“Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. ” – Ecclesiastes 4:1
Jack Reacher is the kind of dude you want on your side. He is ex-military. He is strong. He is noble. He seeks to protect the helpless. And he’s easy on the eyes. He is reticent to speak, so you don’t have to worry about him saying stupid stuff. And he is well-intended. But the best thing about Jack Reacher is he has a really strong sense of what is righteous and the drive to punish wicked men. 
Evil is nothing new, which is why we need heroes. We want a large, buff guy to run to our rescue and bop the bad guys on the head. We want them to give us a hug and tell us everything is going to be alright. Or at the very least, we want a reassuring grunt and a nod after the villain has been tossed over a cliff. But since we don’t live in tv land, we are kind of stuck with local law enforcement. Unfortunately, they can’t be everywhere at once and when they do respond, they don’t light bad guys on fire to punish them for their evil deeds.
Now maybe you are thinking, “I don’t want the police to light bad guys on fire.” Well, maybe you haven’t been seriously wronged lately. This world is filled with some seriously unholy people. Larry Nassar. Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes. We are surrounded with serial sex offenders to the point the police have a database available online so people can be aware and informed. Worse, we have a seriously flawed justice system that lets bad guys go free. I think this is why the character of Jack Reacher is so popular. He takes care of business to ensure bad people meet a timely demise.
We want justice. We want wrongs to be righted. And much of what happens in this world feels wrong. But what if justice is not actually what we seek? What if what we really seek is vengeance?
One of my favorite books in the bible is Ecclesiastes. The Preacher (a king over Israel) wrote things like, “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” But he also wrote, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to kill, and a time to heal.” It made me wonder what a conversation with Jack Reacher and the Preacher would sound like. I have a feeling much of the conversation would them be nodding in agreement.
Reacher says, “I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”
The Preacher says, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.”
Reacher says, “Hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot.”
The Preacher says, “For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”
Reacher says, “I know I’m smarter than an armadillo.”
The Preacher says, “The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”
Reacher says, “Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”
The Preacher says, “Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.”
I’m not going to lie. I kind of wish Jack Reacher was real and I knew him. There are guys like him in the real world. They are the Navy Seals and Marines that protect our country and make the world a safer place. But even they are shackled by laws that forbid them to burn bad guys up.
“Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. ” – Ecclesiastes 8:10-11
Jack Reacher
While watching Reacher on Amazon Prime, I’ve thought a lot about what justice is. Is justice killing the people who killed your brother? (The plot of ‘Killing Floor’.) Or is justice locking someone up for life where they can’t hurt anyone else? Because as much as I enjoy watching Jack Reacher dole out his version of justice, it doesn’t square with my worldview and feels more like vengeance. The one thing lacking in the story is any kind of accountability from God. The bodies stack up but there is no eternal significance. And in the end, Jack Reacher is just a (self-proclaimed) hobo wandering throughout the world alone. No family to speak of. No home to go to. He doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. (At least not the kind we can write about on this blog.) In the end, the Reacher series inspires within me a thirst for a truly righteous hero who doles out justice without the vengeance afterburn. Namely, I want a satisfying conclusion. Which is probably what made me think of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.
“Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.” – Ecclesiastes 8:12-13
Our lives bear the mark of a creator who is both righteous and just. Otherwise, where would we get our sense of righteousness and justice from? Certainly not from the hearts of men who desire evil constantly (and that would be all of us). The Preacher says we do well to ‘fear before God’. More importantly, Jesus said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28) The most satisfying conclusion in life for me is faith in and through Jesus – the savior of the world. Jesus is the hero who best suits my needs. He imparts his righteousness to me, a flawed and sinful creature. His rule and reign are forever. His justice is supreme.
Jack Reacher is a ‘comic’ book character with some seriously witty lines, thanks to author Lee Child. The Preacher was a real king who recognized the vanity in life and pointed to the creator as the source of all that is good and wise. In some of his final words, he wrote, “and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7) I suppose that would be the king’s retort to Reacher, after all. And probably, in light of this, Reacher would have nothing to say.
Leave a Reply