Where's the (Philosophical) Beef? #1 - LOST ending

This will be a short post. I wanted to come up with some clever take on a show that aired this week, but nothing really inspired me. Plus it is late and I'm looking to get a good night's sleep prior to the start of the work week.

I re-watched the LOST finale today. I enjoyed it the second time almost as much as the first time. Much has been made of LOST's failure to provide answers, and this is certainly true in regards to the science-fiction elements of the show. Why the show's creators felt the need to go so far into sci-fi in seasons 4 & 5 that it confused and alienated viewers not into that genre, then didn't bother to work any sci-fi into the end game, is beyond me. But whatever.

Tonight I want to write about the ending, specifically about the resolution of the "alternative" Universe, which - SPOILER ALERT - turns out to be some sort of afterlife, or "pre"-afterlife. All the survivors of Oceanic 815, and a good deal of other people involved, are able to meet up in this alternate reality after they die, as a way of finding each other again before they move on to whatever is next. Some of them died early in the show's run, some died at the end, and some presumably lived 40, maybe 50 years more after the end of the series. Heck, if Hurley is ageless like Jacob, and can bestow the same power on Ben, who knows how much longer they lived? Not long enough for Ben to be able to forgive himself for what he had done, apparently. Or maybe it was just that we viewers might not accept peace for him so readily, no matter how long a period of redemption is implied.

Anyway, at the end Jack's father shows up, and talks about how everyone in that group needed each other, and how they are going to move on together. I like this idea, although it runs completely counter to the Reformation/Enlightenment ideal of individuality. LOST was always about "Live Together, Die Alone," but communal salvation, in an eternal as well as temporal sense, is something completely foreign to us in the West. This despite the fact that God spends much of His time in the Old Testament addressing the Israelites as a people, and far less time focusing on individuals. (Although by the later prophets He does make it clear that we are individually accountable.) My point is simply that perhaps we are missing out on some key element of what it means to be saved by being so relentlessly focussed on the individual.

Switching gears a bit, what I really want to discuss is the whole idea of meeting everyone you love again, and seeing each other as you were during the most important, most fundamental time in your life. All the characters end up meeting together in a church, smiling and laughing and hugging each other. I can sort of envision that for myself. The feeling of seeing the people I love all together, some that I haven't seen in years, and even the ones I have, seeing them clearly for who they really are, for the wonder that God created them to be. I get choked up thinking about it. Thinking about the veil clearing, and about beholding each other where there is no more curse. I long for it so badly that I know I was designed for it, which is why I can believe in it.