Alan Ritchson recently responded to criticism he received that asserts he should not play the character as a Christian.
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher (2023), Prime Video
Ritchson shared a video to his Instagram earlier this week saying, “I love playing Reacher. I love telling this story. I love playing a character who creates a a kind of moral ambiguity that we should struggle against as we consider whether or not what he’s doing is good all the time or morally right. I think that kind of thing is fun and fascinating and I think escaping to that world um as an audience hopefully it’s as enjoyable for you as it is for me to help bring it to life.”
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He continued, “But it’s funny to me how a lot of people criticize me, supposed Christians especially criticize me, for playing Reacher as if the only TV that should exist is seeing people silently folding their hands in the pew of a church. I mean what kind of stories are we supposed to tell?”
“If you look at scripture what do you find? You see a thousand years of an infinitely holy God holding tension with human beings as he tells the story of who he is, reveals who he is through an imperfect people. So we get stories of paganism, and war, and bloodshed, and ghost stories, mysticism. We see miracles and magic,” he said. “We see life and resurrection and death. And we see this incredible canvas where God is completely unafraid to tell the story of who He is through less than morally ambiguous characters, through through pure evil sometimes.”
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher (2023), Prime Video
Ritchson then stated, “So I think it’s laughable when people criticize me for playing characters that are not like saintly, you know. That’s not my job. And I don’t think God cares about only telling those kinds of stories. I think we can start conversations and we can reach people through these mediums in a way that I think God enjoys.
“And so here we are now where we can get to the heart of the matter where God has built a platform because of this show for me where I can reach people who maybe don’t think about these things all the time and maybe, maybe for those who are struggling, or feel lost, or want to try something new, they can find something that brings them hope like my faith has mine,” the actor said.
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher (2023), Prime Video
“And so to go back to the heart of the matter, I think we only have to look at the first two verses of the Bible to see who God is, the purpose of what he’s doing, and what he wants to do in your life, and where that tension exists once humanity enters the equation,” Ritchson asserted.
“In verse one we get this: God created the Heavens and the Earth. We see that God is a Creator but what kind of Creator? We go to verse two to find out. It says, ‘Now the Earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The waters representing chaos, the Earth formless and empty. The Hebrew word for formless and empty is Tohu va-Vohu. It means wild and waste. There was nothing but wild and waste in the beginning. We sort of skip over the Big Bang and we’re just— we’ve got the planets forming and coalescing, but it’s wild and waste. There’s no good there yet. There’s nothing usable. It’s empty. And God’s spirit is hovering over the waters and out of that he creates a garden that is enviable among angels and Man, the Garden of Eden. He creates Humanity. He begins this Saga that is epic, an epic Saga of Love out of the wild and the waste,” he detailed.
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher (2023), Prime Video
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“And I think that is exactly what God intended in the first two verses of the Bible to be revealed,” Ritchson shared. “That he is a good Creator. And that out of the wild, the waste, and the empty of your life he can create a garden if you let him, but the difficulty is the fact that when when God wills himself over creation and says out of this wild and waste just with my breath I will animate goodness and gardens and sunsets and sunrises and humanity that will learn slowly how to love each other. When it comes to people He’s a little standoffish because He doesn’t want to breach free will because He wants to respect the fact and see what you do with this opportunity to invite the spirit in that hovers over you, or to try to do it on your own and stay in the wild and the waste and be the king and lord over the emptiness. Would you rather be the king and the god of the emptiness, and the wild, and the waste, or would you rather participate under One who is the infinite, holy, good Creator of all in his garden? Participate in that garden?
“That is the question that we face in the first two verses of the Bible,” he reiterated. “That is the heart of the matter and when we are distracted with other questions of like, ‘Are you, can you possibly be a Christian and play a character like Reacher?’ We’re missing that that moment that confrontation that God is waiting for in all of our lives and for some of us it comes sooner than others.
Ritchson concluded, “I hope if you haven’t confronted that question yet that this conversation helps bring you to it sooner. Do you want to be the god of emptiness, wild, and waste or do you want to be a servant in a garden?”
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher (2023), Prime Video
It’s unclear what exactly the criticism Ritchson is facing, but the idea that Christians can only tell stories of individuals praying in a pew is ridiculous especially given how Jesus Christ communicated via parables during the years He preached the Gospel.
What do you make of Ritchson’s comments and his response to the criticism he’s faced?
