The Matrix

It's been a long time since I said I would write something about The Matrix, but the task seems so daunting, and it's been so long since I watched it. Here are my initial thoughts. There's really no telling what the beliefs of the makers are; there's such a montage of meaning in it. However, I always look for the Christian message of a movie, even if unintended. I believe it appears in all aspects of life even in artistic works. In the Matrix are the obvious Christian messages and the not so obvious. But it's odd for a movie to be so wrapped up into a worldview that so parallels the Christian or biblical worldview as The Matrix does. The Matrix posits an entire world in which people think they're living in reality but really are living in a dreamworld created by a super-intelligence. In this world, some people realize something is wrong "like a splinter in your mind," as Morpheus tells Neo. The Matrix is all around; you can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church. "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth." The truth that everyone is a "slave, born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or feel or taste, a prison for your mind." It is the reality that people live in. There are certain persons with extraordinary powers to do wonders and understand things beyond what normal humans understand. Like Christ, it is those who come from somewhere else, not the dreamworld, who understand. A person can escape the dreamworld, but it involves a form of dying to the slavery of the dreamworld and being "born again" into reality. For such a person to escape, they must be called out; they do not save themselves. The person is instructed to count the cost and that the only promise is that they'll know the truth. Then there's "the One," the person who knew how to recreate reality according to his will and who could show the way to freedom to the others. But in order to achieve that status of power, he must die and rise again. He's betrayed by a member of his own group, leading to his sacrifice and resurrection from the dead. That is an outline of the movie, not a picking of a random scene or event or sentence here and there which matches the Christian worldview. That is the theme of the movie, and it matches Christianity almost exactly. Now, what about individual scenes, statements, and characters from the movie.

The Matrix - Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith, the agent for the Machine, software that can enter and leave any other software in the Matrix. He is one of three agents we see, and they are all something other than human in their actions and speech. Particularly revealing is Neo's experience in the interrogation room, before he knows what is going on. Mr. Smith comes across as a professional, unemotional law enforcement officer, but he also comes across as something else. The agents are a demonic trinity, and Mr. Smith is in charge. We learn the most about Smith when he has Morpheus in custody, and he speaks to him "honestly." He's impressed with the brilliance and beauty of the Matrix, like it's the living world of God's creation, but it's something that he and the rest of the Machine built for "billions of people living out their lives, oblivious." You wonder if there's some hint at the real world, where billions of people live out their lives, oblivious of whom the true Creator is. Smith talks about "the first matrix" where everyone is happy. But it failed. He believed that human beings defined their reality through suffering. The second matrix is all about evolution. Like the dinosaur, humans no longer rule, and the computers took over and made it their time. Smith shares his "revelation" with Morpheus. He tried to classify human species. They're not mammals, which create a natural equilibrium with the environment. The only way humans survive is by monopolizing an area, then spreading to another area. Another organism that does that is a virus. "Human beings are a disease, . . . and we are the cure." Then Smith tells Morpheus his personal angst. He can't stand his job of living in the matrix with people, their smell. He hates reality. He's afraid he's been infected by the stench of humanity. He himself wants liberty from "reality." He wants slavery in the computer above all. Humanity can be exterminated as far as he cares. He's the epitome of a gnostic, one who claims to know the reality and wants freedom from being human. Smith is really a computer, and being, or pretending to be, human is just too much for him. Humanity and "reality" are just illusions to him. He wants escape. He's superior to all humans.

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.

Morpheus = John the Baptist

Morpheus is wanted by the authorities. He's outside the regime. He brings others into the truth. He baptizes them into a new way. Morpheus asks Neo: "Do you want to know what it is?" If Neo chooses the blue pill, the avoid reality pill, then he wakes up in his bed and "believes whatever you want to believe." Unreality is not fixed; it's changeable and subject to opinion. The red pill, the reality pill, will allow you to see the matrix, the truth. Morpheus has exited the dream world, lives frugally in a ship called "The Nebuchadnezzar." And he brings in those who have escaped and heals and rebuilds them. He's sure of what he's doing, his calling. He pulls Neo out of the baptismal waters and into his ship. Morpheus explains the Matrix and its structure to Neo. Morpheus explains the limits of reality to Neo and how what is real can be changed, imitated, recreated. He shows Neo the world as it exists today, a desert, a wasteland, like the spiritual reality of the human world destroyed by sin. What we ourselves had created were the cause of our own destruction. Like the law of God, Morpheus explains the slavery, how it works, the condition of humanity. Like that of John the Baptists, Morpheus' mission involves hardship and suffering. Most importantly, Morpheus tells people about the Messiah, the One who "had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the matrix however he saw fit, . . . who freed the first of us, taught us the truth." Morpheus believes "the oracle," what we would call the prophet. The oracle speaks of the One to return. Therefore, Morpheus has spent his entire life looking for him. And Morpheus believes he has found the One in Neo. Morpheus trains Neo in spiritual warfare, or digital warfare, as far as the movie's concerned. Like the catechism question about having a soul as well as a body and the scripture in James about the body not living without the spirit, Morpheus catechizes Neo about the reality of dying in the matrix, even though it's just in the mind: "The body cannot live without the mind." Near the climax of the move, Morpheus is caught and imprisoned. Sounds like John the Baptist, who leads the way for the One, the Messiah.

Neo, the New Man, & Trinity

Neo, or new in Latin, is the new man, saved from darkness, blindness, slavery, to walk in a new life. He represents sinful man, saved from slavery to the world of deception of the devil, but he's also the Messiah, the One who will bring others into freedom. Neo speaks to Cipher, the traitor, not knowing he's the traitor, and learns that Cipher wants to go back to Egypt. "Why, oh, why didn't I take the blue pill?" But it's Trinity who knows who Neo is. She knows but cannot say. They work in perfect harmony, like the real Trinity. That's displayed when the helicopter scene occurs, and they act in tandem as if they know what they other's doing. Smith is also a Devil character, seeking to kill Neo. Trinity brings Neo back to life, like the Father bringing the Son back to life. Neo dies and rises again at Room 303, Heart O'the City Hotel. Her faith in what the oracle/prophet is greater than death itself. Trinity is like Abraham who believes that God will bring his son, Isaac, back from the dead. In his resurrection body, he still has the marks of the bullets in his chest, like Christ who still has the scars of the nails in his hands. then, in the last scene of the movie, he tells the machine that he knows it's scared. He tells them the world will be shown what it's like to not have borders and boundaries, like Christ broke down the walls and boundaries between man and God. He then ascends into the heavens, as Christ ascended into heaven. I know there are other ways to interpret the movie, even anti-Christian ways, but that's how I interpret it.