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.