When Faith Takes Center Stage: Making the Most of Major Moments in our Culture

(This is a reprint of an article I wrote a few years ago for our church magazine at Hope Baptist in Las Vegas. I think it serves as an excellent refresher in leveraging the opportunity to speak truth into the culture that the final episode of the TV series Lost has afforded us. Enjoy!)

            “If God had a face what would it look like? And would you want to see if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like Heaven and Jesus…”

(from “One of Us” by Eric Bazilian)

I’ll never forget the first time I heard those words come wafting over my car stereo speakers. The woman’s voice that sang them sounded so sincere and the questions she was asking were so poignant that it stopped me in my tracks.  In the weeks that followed, that song rocketed up the music charts and you could hardly turn on a radio or TV without hearing it. Whether or not you agreed with the sentiments expressed in the song, there was no denying that the subject of faith in God had suddenly been thrust into the spotlight. It was as if the songwriter had tapped into something deep within our cultural consciousness; the longing for God to be real and, more importantly, to be accessible.

Suddenly, everywhere I went, people were discussing spiritual things. Friends outside the faith were anxious to hear my take on it. “You’re a Christian, Jerry, what do you think about it?” People who had been totally closed to the gospel only a short time before were now asking me to explain it to them.!

That was a rare moment in our secularized culture, a divinely orchestrated open window of opportunity to engage our culture on its home turf. Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller The DaVinci Code was another such moment. Suddenly the question “Who is Jesus?” made headlines in every newspaper and magazine in the world.

Dick Staub, in his book Too Christian, Too Pagan says, “Jesus didn’t invite the world to come to church, He commanded the church to go into the world.” The question for us is, “Can we put down the picket signs long enough to honestly answer the deep questions of faith our culture is asking in popular music, books, TV and movies?”

So how can we be ready for that next big moment when it comes? How can we engage our culture without succumbing to its influence? Here are a few ideas to help us be “in the world but not of it”:

Pray!  There is no substitute for spending time alone with God. Like Pastor Vance always says, “We don’t pray before we work, prayer is the work, then God works.” Changing your world starts by letting God change you into the image of His Son, then letting people see that image in your life.

Stay connected. Don’t retreat into a stained-glass bubble. Get out there and mingle! Watch a little TV, listen to the radio, go to a movie. Don’t retreat into the Christian subculture or you may miss what God is doing all around you.

Affirm Truth wherever you find it. There is an old saying; “Truth is Truth even in the mouth of Baal.” Sometimes pop culture can stumble onto truth, even if it doesn’t understand why it’s true. Look for themes in pop culture that line up with Biblical truth. Point them out at every opportunity. Use them to start discussions at work or school. Some helpful resources for doing this can be found at websites like movieguide.org, movieministry.com, and Focus on the Family’s pluggedinonline.com.

Be ready with a gentle answer. People will have a lot of tough questions about faith in a fallen world. Don’t get defensive or intimidated. It’s not about being right; it’s about speaking the truth with love (Eph. 4:15) and trusting God with the result.

What LOST taught us....

Ok, ok so I am probably just one of a million self-styled pundits blogging on the final episode of what was arguably the greatest show in the history of television, ABC's Lost. As expected, the final episode was polarizing and controversial among it's fans. The first few minutes after the final show finished, Facebook lit up with Christians who were fans of the show decrying the ecumenism and universalism of the show's theology. But really, what did we expect? Lost has toyed with spiritual and religious matters its entire run. In my opinion that is one of the things that made it so compelling. But ultimately you have writers and creators who do not know the truth or the Author of Truth so can we really expect it to line up perfectly with Biblical doctrine?

So... While it's fresh on my mind I wanted to share a few thoughts on where I believe Lost got it right.


The spiritual is as real and as significant as the material. Even more so.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, "... we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
What many of us miss in the busyness of our lives is that we are built for glory, made to last. We were created for the eternal, not the temporal. There are spiritual realities in us and all around us that are even more real than what we experience physically and will last far beyond this present world. We would do well to have an eternal perspective.

There is life after death, and the decisions we make here have an impact on where and how we experience it.
I want to be very careful that I am not misunderstood here. The Bible says clearly that Jesus Christ is the only provision for salvation. "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”(Acts 4:12) But even for the believer, how we live in this life bears heavily on the life we will experience in eternity with Christ. Otherwise why would the Bible say that "each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." (1 Cor. 3:13-15) We have hope beyond this life, and a blessed assurance that we will see our loved ones in Christ again. I found this aspect of the final episode very comforting and very moving, even if it was theologically flawed.

Faith is a vital part of our lives, so be careful where you place it.
Every person has faith in something. They can't help themselves. It is written into our DNA by our maker. We long to know that we matter, that our lives have purpose and direction and significance. So whether it is in God or  in something else or even ourselves, we doggedly cling to that belief. Where we get "lost" (pun intended) is in the object of our faith. For Locke it was the island. For Ben it was Jacob. For Jack it was his ability to fix things. Every character had placed their faith in something. The truth is that everything other than God will fail us. Matt Chandler once said, "When you make gods of things that are not God, they cannot bear the weight of it and they will eventually collapse. And when they do, you will get hurt." Nevertheless, I loved the way that Lost fearlessly tackles the deeper issues of faith and doubt, redemption and salvation, purpose and destiny. The show handled deep issues of faith with more courage, honesty, and intelligence than all of Christian television programming combined.

Ultimately, life is about relationships.
It's not about blowing up hatches, pushing buttons and entering numbers. It's not even about smoke monsters and mysterious pools of light. This is the strongest theme of Lost. Our lives both here and in eternity are shaped by the relationships we have cultivated and invested in. How we treat people, how we love them, forgive them, comfort them, encourage them, these are the things that Bono calls "all that you can't leave behind." Your relationship with God through Christ is the fundamental, foundational relationship of your life, out of which will flow every other relationship. I appreciate that the writers of Lost never let the show stray too far from its heart: the relationships of the characters.


One final word of encouragement I would like to offer my fellow believers that may have been disappointed or upset at the universalistic approach of the final episode. Please do not get so bogged down in the details that you miss the big picture. Every now and then, God opens a rare and fleeting window for the Church to break out of its stained-glass ghetto and speak the Truth into the mainstream culture. Lost's  final episode was such a moment. All over the world today -- in break rooms, cafeterias, around water coolers, in cubicles, in chat rooms and message boards -- people are talking about spiritual matters of life after death because of Lost. People are asking questions like what happens when you die, where do I go, how can I know for sure? The Church has some very good answers to these questions. Hopefully we can stop the flaming and the hating long enough to see this opportunity and leverage it for the Gospel's sake.

Thanks to J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, and everyone else who worked so hard to make Lost one of the most compelling, intelligent, creative, and even spiritual hours of television I have ever had the pleasure to experience. Now please pray for me as I enter my period of post-Lost depression. I almost wore a black arm band to work this morning! Oh, well, there's always Wipeout! :-)