) and literature (e.g., Simon in the Lord of the Flies) and assumed that merely having a Christ-figure in the story was enough to tap into a Jungian collective unconscious. But because they fail to appreciate how the death of Christ affects the metanarrative of history, they do not realize how their Christ- figure is supposed to affect the narrative of their own plot. [...]
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