The Millennial Star

‘Taken’ and the responsibilities of a patriarch

Geoff B.

The movie ‘Taken’ has a simple plot:  a retired but still vital CIA agent tries to recover his daughter, who is taken by sex slave traders during a trip to Europe.  In the process, he kills dozens of bad guys.

For a father of a teenage girl, this kind of movie provides a lot of satisfaction:  without spoiling the movie, I can probably tell you that the bad guys get it in the end.  And these bad guys are really bad:  they make their money trafficking in young, innocent women — the more innocent, the better.  Jonah Goldberg calls the movie “Patriarchal Porn” because the hero good guy (Liam Neeson, the CIA agent) has an overwhelming desire to protect his daughter, and he succeeds in demonstrating that he is the real, true manly man.

I have been struggling with two contradictory reactions to this movie:  one is that it touched a deep, core need to be the big, protecting patriarch for my family.  I have to admit a feeling of deep satisfaction as Neeson wasted all the bad guys (and, again, these guys were really BAD — sex slave traders — like Nazi BAD).

But of course we know from the Gospel that in real life there is no justification for killing 30 people to rescue your daughter from bad guys, no matter how bad.

D&C 64: 9-10 says:

9 Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.

10 I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.
If that’s not clear enough, Romans 12:19 says the Lord is responsible for vengeance:  “vengeance is mine, and I will repay, sayeth the Lord.”
So, we patriarchs who are trying to be peaceable followers of Christ have two seemingly contradictory commandments:  on the one hand, we are supposed to be protectors of our families, and on the other, we are supposed to forgive and leave vengeance to the Lord.  It creates quite a conundrum for us theoreticians.
Of course in real life it is probably unlikely that I am going to need to travel to Europe and kill 30 bad guys to rescue my daughter.  A more practical scenario:  bad guy breaks into the house, I shoot him to protect my family.  Seems clear, this is justified (self-defense is justified).   But would it be justified, for example, to make the guy suffer who raped your daughter?  How about the guy who hit your daughter?  How about the guy who made fun of her at school and made her cry for two days?
Do you see what I’m getting at?  Being a patriarch is more complicated than it seems.  My response has always been to let kids work it out themselves, but if some punk ever hits my daughter, I don’t know what I’d do.  Luckily for the theoretical punk (and my daughter) it has never happened.  But if it did, would channeling Liam Neeson be the right response?
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