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The Matrix – Caveats

Having made some glowing statements about this movie, I have to add some caveats. First, there is a dearth of explicit reference to sin or anything comparable. Normally, I wouldn’t demand a movie present each aspect of orthodox theology, but The Matrix follows that theology so closely, it seemed important to me that something so important not be left out.  Otherwise, one could interpret this movie as some sort of gnostic presentation, which it may have been intended to be.  I do not know.

Having said that, there is a statement made by Morpheus to Neo near the beginning that is arresting in its directness and force. When Neo asks, “What truth?” Morpheus looks him in the eye and with somber seriousness: “That you are a slave, Neo.” In the movie, people are enslaved to the computers. Of course, in real life people are enslaved to sin: “Whoever sins is a slave to sin,” said Jesus.  Jn. 8.  So, taking the symbology of the movie and applying it to the real world, the slavery spoken of is sin.

As Morpheus says later, Neo has to let it all go – doubt, fear, disbelief, which are the basis for sin.  While he has been freed from the computer dream world, now he must fight, and that fight must be waged with a free mind, one no longer controlled by the computer dream world from which he was released. Christians are the same way; they must let go of what held them back before, and they first and foremost do this by reading the bible – “washing their mind with the water of the word.”

Second, the parallel world of this movie implies that our enslavement is metaphysical, or even physical.  Sin and its effects have an effect on that aspect of reality, but they are mostly moral in origin.  Man is a moral being, and his sin derives from moral failures.  However, considering that the movie has to use some vehicle or construct to convey its message, this factor does not bother me too much.  How do you present a picture of an invisible idea or principle without appearing to make it too metaphysical?  That’s the limitation of a movie screen, actors, and sets.

The makers of the movie, the Wachowski Brothers, may have taken dramatic liberty in an attempt to picture this world of enslavement, a world by the way that the slaves can’t see. But how else could they picture it to make the point? It is a dramatic moment and powerful when Morpheus and his disciples from outside the Matrix cause Neo to awake from his computer induced dream and see what is really happening. It is akin to a conversion experience, wherein he was blind but now he sees. Interestingly, he is immediately rejected by that world, just as the Christian, who is no longer of the world, faces rejection by that world also.  The rejection works to his benefit, for then he is rescued by his brother/disciplies, also rescued from the Matrix, and learns a new way to live – the way of freedom.  But like the Israelites entering Canaan, that freedom involves fighting for what is theirs.

Third, although Neo is a Messiah-figure, he is a just a man, born in the world of enslavement and a slave himself.  Jesus Christ, of course, was not just a man; He was and is the God-Man, the 2nd person of the Trinity.  He also was never enslaved to sin, having never sinned.  Without that information about Him, it could never have been said that He came from outside the Matrix of our world. Whereas the movie can picture for us Neo and the others outside the Matrix and reentering it, we do not have that convenience with respect to the Son of God.  Instead, we have the evidence presented in scripture of a man born very unusually (the incarnation in Mary’s womb), living a life blessed by God like no other (his miracle-working power in its quality and quantity makes the miracles of the prophets of the Jewish bible look like a child’s sandbox play, and they were unusually gifted men by anyone’s standards).  His own self-attestation to be without sin and from a different world (see the gospel of John), and the resurrection.

So, with those caveats in mind, let’s have fun dissecting and analyzing the wonderful meanings of The Matrix for Christians who believe in the power of the gospel to change lives and set people free.

Cont’d on next post.