[su_note note_color=”#d5d5d5″ text_color=”#91201f”]The following is the Letter from the Editor for Volume 3, Issue 6 of Christ and Pop Culture Magazine: “Lost & Found,” available for free for a limited time. You can subscribe to Christ and Pop Culture Magazine by becoming a member and you’ll receive a host of other benefits as well.[/su_note]

There is something about my church’s Lost & Found box that makes me sad. Sweaters, umbrellas, and Bibles are common occupants—the usual lost-and-found fair. Still, people are missing their possessions, unaware how these items could be so easily claimed and readily found.When loss finds us, we ache.That’s the part that saddens me. It resembles the many things in this life that are lost to us, and we have no idea if we will every find them again. Loss finds every human heart at some point. Relationships, jobs, homes, people, pets, innocence, phones, Bibles, umbrellas, and sweaters—none of these losses are appreciated. When loss finds us, we ache.In this issue of Christ and Pop Culture Magazine, Tyler Glodjo details the depth of loss’s ache in his article titled “Grieving Through Pop Culture.” Glodjo provides a raw and moving account of how he dealt with the death of a dear friend:

“My friend died, and I was sad about it, but I was more depressed that his death broke my faith.”

Isn’t that the awful truth? Just when we are in desperate need for faith, it seems to buckle under the weight of life. Brutal experiences like Glodjo’s plunge us into reality: We have little control in this life. And that reality can push us to seek any semblance of security we can find. According to Jonathan Clausen, some find a taste of it in video games. Clausen explains it this way in his feature, “What We Find and Lose in the Video Game World”:

“This idea that we have lost control in our own life is rectified by having the ultimate control over our online worlds of escape. In these worlds, gamers can find a sense of comfort, approval, and control that the real world is not providing.

In this way, games echo the reality of God’s promised restoration. One day our losses will be resolved. What games give us in part is what Jesus promises us in whole. But the promises of God, while sorely needed for the losses we face, are not always received as Good News. In “Losing Influence and Finding Faithfulness: The Decline of Evangelicalism and the Lost and Found Parables,” Chad Thornhill explains:

“Christianity no longer holds a place of prominence, particularly in the West. While we cannot change that reality, how we respond to that loss of influence is important.”

What Thornhill stresses for Christianity collectively is the same for us individually: Because losses are unavoidable, our reactions are key, shaping our experience from that point onward. Will our losses harden us? Will we hide ourselves away to limit our exposure? Will we search for lost faith until it is found once again?

No one likes the pain of loss or the questions that come out of it. What a consolation that God knows our sorrows! He sympathizes with us as we seek answers and search for what’s been lost. And He can return to us a faith made stronger by the breaking, a faith found in the midst of loss.

—Erin Straza

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne. Check out Seth’s graphic novel and comic review site, Good Ok Bad.

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Erin Straza

Erin Straza (CAPC partnerships manager and Persuasion podcast host) is a donor communications strategist for nonprofits. Her first book is titled Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You (InterVarsity Press, 2017); she writes from the Illinois flatlands where she lives with her husband, Mike.
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