***Spoilers Alert*** Most reviewers of the movie point to bad images of Christians in the film and how the Native Americans and Chinese were exploited. There was no review that closely examined the man who was The Lone Ranger, John Reid.
Let's give it a go.
Mr. Reid was found among Presbyterians (baptized Christians) on a train heading out west. He was discovered by one of the group carrying John Locke's Two Treatises of Government that he considered "his bible". As a lawyer, he believed that bringing men to justice within the court system was the way to handle every criminal. He would defend this belief for most of the movie with his life.
However, when the rubber hit the road, he had to reevaluate his position. In the end, he believed that he had to personally take the lead to exact justice.
This transformation reminded me of Ambassador and Dr. Mary Ann Glendon's book The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt. In it, she describes how many scholars end up not being effective politicians and vice versa. It takes a special person to pull off both. "Perhaps Plato put it best when he chastised both the man of action who never looks beyond immediate concerns and the scholar who keeps his head in the clouds."
John Reid was an example of the scholar. It took experience to know that most times, people need to take up the mantel of justice themselves or in associations of people, just not leave it to government agency.
This is the irony of the movie: it takes the emergence of The Lone Ranger to actualize Locke's natural man who was John Reid. It took experience in action to understand the Two Treatises.
The parallel for Christians is that Love in action is what actualizes faith in Jesus of the Bible.
And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corr. 13:2)The Lone Ranger Part II
The Lone Ranger Part III
