Welcome to Tuesdays with Doctor G. where I am continuing a series entitled The Gospel According to Lost. This is episode two.
In the first episode I introduced a wager between two brothers, Jacob and the man in black to answer the question, “What are people like—at their core?” It’s an age-old inquiry and the brothers both give their answers, which turn out to be two distinct worldviews.
The man in black answers first.
Introduction
The man in black goes first. We meet him and his brother late in the story, in the finale of Season 5, The Incident. This is what he believes about people:
They come. They fight. They corrupt. They destroy. It always ends the same.
Pretty devastating, don’t you think? People are rotten to the core. It’s self-evident. He’s watching an 1860s ship making a bee-line for his precious island in order to steal its mysteries and loot.
Kinda proves his point. And the morally questionable protagonists of Lost add even more weight.
The man in black is channeling your basic Augustinian framework of original sin. This is the teaching that people are born morally corrupt. It’s in our DNA. And we need external divine restoration to be whole.
The seed of this idea was planted by the apostle Paul when he said that “sin and death came through one man, Adam.” Augustine formalized the concept, the church canonized it, and this is how it became embedded within Western culture. Even if you don’t subscribe to a single religious doctrine, the residue of this claim lives in our cultural consciousness.
We are children of Adam, that first rebel without a cure. :)
What Ails Us?
Here is where we begin the diagnosis of what ails modern human beings.
I believe we suffer from a collective self-hatred. We don’t like ourselves very much—our humanity, our bodies, the color of our skin. Think of the shame connected to our sexuality. Millennia of self-condemnation, about one of the most natural aspects of our human existence.
I recall countless conversations with my students who were trying to fit their sexual lives inside a theological container that condemned every desire, especially toward those of the same sex. And perhaps the most tragic irony of all, I was the professor giving them the container.
Even if we have a positive opinion about ourselves, we certainly don’t have that of other people. After the 2024 election someone said to me, “I can accept Trump 2.0 better because at least the Bible explains evil human nature.” I am good. They are evil.
This estrangement from our humanity has one more consequential result. We struggle to live inside the life we have been gifted. Instead of being present and embodied, our minds are captured by a dopamine device feeding us an endless stream of distraction, conflict, and rage.
Conclusion
That is the first answer to the question: What are people like? According to the man in black, Augustine, and popular Western culture, we are irredeemably corrupt outside of an external fix. This idea has buried itself deep into our collective minds and has contributed to our self-hatred.
Jacob goes next. He has a different take on people.
See you in Episode Three.
Gustavo
