At this point I need to issue a \u201cspoiler alert\u201d since what follows includes information<\/a> about future plot developments<\/a>, as well as speculation on my part.<\/p>\n I wonder whether we don\u2019t catch glimpses of the same person<\/a> (at different ages) in these pictures below:<\/p>\n Lest I leave theological questions to the side entirely in this post, these time loops in LOST provide a great opportunity to reflect on one of the theological issues raised by the view of God as fully knowing the future and influencing or even controlling it to bring about his purposes. This results in what I\u2019ve sometimes called the \u201cbored view of God\u201d, in which God spends eternity doing what God always knew God would do, with no surprises, no genuine decisions, and in one sense no freedom, since God will presumably always do what God perfectly foreknew God would do. This is certainly a possible way of thinking about God, but it is important to observe how different it seems from the depiction of God as one that interacts personally with human beings in the Bible and other texts and traditions both within and outside Judaism and Christianity.<\/p>\n Lately LOST has been creating time loops, and at least since Locke spotted \u201ctall Walt\u201d after having been shot, there were hints that individuals might move around in time. A recent MAJOR spoiler suggests that some characters who have been in the background all along, but have increasingly come into the foreground in recent episodes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BtqUSG7RCA0\/SfB-qOKrohI\/AAAAAAAAAcU\/yPobDGApwpk\/s400\/mark_pallegrino02.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_BtqUSG7RCA0\/SfCFQNRARvI\/AAAAAAAAAcc\/ui5ur9u32V0\/s400\/jacob1.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_BtqUSG7RCA0\/SfB7jpU2bXI\/AAAAAAAAAcM\/GMa4M9mnCso\/s400\/small_zumaltwo139092-walk-hard-hollywood.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/content9.flixster.com\/photo\/10\/05\/85\/10058567_gal.jpg\")
<\/a>Why does Jacob<\/a> do what he does? To be rescued from the limbo<\/a> in which he has been trapped. Why does he do so? Because he knows he must, because he meets his son and his grandson before he becomes trapped, and thus knows he must be helped to escape, since if he does not do so and travel back to an earlier time and place, then the things he has already experienced will not have happened, creating a temporal paradox that could destroy the universe. Or perhaps (like Harry Potter summoning a patronus for the first time) he knows he\u2019ll succeed because he already encountered himself and or others who travelled through time to bring these things about.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-3556142312185508433?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")