Click here to get this post in PDF

The Matrix – The Calling, that is, Election

In the Matrix, Trinity sets up a meeting with Neo (hacker name; his real name is Thomas Anderson), a meeting he doesn’t even know he’s attending. They meet in a place that can be described as a den of iniquity, sin and uncleanness.

In their introduction to each other, she meets him and says, “Hello, Neo.” He asks, “How do you know that name?” She answers: “I know alot about you.” When she tells him her name, he asks, “The Trinity? that cracked the IRS D-base?” She says, “That was a long time ago.” He says, “Jesus!” She says, “What?”

So the parallel to Christ, in the name, the singularity, and the identification of someone who “knows alot about him is established early in the movie.

She tells him: “I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, . . . why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him; I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.”

Neo answers, “What is the Matrix?”

Trinity: “The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you, and it will find you, if you want it to.”

THe very next conversation is between Neo and his supervisor at this job the next morning. The supervisor accuses Neo of believing he’s special. Then, directly after, Morpheus calls him in a providentially set-up way and tells him: “I’m not sure you’re ready to see what I’m planning to show you.” Then he attempts to guide Neo to prevent being apprehended by the agents of the enslavers who are trying to detain him and prevent him from following Morpheus. Ultimately, Neo is asked to risk his life to obtain enlightenment and freedom, but he can’t do it. His trust in Morpheus is weak. He doesn’t know him. He is self-pitying: “Why is this happening to me? I didn’t do anything.” He’s lost and doesn’t even know it.

He’s like you and me before knowing Christ – unwilling to risk life and limb for what we do not know, selfishly thinking we’re innocent and not knowing how lost he is.

The only thing he has going for him is that he disrespects the reigning authorities and definitely doesn’t trust them either. That is shown in the next scene when they detain him and “bug” him in order to track his movements and hopefully catch Morpheus. Then Morpheus calls Neo again, during a thunderstorm, and tells him: “They don’t know how important you are, or they would have killed you.” Like Satan didn’t know how important Christ and his death were, or they would not have killed the Lord of glory.

When Morpheus meets Neo, Neo is still a potential enemy. Morpheus’ assistants have to ensure that Neo doesn’t hurt them because even though he means them no harm, he’s clueless as to the dangers of the trackers and what they intend to do to Morpheus and his group. Morpheus sends him to the “Adams Street Bridge.” Adams street? How much more obvious could you get? Neo still lives in Adam’s world, and he knows where that road leads; he’s been down it before. Trinity tells him, therefore, Neo has to trust Trinity because she knows that’s not where he wants to be.

After explaining as much as he could about the Matrix, Morpheus must admit that Neo can only understand what it is by seeing for himself. Morpheus gives Neo a choice to find out, where there’s no turning back. Neo must partake of a communion of sorts, eating either a blue pill or a red pill. Choosing the red pill is deciding on a change, an encounter with reality, with truth. Neo chooses the truth.

In being prepped for the “trip” out of “Kansas,” he asks Trinity: “You did all this?” Trinity: “Yep.” Before he enters the truth, he’s still blind as to his condition, his slavery, his blindness to the truth. Morpheus asks him: “Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure it was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

When Neo awakes, he discovers he’s part of a network of sleepers that powers an evil empire of lies. He may have never intended to support such evil, but he does, merely by being blind to the truth.

Trinity and Neo continue the double entendres throughout the movie. In another scene, Neo says, “God,” as an expletive, and Trinity answers, “What?”

When Neo meets the oracle, the prophet, he learns what? It’s hard to tell. She doesn’t say he is or isn’t the One. He leaves thinking that he’s not the One, but Morpheus later tells him he learned exactly what he needed. What he needed was love. His love for Morpheus causes him to act in a way that indicated he didn’t care what happened to himself, leading him to great deeds, leading to the discovery that he was the One. Had he continued to think, “I must protect myself because I’m the One,” then he never would have risked himself for Neo.

The One loves his brother more than himself. The calling is important, but it’s less important than loving one’s brother.