The Matrix - Morpheus

Morpheus is an obvious John the Baptist type, in that the Oracle reveals that he would find "the One," he taught many others about "the truth," and he gives his life for the sake of the One. At least, he thinks he is giving his life. In the end, the One shows his preeminence by saving Morpheus. Morpheus is a man of faith, and he teaches faith to Neo, the disciple. This faith believes in another world, that which is outside the Matrix. After being freed from it and while in it, one must realize that the rules governing it no longer constrain the one freed. But death is still possible, and so is suffering. Morpheus' disciples know the dangers of the Matrix and from those still bound by it, so they are severe with Neo when they first contact him. And their words, while having completely comprehensible meaning for those who have been freed, are cryptic gobbledy-gook, even evil to those unfreed. Morpheus, like John the Baptist, has a moment of unbelief himself, when he sees Neo die. Morpheus, even though freed and full of faith and believing that the prophecy would come true, did not know exactly how it would turn out. For example, during training he told Neo that when he was ready, Neo would not even need to dodge bullets. Yet, when Neo is struck by bullets and dies, Morpheus was dumbstruck and couldn't believe what had happened. In the same way, the disciples of Jesus, though they believed in Him and His messiahship, did not understand He would have to die. For them, death was victor, along with many other things in life - suffering, loss, disappointment, difficulty - all these things mean God is not in control or has forsaken them. Christ always rose above those things. Think of the time in the boat with the disciples, when they thought they were sinking, but Christ simply said, "Where is your faith?" Think about Lazarus and his sister, Martha, when Jesus asked, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of god." Therefore, Christ was perfectly content with the difficulties His Father allowed into His life and believed always that only the best would result.

The Matrix - Neo

Neo is an obvious Christ figure. To simplify, he dies, rises again, and thereby lives in total control of the Matrix, unable to be defeated by the Agents of the Machine but able to decode and devour them from the inside out. But if it were that simple, the movie would not be genius, and it is genius.

Neo begins as a pawn of the Machine, like all other humans. So in that case, he is not like Christ, who came from outside this world to teach us about the outside of this world. After being freed by Morpheus, Neo comes from outside whenever he returns to the Matrix, but he is not free of the Matrix when he returns. At least, he is a witness of that which is above and beyond the world of the Matrix as Christ was a witness of the world from which He came. Neo in Latin means New, and his name spelled differently is One, as in the One. Christ also was the new man, the second Adam, come to build a new kingdom, not like the old. "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby." Eph 3:15-16. After rising from the dead, Neo ascends to heaven at the end of the movie. Part of the genius of the movie is that this supernatural gift of Neo's is not just to show he's the One. It's to show how to escape slavery to the Machine, the world of rules, limitations, disbelief. Neo shows us to endure, even death, and that we will come out the other side of whatever is stopping, hindering, even destroying us. In Neo's case, it is the greatest enemy of all - death. There is no greater difficulty. All our problems are less than death; therefore, if waiting on God, believing that victory is ours, is what Christ and Neo did, then that is all we need. Another part of the genius of the movie is the discipleship phase of Neo's life. Here is what we relate to the most as humans. Neo, according to Morpheus, knows there is something wrong with the world, but he can't explain it. It's "like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." That's how sin is. You can't explain why and how you're not right, nor why and how the world is not right. And you don't know how to stop being a slave to that world. Jesus said, "He who sins is a slave to sin." Neo can't be told what the Matrix is; he must see it. "Except ye be born again, ye cannot see the kingdom of God." Jesus' conversation in John 3 with Nicodemus. And Neo is. He comes out of the womb, seeing the world for what it really is, controlled by something unfriendly, keeping him blind to the truth of the slavery the Machine keeps him in. His new life requires learning new things, most importantly learning how to deal with suffering and fighting with those powers that held him.

His biggest fight is in his mind. In training Neo, Morpheus seeks to "free your mind." He must let it all go - "fear, doubt, and disbelief." And anything is possible. Neo's relationship with Morpheus is subtle but evident; he loves Morpheus for freeing him, for teaching him, for being a fearless man standing for the truth. And this relationship leads to the key to Neo realizing his calling. The oracle scene is profound. Instead of telling Neo he is the One, she tells him that he's not ready. She deflates Neo's inordinate attraction for himself and lets him know there's someone more important - Morpheus. Based on the Oracle's foretelling that he would have to make a choice between himself and Morpheus, Neo makes the choice to think of someone other than himself, and that is where his faith and power arise, from his love for Morpheus. Even so Christ did not suffer for the righteous but "in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:6. Were we more deserving than Christ? On the contrary, it was the opposite case - we deserving His death, and He deserving life. Yet, he put us first. Thus, love conquered, and Neo's calling was revealed.

The Water Horse

A lonely boy, who has lost his Dad, finds a creature whom he helps and who grows into a friend and a protector of the boy. But this creature is not like men, cruel and demanding, lacking understanding of a small frightened boy. This creature takes the boy and plays with him in the environment most terrifying to the boy, makes him see its wonder, and that it is not a danger to one who can protect the boy from just about anything that threatens the boy. The boy learns to love this great creature, to build a relationship with it. It is so with our great Creator, who loves us and is so powerful, fearful, yet faithful to us. And we can know Him and His love.

Spiderman 3 - Harry Osborne

Harry, spiderman's best friend, goes through quite a transformation himself. He's lazy in high school, and Peter helps him through school. He's a disappointment to his father, the ambitious, successful scientist, who would rather have Peter as a son than Harry. Thus, Harry has to overcome alot just to remain friends with Peter. Amazingly, their friendship last, but in S 2 it's fraying because Peter, as the photographer of spiderman, Harry perceives as spiderman's friend. Harry thinks spiderman killed his father.

At the end of S 2, just after learning that Peter is the spiderman whom Harry thinks deserves to die, Harry begins to hallucinate like his father, and he finds his father's equipment and drugs. But Harry is not the same as his father. He's not that selfish ambitious type. He can be lazy, he can be a jerk, he can love being wealthy and famous, but his actions in S 3 are for revenge, an excess of justice. It's an excess in the sense that an individual human doesn't have the right of revenge, even if it's just. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Harry's use of the Goblin equipment and drug are for one purpose - to get spiderman, and he thinks this is justice. Harry being Goblin Jr., as Peter taunts him during a fight in S 3, is not at the expense of humanity and solely for himself. It's for the sake of love really, a misplaced love of his father. That is vengeance, the love of family, friend, the innocent. So, Harry can return to friendship with Peter and spiderman, once he knows the truth.

But Harry reveals a different character after his "bump on the head." He's a very caring person at heart, and he tells a nurse after Peter and Mary Jane leave his hospital room: "I'd die for them." This is prophetic, for at the end he does die for the very spiderman he originally wanted to kill. Harry's hatred and vengeance were rooted in passion, not a cold self-centered ambition like his father's. Therefore, once he knows the truth and accepts it (he doesn't accept Peter's explanation at the start of the movie), he can move straight to his true self, that of caring deeply for his friends. Don't get me wrong; he's capable of great evil and manipulation, for instance, his instigation of the break-up between Peter and Mary Jane. But still, even that is rooted in love and loss, partly for Mary Jane and partly for his father.

Spiderman 1-3 - the female

Mary Jane began as not just the girl next door, but also the hot girl dated by the hot, football player guy, who is a jerk, but whom all the girls wanted to be with anyway. She became her own person in the first movie, seeking a dramatic acting job. In the sequel, she became the successful actress, overcoming her past, and the girl who admits that she's in love with the person who was the geek, and who became more than she knew he could be or was, more than what he himself knew he could be. When she stands in Peter's door at the send of S 2, she tells him, "I've always been standing in your door." This is a great admission. She loved him for who he was when he was a geek, when he was nobody.

In S 3, the stakes get huge. She and Peter are about to get married, and unlike the other two movies, she doesn't learn how great he can be or love him in spite of his humble condition, she learns just how low he can go. Here is where the real test of her love occurs. Can she love him when he has become the jerk in high school she dated but decided against?

Spiderman 2 - the citizens of NY

Unlike the first movie, in which normal citizens were pretty seen as cowards, unable to affect any good, the average people are better in this movie, fitting well with Aunt May's words about heroes. (See post about Peter Parker, S 2.) In one scene, spiderman saves a train full of people and almost dies in the process, and he loses his mask. They are shocked that he's just a kid as he awakens to consciousness, and they promise not to tell his secret. Then they try to protect him from Dr. Oc. It's one of the most touching scenes in the movie. Even Mary Jane and Aunt May get in the act and save Peter at crucial moments merely by their attempts to do what is right. We should never underestimate what we can do, even if it is imperfect. God blesses our efforts done in faith. "Do not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not faint."

Spiderman 2 - Peter Parker

All the stress of trying to juggle school, normal money-making work, his personal life, the loss of Mary Jane, the fighting anger of his best friend Harry, and the coup de grace - the loss of his powers as spiderman at critical moments - result in more than Peter is able to bear. He does the unthinkable; he leaves his calling and stops being spiderman. This actually has a beneficial effect because he gets his regular life in order in a number of ways. He returns to his intellectual love of science and improves in school; at the risk of shame and her rejection, he tells Aunt May the truth about the night Uncle Ben died; and he courts Mary Jane, now engaged to the handsome, brave, successful astronaut. He has finally realized there's more to life than his calling.

However, in this phase of his life, he encounters questions regarding his decision, for instance, he walks away from a mugging, he braves a building fire to save a little girl but unknowingly leaves a person to die whereas spiderman could have saved both lives, and his Aunt May, not knowing he is spiderman, gives him the speech about spiderman and his value as a hero. The words she speaks carry a double meaning. She says that to do the right thing: ". . . sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most, even our dreams."

She also says she believes there's a hero in all of us, someone who keeps us honest, makes us noble, helps us believe we can hang on a second longer. What a statement! We're an encouragement to each other - to be heroes, to persevere - the perseverance of the saints, and to do the most difficult thing of all - be honest. That was Peter. He could do the daring-do, swinging from buildings as spiderman, but honesty - that was the hardest thing. Then she faces the most fearsome aspect of life: "And finally allows us to die with pride."

But is the dream about being spiderman or about getting Mary Jane. Peter sees it as referring to his dream of getting Mary Jane. Here's the dilemma: His love for Mary Jane clearly fuels his ability as a superhero, yet he has to give up Mary Jane to be a superhero. In God's economy, we encounter paradoxes, seemingly insoluble situations where it seems we have to choose one of two things. If we choose in faith, we just might get both dreams, as Peter did. In a desperate confrontation with Dr. Oc, Mary Jane's life is in danger; spiderman regains the reliability of his powers. You see, love and power - from God - cannot be separated, because they are not separated in Him.

Spiderman 1 - Peter Parker

What about Peter? What kind of character is he? He's likeable, he has a sense of humor, showing he, unlike Osborne, does not take himself too seriously. And he's humble and meek, for instead of using his power for evil or to show off or get back at enemies, he follows the advice of his Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) and uses his power responsibly. "With great power comes great responsibility gets repeated several times in this movie and the first sequel. He's poor in spirit, like the persecuted, for he's made fun of by others in his school. But he does not retaliate, except in self defense.

Even as he realizes more and more the power he has, he keeps his sense of humor and humility. Unlike Superman, we can relate to this person better, but he is seemingly perfect in his execution of heroics. He saves his girl, the city, and he takes care of his aunt, all seemingly selflessly. He just wants to do the right thing, and in that sense he's a Christ-figure. But we will meet his weaknesses, those of every man, in the sequels, and we relate to him even better. At the end of the movie, he has so combined his intelligence and his spider-gifting that he can seemingly do the impossible. He's practically omnipotent, as the Goblin, clearly a devil-figure, demands that he make a choice - save the love of his life or save a gondola full of innocent people whom spiderman doesn't know. Instead of choosing, spiderman saves both and like Christ, but not quite, almost dying in the process.

While the devil, the Goblin, believes the key is to attack spiderman's heart, this strategy backfires, for spiderman's heart of love for Mary Jane seems to be from whence he gets the strength to vault from near-death to superhuman feats of strength. The Goblin ends up begging Peter for mercy, yet uses the expression of mercy to try to kill him. How much more devilish could he have become. Yet, Peter the human remains magnanimous even as Osborne dies in his arms. Peter, as spiderman, gently returns the body of Osborne to his home and keeps the secret of who he really was, lest Osborne's son learn of it and be ashamed of his own father, a father, by the way, who never truly accepted Harry (James Franco) for who he was.

Again, like Christ, Peter loves his enemy. In his normal human life, he keeps his spiderman identity incognito, even to the point of being considered cowardly. Christ, though having the power to get off the cross and show his enemies who He really was, resisted such temptation for the greater cause. Hebrews says, "He [Christ the new final High Priest] can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himselfis also subject to weakness."

Spiderman 2 - Otto Octavius

Peter is not only gifted as spiderman, he's also a gifted scientist in his own right, and he meets another gifted scientist, who at their first meeting becomes a self-appointed mentor to Peter. He tells him intelligence is "not a privilege, it's gift to be used for the good of mankind." Dr. Otto Octavius. Octavius is amazingly similar to Osborne in the first movie. He respects Peter's scientific mind, and like Osborne, he wants to take him under his wing, like a father-figure. He's a brilliant scientist who wants to create something risky but useful, something that is the first of its kind - a self-sustaining fusion reaction, a little sun for the use of mankind. He even has a sense of humor, like Peter.

But he differs from Osborne. We like Octavius at the beginning. He portrays a sincere desire to use his intelligence for others, and he loves. Octavius' wife shows the humanity and goodness of Octavius. We never saw Osborne love anything but his work and ambition. They met in college, and she tried to explain to him T.S. Eliot, the poet of modern, technological man and the conflict between those two modern stumbling blocks for man - scientific progress and reliance upon intellect versus the mysterious divine and faith. There's a hint of the future when Octavius says he never did understand Eliot, and later when he has started the fusion reaction and with an unaccustomed self-aggrandizement in his voice and the Goblin's (the devil's) gleam in his eye, he says, "The power of the sun in the palm of my hand." Even after discovering what the arms have made him, Octavius wants to do the right thing, but the arms convince him otherwise, and they use his "dream" to convince him that the ends justify the means. Like Osborne, we suspect he has the power to control what the arms do, but he succumbs for the sake of his "dream." Like Satan, the arms use what is good to cause evil, unlike God, who uses even evil to accomplish his good, kingdom purposes.

After his loss of his dream of unlimited fusion power, his wife, and even his normal humanity ( he becomes physically and neurologically fused to his own creation, superhuman, indestructible arms, each of which has its own artificial intelligence), he begins to listen to the arms who can speak to his mind by way of the neurological connection caused by the electrical shock he received during the fusion demonstration. Unlike Osborne, Octavius battles a real enemy, not just himself. So the villain has evolved in the sequel. Octavius becomes like Osborne in every way, except that at the end, Octavius is able to redeem himself. Another electrical shock brings to his remembrance who he really is - not Peter's enemy but his friend, not a diabolical nemesis of the world using science destructively but a responsible scientist with ethics.

In the same way he uses the words of his Uncle in the first movie, Peter uses his Aunt May's words. The words represent a brilliant understanding of the writers of this sequel of the difficulty and power of doing good. All through the movie, Octavius, like Osborne, has justified murder, theft, and wreaking havoc for the sake of something else - what they thought they deserved. Octavius' cause is a "higher" one than just personal ambition - the dream of a new scientific discovery - but it has become a selfish, destructive one nonetheless. The words Peter uses to call Dr. Oc back are amazing in context. Peter repeats Aunt May's words, altering them a little, and says that in order to do the right thing, like be honest, be noble, to persevere: "Sometimes to do what's right, we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most, even our dreams."

Octavius comes to himself and hears Peter's repetition of his Aunt's words. He realizes the wrong he has done and like Samson, he gives his life to undo it. As he dies, he proclaims: "I will not die a monster." No one hears, no one will know what he did to right his wrong, no one except God the all-seeing. He doesn't die a monster before God, not before man. That is what God tells us to do, to remember the Lord and His ways, to return to the right was, even if no one recognizes it, even if we are killed because of it. And Christ teaches us that there is something much more important than life itself - the kingdom of God.

While we want to relate to Peter Parker, and we do because he's like us in many ways, Octavius and Osborne, I'm afraid, is the more typical pattern for the mass of sinful humanity. See the great potential of Octavius, what he could have done, what he could have been, but he became a monster because of his desire to "do good." We, in spite of, or because of, our best intentions, claiming to be good, expose our sinfulness. That's the problem with "do-gooders;" it's not that they are just annoying, it's that they become monsters when separated from Christ.

Spiderman 2 - Our calling, our personal life

Spiderman 2 shows the matured spiderman, no longer a kid thinking he has a responsibility to use the gift, learning to use it, learning his physical limitations and abilities; he's now well into a ministry or career or profession as spiderman. While he is superb as spiderman, saving lives and keeping criminals off the street, he's miserable as a normal person trying to make a living, a student trying to attend his classes. With his feet in both world, he ends up not doing very well at the normal human world, and that is the world everyone sees. He's starving for attention . . . and love. He has decided he can never be with the love of his life, Mary Jane, lest her life become endangered like his. He's practicing what his Uncle Ben taught him before his death in S 1 - With great power comes great responsibility.

In this movie, Mary Jane indicates to Peter Parker her interest to him more than in the first movie, where they are more like friends and Peter longing for her from afar. This tests his commitment to keep his love a secret to the limit of his ability. In fact, It is clear toward the beginning of the movie that he is acting contrary to his gift. "It is not good for the man to be alone," and it's not good for Spiderman who begins to lose his powers as he begins to lose his chance to be with Mary Jane. Even his weak attempts to keep his friendship alive with Mary Jane get undermined by his calling to "save" people and stop crime. This movie magnificently pictures the tension between the man committed to his calling before God and his obligations to other people. Those obligations, and needs, involve fellowship, honesty, love, etc. As those degrade for Peter, so does his calling.

Peter has a blind spot with respect to Mary Jane. His assumed noble protection of Mary Jane is a self-deceiving cover. Peter Parker is a normal man, and he fears and doubts his own ability to have a deep and intimate relationship with a woman. As with his jobs in his normal world, he's unreliable, and instead of keeping his calling separate from his personal relationship, he uses it as an escape. When he lets her down by failing to show up in time to see Mary Jane's acting part in a play and sees her with her new boyfriend/soon to be fiance, he leaves and becomes spiderman. We are unsure just what motive he had in pursuing Mary Jane (seeking to be just a friend? pursuing her romantically?). This scene is when he begins to lose his calling; his powers fail him. Though Peter doesn't recognize the problem, we know his failure in his calling is a result of his failure with Mary Jane.

His blind spot and why his attempt to protect her is a self-deception is that the Goblin in the first movie figured out fairly easily that Mary Jane was his girlfriend, or desired girlfriend. And in S 2, Octavius figures out the very same thing. They both learn it from Harry, Peter's best friend, before Harry even knows that Peter is spiderman.

Spiderman 1 - Osborne, aka Green Goblin

Tobey Maguire, who plays spiderman, and Kirsten Dunst, who plays his love interest, Mary Jane Watson, are the 2 main stars of the series. Spiderman acquires his "gift" from a fourtuitous biological event, but the interesting thing about this event is that it was not sought after. In that sense, it was as if God in His sovereignty had given this gift to him. The movie contrasts this gifting directly with that of the scientist, Osborne of Oscorp, whose ambition and impatience drive him to experiment on himself with a formula that is supposed to grant super strength to the partaker. It's risky because it has also been shown to cause insanity. Osborne's taking of the drug merges with his own sinful, overly ambitious nature and turns him into spiderman's murderous nemesis, the Green Goblin.

Osborne, played superbly and sinisterly by , is a pitiful, yet too real, picture of sinful man. Alternately, strong and cruel when under the influence of the drug, but weak and blame-shifting when acting as a normal person. He blames his own evil on a voice, a personage, the Goblin, who seems to speak to him as another person, but is really the projection of Osborne's own sinfulness - his desire for power, to wreak revenge upon his enemies, to get whatever he wants. This portayal of Osborne is almost as brilliant as that of the portrayal of the scientist in "A Beautiful Mind." It might actually be more ingenious than the portrayal in that movie, for the Director of Spiderman, Sam Raimi, does not use a trick to fool the audience, making it seem real what Osborne hears. We know the entire time it's his own mind that is speaking to him, yet we feel as if he truly is helpless to ignore the "voice" telling him to do the evil he does.

Is it psychosis, or is it the power of sin and guilt to drive a person to divide himself into two people? That way he can avoid the guilt of who he really is. A horrible merging, or is it a choice of personality, occurs at the end of the movie, when after telling Peter who he is - Mr. Osborne, the respected scientist and CEO and father of Peter's best friend who sought to befriend Peter - he quickly reverts to the Goblin and attempts to kill Peter. However, "he who digs a pit will fall into it," the scripture says, and Osborne inadvertently dies by his own hand even as he attempts to kill Peter.

Don't people do that, in small and large ways, even Christians? We find a way to avoid the responsibility of our behavior, our sin, which we know deserves the just anger and displeasure of God. Yet, if we believe, we can turn to Christ for forgiveness at any moment, and he welcomes us without hesitation. The problem appears twofold - either we don't believe he's that good and hide from Him, as Adam and Eve did, or we run from him because we want our sin too much. Osborne is portrayed clearly as wanting his power too much, but the psychosis is the movie's way of showing his attempt to absolve himself of sin, instead of turning to Christ. Turning to the meek Christ would logically require Osborne to give up his overly ambitious dream and desire for power.

Spideman 1, 2, & 3

This triloby starring and is one of the most successful series of sequels ever made. All three approach or equal what I call a perfect movie - movie in which every scene accomplishes what was intended and has a high theme of some kind. The perfect movie is rare, for example, Ben Hur, The Sound of Music, It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (the 1930s version with Gary Cooper), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Chariots of Fire, etc. It is unusual for a Director to have one perfect movie. Frank Capra had three. It is also rare for a musical to be a perfect movie because it is so hard to mix music with an attempt to depict reality. The Sound of Music is one of the few to accomplish that. It is also rare extremely rare for a sequel to be perfect. The sequels to Raiders of the Lost Ark are pale imitations.

Yet, the writers and director of Spiderman have somehow found a seeminly endless well of ingenious, various ways of depicting deep, even spiritual truths, through this youmg man and his attempts to balance a normal life with great gifts, to know how to do heroic things without being too caught up in being a hero, to balance the loneliness of being a servant/leader but recognize his need for others, to take risks in serious situations but to keep a sense of humor. Spiderman's scenes are incredibly well-acted, well-directed, and merge well with the amazing special effects. Its high themes are many, but the bottom line and what makes the series so successful is that Spiderman is every man and his battles to live courageously, love sincerely, and stay humble. It's the scripture: "He has shown the O man what is good, but to do justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

It will take several posts to really plumb the depths of these movies, so I'll get back to the Matrix another day.

The Matrix-What we cannot see

It's interesting to meditate upon the behind-the-scenes action of life. What actions are performed by God, the angels, Christ just to keep us alive and functioning? Christ is said to be interceding on our behalf. The angels are servants of the called out ones. Certain things in life are the result of unseen work of dramatic proportions, yet we don't see them. Consider your salvation. For you, it's a revelation, an input of God's knowledge into you by His Spirit, and of course, the result of Christ's magnificent work on the cross. You believe, but you don't see all that went before to bring you to believe.

In the first scenes of the Matrix, Trinity contacts Neo by way of his computer, which leads him ultimately to accept the path offered by Morpheus - enlightenment as to the nature of the Matrix. But he never sees that Trinity risked her life to do that for him. We see her on a laptop making a simple communication to Neo's computer, when the police come in, and she escapes. Then, the computer-software-agents of the Matrix, Mr. Smith and his cohorts, arrive, and her life-and-death run ensues. She does all that just to get a simple message to Neo. Yet, all he sees are a few short sentences on a computer screen which cause him to want to meet and learn more.

We see so many "simple," seemingly easy things, both in the natural world and in the spiritual world, but they cannot be simple. And they are not easy. Like a computer - we use them, but the technology behind them represents years of manhours and centuries of accumulated knowledge.

North by Northwest

This is a Hitchcock film starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. It is one of his funniest, and in typical Hitchcock fashion, it mirrors reality, yet bends it. In this film, a man encounters strange events because he's confused with someone else. He's innocent and should be a bystander but as in life, somehow becomes involved simply because events draw him in. He's not in control. The sovereign God is, and He works events out, as the man becomes more than he ever intended to me, loves more than he thought possible, and gets a wife in the bargain. The man wins even though he's an amateur, but he wants, perhaps for the first time in his life, to do the right thing. God obliges him. Quite a trip with lots of action, suspense, comedy, and entertainment - like life itself. You can watch it over and over and still enjoy it.

The Matrix - Gnosticism?

Some might argue that this movie represents a gnostic form of Christianity. Gnosticism was a Christian heresy strongly condemned by the Apostle John in I John. The physical world, its attractions, its temptations, were for the gnostic repulsive; he wanted to escape from the physical world. Before death, how does one do that? Gnostics believed in knowledge as salvation. Knowledge is not the key to salvation, but it is a part. The knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of the need one has for a savior, the knowledge of God's power to save and His authority to forgive, etc. All this knowledge is key to our faith and our salvation. Gnosticism was different. Gnosticism held to an idea that if we just realized that what we're living in is not real, then we will live above "the real." (Consider Mary Baker Eddy's "Christian Scientist" teachings.) The gnostics sometimes even denied that Christ died or that he had lived in a human body; he just appeared as a specter and seemed to live in a body. And he didn't really die; he just moved on to the spiritual world to which he belonged. All rank falsehoods that completely undermine the Christian faith. In the movie, Morpheus speaks of "the desert of the real," and Neo is told by a child who can bend spoons with his mind to try to believe the truth, that there is no spoon.

These portions of the movie, plus others, contribute to the idea that perhaps a gnostic gospel is being presented. I don't believe it. The reason I don't believe that is the case is Mr. Smith's speech to Morpheus while Morpheus was in captivity. Mr. Smith is an ageint, a sentient program that is really a computer program sent by the Matrix to go in and out of any software it chooses. He speaks to Morpheus alone after telling his colleagues to leave. He's the gnostic. He tells Morpheus that he must get out of this "world, this reality," because he can't stand the smell, he must get free. In other words, Smith denies humanity, can't stand the physical, fleshly world, like the gnostic, and he represents a perverse intelligence, an intelligence lacking compassion, humanity, and humble acceptance of the world as God has given it. His speech, coupled with a previous speech on evolution, clue us to the fact that this movie is not about knowledge as salvation, nor is it about a godless evolution; it is about human beings continue to believe that they are the images of God and can change that which would enslave man.

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 so closely, it seems important to me that something that important not be left out. Otherwise, one could interpret this movie as some sort of gnostic presentation, which it may have been intended as, 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 dervise 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 simply 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 he then 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), living a life blessed by God like no other (his miracle-working power in its quality and quantity makes the 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 wonderul meanings of The Matrix for Christians who believe in the power of the gospel to change lives and set people free.

The Matrix

I will focus on the first movie of the trilogy. The 2nd and 3rd movies can be ignored as mere glitzy presentations of special effects, having little meaning beyond that. The first installment is a classic. The Matrix is so full of biblical allusions that it needs a special introductory post. The movie doesn't so much preach as feel like reality. When I say reality, I mean truth. And when I say it feels real, I don't mean the words don't need to be heard and understood. The feeling of the movie is an aspect of good movie-making. The words are significant. The actors speak their lines to perfection. It is in a category that I call a perfect movie. I consider a perfect movie one in which every scene, every act, accomplishes its purpose, and the movie must have a grand theme. The theme of the matrix is reality. Yet, there are numerous sub-themes - how to know the difference between reality and fantasy, the slavery of those who don't know reality, what it takes to know reality, how a organization that seeks to show reality to the world operates, faith, the difference between people who know reality and those who don't, the differences amongst the people who know reality, and the need for One to lead. I cannot explain the plot. It would take too long, and it would not do the movie justice. The plot is merely a construct, a vehicle, to show us the real world. In a sense, The Matrix is one of the most important movies of modern time because it so effectively shows us how we can be deceived and never know it and that we cannot know it - on our own. Only someone from outside the reality we live in can tell us what is real. But to exit reality is to die. Personality and the principle of faith are keys to understanding the power of the movie. Persons are the heroes in this movie, not technology, not groups, but individuals are what make the difference in the world. Faith is key to acting in this world. Without faith, one is prey to the "laws" supposedly governing the reality we live in. Faith allows a person to go beyond and demonstrate the existence of another reality. The movie follows a path, a trajectory, that involves the finding of the One, a messianic character who can manipulate the Matrix and not be controlled by it. That person can free the others. He comes from outside the Matrix, yet he lives in it. As John 1 says, "That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him." Jn 1:9-10. There are disciples in this movie who follow a John the Baptist, named Morpheus, who seeks "the One." They find him, and he seems like a fairly normal person, but he's a computer programmer who operates outside the restrictions as to how computers and programs can be used. The people enslaved are living in a computer generated dream world, thinking they are normal humans living in a normal world, when in reality, they are the slaves of the computers who use humans as a power source. They keep the world going and they program reality; therefore, it is they who have taken over the control of the world. That seems to be their only purpose for existence - control. Future posts will go into the details, and they are many. Therefore, the posts covering the meanings within The Matrix could be extensive. Entire blogs could be and have been devoted solely to this movie.

Torn Curtain

Excellent Hitchcock film with a stellar cast - Paul Newman, Julie Andrews. Normally, Hitchcok is all about the drama, the suspense, and ordinary people involved in extraordinary situations. Perhaps, his emphasis on the details of daily events and their significance is his most biblical contribution to film. In this film, Newman is a scientist and a spy, who early in his mission has to kill a man. He's at a farmhouse and is discovered by his guide, actually a secret service man who trails him. He's one of the most likable people in the movie, the secret service man, I mean, but he's also a ruthless, committed East German Communist. Newman's only help in the killing comes from the woman of the farmhouse. The killing is drawn out, not easy. The scene makes you realize that killing a human being is a difficult thing, unlike the quick deaths one sees in war and action movies. It is not pretty, and you do not leave the scene with a good impression of Newman. You understand why he had to do it, but you also empathize with a man who is used to the classroom and mathematical formulae. He's sickened by his own actions, and it makes you wonder if good people can make good spies. He's an amateur who has had a chilling initiation into that world. Hitchcock is a genius at showing a killing and how unsavory it is. That also is biblical.

Hitchcock's movies also respect women, and Newman's fiance' who thinks he has defected to the Communist block, is perfectly portrayed as the loyal woman who can't understand what Newman is doing, yet faithfully follows him anyway. Yet, vain women like the Ballerina, who expects media attention (and is disappointed twice because of Newman), he holds up to ridicule. There are several dramatic scenes in the movie that keep you on the edge of your seat, even though the plot is hard to swallow. The idea that an American scientist would have to go all the way to East Germany to get a German scientist to explain a math formula for a special missile project is preposterous and plays on that old caricature of German scientists being so exceptional and Americans just copy-cats. It would be much simpler for a brilliant scientist to just perform his own experiments and manipulations of the mathematical formula. But it's still a good flick.

The human element is foremost. The scenes of the East Germans who help Newman are much more affecting emotionally than Newman's courageous scientist, who goes in and out of East Germany. We know those who stay must continue under great hardship, perhaps even death. And they help Newman anyway. This is Christ's way - to die for ungrateful mankind, to stay in this life as a human until the job was done for our sakes. Yet, we show so little appreciation for Him.

Judgment at Nuremburg

This a movie starring Spencer Tracy as a judge who presided over the trials of judges in Germany after WWII. The main trials of the big figures were over, but in 1948, the trials of other, lesser figures occurred. Four German judges are on trial in this movie, and the key word repeated over and over is "responsibility." The movie begins with much emphasis upon the atrocities that occurred, as if these judges were responsible for everything that went on. Tracy plays a judge who is intent upon finding out just what, if anything, these judges did that was truly criminal.

Many people complain about the "technicalities" of the law that allows the guilty to go free. Such cases are few and far between. The technicalities are what keep a free people free. Freedom from state coercion means the State must prove its case against the individual to the tee. In other words, the person must be guilty of violating all the elements of the law. For example, the person on trial for murder may assert that he thought he saw a gun in the victim's hand. If he truly saw a gun, whether the victim had one or not, then he is not guilty of murder. That is a technicality.

The other biblical principle upheld by holding the State to a high standard is grace. A people who live under grace may commit all kinds of wrongs. But wrong in whose eyes? Yours? When did your standard of right and wrong become the means for imprisoning and executing people? Grace means the people have many opportunities to do "wrongs," but they can only be held responsible for truly violating the law. Wrongs, in and of themselves, do not mean people are responsible for crimes.

In the movie, the prosecuting Colonel JAG, played by Richard Widmark, takes on the face of mass vengeance. He holds the entire country responsible, and he prosecuted the husband of the woman, in whose house Tracy is able to live while he's a judge on the tribunal. Tracy tries to understand and seeks to get to know the woman, Mrs. Bertholt, played by Marlene Dietrich. She's nobility in Germany, and she despised Hitler. She tells Tracy about a time she saw Judge Yaneng, one of the defendants played superbly by Burt Lancaster, cut Hitler down to size at a concert one night, causing Hitler to blanche and walk out. She claims Yaneng was one of the few people who could do so. Yaneng also rebukes one of his fellow indicted judges, whom he considers a party hack. The question arises: Who is responsible? Was Yaneng a good guy or bad guy?

The prosecuting Colonel has a tough job. He has to convince Germans to testify against their own country men. But he did not have trouble getting Yanneng to testify. Yaneng stopped the defense counsel in the middle of his questioning of a woman to ask, "Are we going to do this all over again?" It's a moving moment, and during Yaneng's testimony he ends with this awful indictment of himself: "Ernst Yaneng made himself excrement." This is the testimony of every honest man, that deep down he knows what he's capable of and that he is not deserving of anything except God's wrath.

The key to understanding the responsibility of these judges in the Nuremburg trials, at least as portrayed in the movie, was the action of the most eminent jurist on trial in not holding to the principle mentioned above - that the man on trial must be proven to have strictly violated every element of the law. The judges were not guilty of all of Nazi Germany's crimes. And the Germans and the judges may not have know just how far the Nazis' atrocities would go. But as Tracy's character after the sentencing tells the eminent jurist Yanieng, who said that he did not know it would come to the execution of millions: "It came to that when you sentenced one man to death who was innocent."

Toward the end of the trial and the movie, the Berlin Airlift began. Its effect upon the Americans brought home the truth of Yaneng's words about Germany being afraid of enemies without and within, and that is why they did the things they did. In other words, in a national crisis, things are done out of fear. That is what was bandied around by military officers - we need not alienate the Germans because we need them to fight the Russians. Pressure was brought to bear on the prosecutor. Tracy's words as he issued sentence ring out: "This is what we stand for in this tribunal - justice, truth, and the value of a single human being." These are preeminently biblical principles. His final words also warn all those who think that they are incapable of such crimes; the horror and tragedy of the Nazi regime was that the good people, like Yaneng, became caught up in the fear, for love of country.

More importantly, this movie teaches a core biblical truth that people constantly forget or don't want to admit. Mankind constantly compares sins and asserts that the so-called minor sins, like fear and doubt, are not like the more heinous offenses, like murder and torture. But this is so completely untrue. The "minor" offenses like fear and doubt are the root cause of the heinous offenses like murder and torture.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

This is an old Gregory Peck movie that sounds like and looks at the beginning like some boring white collar drama. However, there is much more to this movie on several levels. Gregory Peck is a business man with a wife and three kids, who needs more money to keep his wife happy. She's not happy with their house, and she's the kind that makes plans, proposes them to her husband, then expects him to make it happen. She's not happy with Peck, thinks he's too conservative. Actually, she accuses him of being afraid. She also says there's something different about him since the war. At this point in the movie, her words seem like empty argument-winners, perhaps even manipulation, but her words point to something true about Peck, and that is what the movie is about - cover-up, truth, the past, and escaping that past.

On the train to work the next day, a leather coat of a passenger in front of Peck makes him remember an event from the war. He killed a teenage German soldier to get his coat and to keep from freezing to death. Later, he remembers how he accidentally killed his best friend with a grenade. Now we know why his wife might see a lack of courage and initiative in him; those qualities resulted in those kind of memories. "A guilty conscience doth make cowards of us all." But that's not all.

To make his wife happy, Peck goes to a job interview where he's given an hour to write the most significant thing about himself. The opportunity to think causes him to think back to the war again and of the girl he met in Italy. She has nothing and wants a child, and he gives her the opportunity to have one, if she conceives. He has to leave the next day and doesn't see or hear from her for the next ten years. Oh, and he ends up getting the job, and thus begins the subplot, that of the executive of the corporation which has newly hired him. His life, mostly past at this point, is something of a reflection of Peck's.