Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Gospel According to Lost


Huge Picture, Click to Enlarge

"The Gospel According to Lost" is a new book out by Chris Seay - Pastor, author, co-founded of the Advent Conspiracy.  Being familiar with both Chris Seay and a former avid watcher of Lost (I fell out of it after the writer's strike) I was very interested in what this book had to offer. I feel that I'm essentially the target audience and so I jumped at the chance to read & review it.

Unfortunately...my expectations failed me.

Now, maybe I was expecting a lot, but still I was disappointed. Each chapter of the book essentially stood alone. There was little connectivity and no overarching story to the message that he was putting forth. Each chapter was representative of a character, and related their attributes, struggles, conflicts, past, etc to something "Jesus related."

I'm all for drawing comparisons to the gospel. I do it often. I enjoy seeing redemptive stories played out in artistic ways through movies, television, music, etc. So this book seemed to be right up my alley.

It just fell flat.
Maybe since each chapter was isolated, it couldn't get any traction?
Maybe it was that each chapter felt like a blog post and then they were just all thrown together to make a book?
Maybe it's because I felt that I could write it just as well and I'm an insanely jealous, evil and bitter person?
Perhaps.

I think what did it for me is that nothing in the book surprised me. Unlike the show, which is a constant revelation of new and awesome content. I knew exactly where the book would be going, and I was constantly right.

But hey, it's hard to compete with Lost.