The Gospel According to LOST, a review

gospel according to lost

You know what I love? I mean, yet another thing I love - since I talk about things I love all the time on here... I love unexpected friendships. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Captain Jack and Will Turner, Legolas and Gimli (apparently I especially like unexpected friendships when one of the players is Orlando Bloom...) and, you know, ALL of the characters on LOST with each other.

From the beginning, it was the people and their crazy-dramatic back stories and the unexpected friendships that grew between them that kept me coming back for more. I loved the way a plane crash on a mystical island allowed a murderer to be friends with a neurosurgeon, a con man with a lotto winner, an Iraqi soldier with a spoiled American girl.

This book, The Gospel According to LOST, by Chris Seay, agrees with me and elaborates on that plus so many other things to love about this show. I think my biggest complaint is that I wished I was sitting in a living room with Chris Seay instead of reading the book. I didn't want to be the person actually talking to him, though. I just want to sit nearby and watch him talk about LOST with some equally intelligent, equally admiring fan. Seay and this imaginary person could enlighten each other on all the philosophical theories referenced throughout the television series and the many names and story lines that mirror biblical ones and the possibilities they've considered based on the many ways all of the characters (called "Losties" in the book) are connected to each other and always have been as well as how they are connected to other characters like the mysterious, god-like Jacob. I would sit by and listen with wide eyes and an oh-my-gosh-I-hadn't-thought-of-that sort of grin and occasionally say things like, "Locke gave me the creeps even before he was possessed by the mysterious dark side" and "I heart Jack."

If you frequently dissect LOST with other people, you may not read a lot in this book that you hadn't thought of before. And on the flip side, if you don't catch any of the connections and references sprinkled throughout the series on your own, there are better places to look than in this book. It's hardly a book of revelation. It's more like a celebration. It seems to say throughout, "Embrace messy humanity, embrace Story, and embrace the mystery. The answers are in the journey, not in an absolution."

Apparently this isn't Seay's first attempt to elaborate on meaning in popular culture, and I'd definitely pick up anything else he wrote. He's great at celebrating art that has intention and that has the ability to drive us to yet more learning, yet more discovery, and many, many more questions.

Another thing I loved about this book? Felicity pointed out a new version of the Bible recently. It's called The Voice by Ecclesia Bible Society of which Chris Seay is the president. It's this version that Seay uses when quoting Scripture in this book. I found this sort of beautiful, because the point to The Voice, I understand, is to represent the story of the Gospel message. And similarly, LOST is all about story, and how much we can discover by just diving in and participating in it.

**

I requested this book as part of a Thomas Nelson program. I got the book for free but with no obligation to review it favorably.