"Taken"

Any man reading this post should run, don't walk, to go see "Taken."  It was the most satisfying movie I have seen in a long, long time.

"Taken" stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, a retired CIA operative whose daughter is kidnapped into forced prostitution.  The stage is set in the first 10 minutes and the rest of the movie is Liam Neeson wrecking people with cold and merciless efficiency.  At every turn are pimps, henchmen, kidnappers, bodyguards, and men who bid on women "certified 100% pure" at auction for unscrupulous purposes and Mills is there to obliterate them.

This in itself, while unassailably cool, would not be post-worthy if it were not for my excitement every time one of the offenders got wasted.  Every time Mills tortures a lead from one of the antagonists, every time he shoots someone without warning to extract information, every time he leaves someone in agony in his righteous pursuit for his beloved, I was putting up the horns in victory.

I could pretend that my emotions were driven by a heightened sense of justice and righteousness (being a priest and all), but that would be a complete lie.  I know myself well enough to know that it was not a sense of justice, but the "satisfaction" of revenge that riveted me at the movies last night.

I hear people talk about justice all the time: our president and political leaders, clergy in the pulpit, my friends at the bar, and protesters on street corners, but I am not convinced any of us actually have a sense of justice, true justice.  I am even starting to believe that there is no such thing in this world, that any system of justice humans have created, no matter how developed, is at best only playing at justice.  

If a stalker kills a young woman in the street there can be no justice for that situation.  His death does not serve justice, but revenge.  The young woman is never coming back and that pain will never go away.  

Even the idea of "social justice" is a myth.  Ask a young boy in a war-torn African village, as you hand him food and supplies, what he is experiencing and his response will never be justice. There is no justice for a starving boy no matter how much food, aid, and medication you bring from rich, white America.

Our world talks a lot about justice, but what we cry out for is blood and gore, revenge and misery, anything that will dull the pain of living in a broken world.  The crowds cried out for Jesus' blood on the cross out of the insanity of sin, not out of a sense of justice.  "Justice" is the sugar coating we put on our blood lust.  "Justice" is what we hope will fill in the hole in our broken and battered hearts.  

I know it is so for me.  I am terrified by the part of me that leaps with a dark joy when I watch movies like "Taken." I pretend it is really justice that I am seeking. That I am driven by my attempt to right the wrong I see all around me. But I am the source of that wrong and my justice, my good work, is filth.

It is only compassion, and not an attempt at justice that will move to heal a broken world.  Jesus came and died for us.  This is the only act in all of history where actual Justice was served and it was in the most unjust way imaginable.  Jesus came that we might know compassion and mercy, love and hope, joy and peace, not justice...never justice.