Taken Back – is it worth it?

Proverbs 24:11 ”Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”

I saw the movie “Taken” last week.  If you don’t want a plot spoiler, don’t read on, cause it’s about to get spoiled.  It is a violent movie, so if that creeps you out, you may want to skip it.  High body count.  In fact, my friend, Matt, tells me that the Blu-Ray version has a body count option on it.  That might be worth a re-veiwing.  Through all the violence, I saw the Gospel played out in this movie. 

A father loves his 17 year old daughter.  She goes on a European vacation vacation with a friend and is violently abducted by a gang that kidnaps young women, addicts them to heroin and turns them into prostitutes.  I can’t imagine the agony for parent or child.  The father immediately flies to Paris, determined to find and rescue his daughter.  He uncorks a kind of vigilante mayhem that is unrestrained.  He risks absolutely everything to find and rescue his daughter.  His daughter, someone he dearly loves, was taken from the safety and love of her rightful family, and was in the captivity of those who would turn her into a slave, in a most grotesque and evil way — turn her into something so different than she was created to be.  Her father deemed her, and her rescue, worthy of the highest levels of risk, even of his life.

Here are a few thoughts and questions for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.

The incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus was a rescue mission.  Can we claim to follow Jesus if our lives are not also a rescue mission?

The Scripture above tells us that God resuces those being taken away to death.  Is that how we see sharing the Good News of Jesus?

Hom much love must one have for another to risk everything so that they might be rescued?

Is that not the same love Jesus has for us, and offers to place in our heart for those far from Him?

When the father in “Taken” encountered any of the other young women who had been abducted, he treated them with great compassion, caressed their faces and saw who they were created to be, not what they had been turned into.  Do we do the same for those who are far from Jesus and wrecked by sin (either their own or someone else’s)?

The father did not beat up the young women, he beat up (and absolutely mutilated!) those who had turned them into drug addicted sex slaves.  Do we sometimes hate and beat up the captives, rather than hate and beat up the captor, the Devil, whose grand design is to steal (abduct), kill and destroy?

If we are not willing to risk our comfort, our reputation, our time, our money and our very lives to rescue the perishing, can we truly claim to follow Jesus, who came and gave everything “to set the captive free?”

Risk it all.  Seek as Jesus seeks.  Love as Jesus loves.  Serve as Jesus serves.  And tell of Him who has come to rescue those who have fallen victim to Satan, sin and death (even if they’ve been accomplices in the abduction).

I am inviting the Holy Spirit to unearth the deep parts of me that prevent me from risking it all for those who are abducted and imprisoned.  And as He exhumes those sinfully resistant attitudes in me, I will repent of them.  And Jesus will forgive me of them, and in that same soil, plant His compassion, love and grace, and a heart that cannot rest until the captives are free, and the captor is defeated – no matter the risk.

Will you join me in that?  That’s God’s plan, His beautiful mission of redemption.  And it’s so worth the risk.  I love you – Tom

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