The Matrix

I am definitely not a sci-fi type of person.
In fact, I'm probably the whimpiest movie watcher you have ever met. During intense scenes I tightly clutch a pillow (or the arm of whoever was foolish enough to sit near me) and pull my blanket over my head, peering around them until the suspense has ended. And I'm not doing it to put on a dramatic show, either. I get genuinely terrified.
So it was highly unlike me, but I watched The Matrix a few nights ago. I knew it was about as Sci-fi as you can get. But I've also heard that there are some pretty amazing redemptive analogies in this story, and I love plots that have an "eternal undertone". I delight in coming away from a movie with thoughts higher than the simple plot I watched on the screen...with a greater understanding of life and God and men. This is why I love the stories of Narnia so much.
(Note: Nathaniel owns an edited version of The Matrix, and I can't in good conscience reccommend the unedited version to you! I know there is a lot of language, etc. in the uncut version that was not in the version I watched.)
The Matrix is a gripping story about Neo, whose life story is best introduced to you through this clip:


The red pill is Neo's first step towards understanding that the world he thinks he's living in is all an illusion of his mind; a computer generated life. For the first time he really "wakes up" and when he does, he's a naked a hairless creature who is living a silent, still existence in a tub of goo, hooked up to cords and tubes that are generating electric power for the new owners of planet earth. Not only this, but every other human being is living the same life. Their real world is a human manufacturing power plant full of millions of comatose bodies like themselves, being used and disposed of like lightbulbs. Their minds are alive, though, and they are completely unaware that the life they're living is all in their brain; a computer program to keep them satisfied. The house they live in does not exist. Their clothes do not exist. Their friends and family do not exists. The real "them" are simply naked creatures hooked up to tubes lying in a tub of goo where they were grown at a vast warehouse.
It's terrifying. Honest-to-goodness, I was freaked out.
But it's a deeply beautiful story too, because the handful of truly "alive" people left, (those unplugged from the computer system and free from the warehouse) have chosen to embrace the terror of the real world and plunge into the battle to save mankind. They'd rather live a hard life but know it's the real thing, than live a happy illusion.

It's so hard to explain! Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew with this post; I don't know.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, this movie makes you aware that just like Neo, there are millions of people living ordinary lives in this world, but painfully aware that there is more to life that what they're getting out of it. There's a dimension they aren't living in, and they don't know how to get there. Some have chosen to deaden themselves to the fact. They grab the blue pill and silence the inner Voice forever. Some choose to take no pill...to remain empty and searching, but unwilling to embrace either extreme: Truth or Ignorance.
I wonder who you, reading this post, are. Do you realize that there is a dimension so much higher, so much more real than the one we can see and feel and touch!? To live as if this world were all that matters would be like an infant in the womb assuming that the small, safe environment she floats in is all that exists. She doesn't realize that the womb is just preparation for a much greater, infinitely fuller life!

Guys, I don't know about you but I'm takin' the red pill. I want to be fully aware of the only dimention that matters: the Heavenly dimension. God. The Savior and Lover of my soul who created me to find fullness and purpose in HIM alone. The Matrix of this world so tenaciously pulls me back to the goo pit I once lived in, but by God's grace alone, I will resist it. I purpose to live my life with an increasing awareness of the Invisible Realities all around me: all pointing back to the only Reality in life, Jesus Christ. When I enter eternity some day, I pray I won't find that I have entered a completely foreign place, but that instead I'll realize I've stepped over
the threshold into the life I always knew I was born for. The home I've always longed for. The glory I know I was made for. The Bible warns us so MANY times that this earth is a vapor; a mist. I think the reason The Matrix seems almost believable to me is because it IS true, in a sense. It whispers of what our souls are already telling us. We're living in the mirage and acting like it's all there is.

I don't know how many people will read this entire post. But my prayer for you, Christian OR non-believing friend, is that God will increasingly draw you out of the "Matrix", the repulsive mirage that seems so real, and into the fullness of all that He is. If He is not everything to us, He might as well be nothing to us.

That's one Sci-fi movie I'm really glad I watched. :)