In "White Rabbit" episode, in a flashback, Jack as a young boy lies on the ground in fear as a playground bully threatens him, while his friend, Marc, is being beaten by another bully. Jack, seemingly out of character, attempts to intervene, resulting in him getting a black eye from the bully.
Later on, Jack explains the fight to his father who tells Jack about his day at the hospital. Christian, while drinking whiskey, says that he is able to cope with the difficult job of surgeon because he "has what it takes." He claims that he can make life or death decisions daily because even when he fails, he can live with the consequences. He concludes that Jack should not "decide," because if he failed, he wouldn't "have what it takes."
On the island, Locke claims Jack's White Rabbit is the vision of his dead father, an illusion to a character in Alice in Wonderland that leads the main character down the rabbit hole and into a dangerous fantasy world.
If LOST was all about Jack, was the trip to Australia to retrieve his estranged father's body the cusp of his life suddenly falling (literally from the sky) into a dangerous fantasy world on the Island?
In life, Jack was told he was not a leader because he could not handle the "wrong decisions" which would cost people their lives. On the island, survivors came to him to make decisions for them - - - life and death decisions on survival, which path to take, who to trust, and where to go.
If one takes all the plot elements, flashbacks, island time, and flash forward arcs, nearly all of Jack's decisions were the "wrong decisions." He really did not have a good instinct at reading people's inner motivations. He really did not want to make close friendships because that would lead to trust. His story is really one of being beat up, physically and emotionally. By the time Jack gets on Flight 815, he is spent. He is lost. He cannot change his relationship with his father. He can never show his father that he was wrong when he said he could not handle the consequences of life and death decisions. Only in a fantasy world could Jack face his White Rabbit.
So how does Jack actually meet his father in "real time?" His flashbacks are mere memories. He finds his father dead in Sydney. His interaction with his father on the island is mere illusion because it cannot be real: is Christian a guardian angel? a fellow traveler trapped in a fantasy-purgatory realm? is Christian a mere delusion? There are two ways to reconcile this premise: the plane crash sent Jack into a fantasy world made up by his mental images or Jack perished in the crash with everyone else and this was his Egyptian style journey through the underworld.
The only time Jack speaks to him on the same plane of existence is in the church at The End when it is revealed that they are both dead. But that short conversation never solved or resolved the deep "daddy issues" Jack had throughout the series.
