I hope you had time to read the chapter from an unpublished manuscript I attached last time. It is entitled, The Real War is Inside My Heart, and Yours. It is a deep dive into the movie The Matrix. It is attached again below.

If you love stories and especially if you watch a lot of movies, you may have noticed a very specific theme in stories, which has just become more frequent in recent years, especially in fantasy and science fiction stories. C.S. Lewis was one of the authors who first told a story about two completely different worlds (The Chronicles of Narnia). Alice in Wonderland was another, and Peter Pan. And we can’t forget Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, although it seems he visited more than just one additional world. Any story that contains alternate worlds only does so because God has spoken His truth deep into our hearts. At some point, the truth has to come out.

There have been too many stories to name in recent years with alternate worlds, but The Matrix¹ is very special. We will be spending the next several newsletters looking at it more closely to see what it has to say to us.

Although a story with completely different worlds may sound strange, this is God’s story in the Bible. Once upon a time there was the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve, who God placed there. That world didn’t last very long, for Adam and Eve came to believe the lie that life would go better with them in charge, instead of God.

Adam and Eve also came to believe that all the things of this life that God gave them as blessings – their bodies and all its physical pleasures, nature and all of its wonders for us to enjoy and explore, our minds and our ability to think and create, and everything else possible in this material life – should be sought out to possess, obtain and achieve, as ends in themselves. And they came to believe the lie that these “satisfactions” would be greater than a loving relationship with God.

They were wrong about that, of course. The sad thing is they could have had it all, if only they had just left all the material things of this life in their proper and secondary place, and left God on the throne where He belongs. But that was not to be. And so, that world was... lost. Not completely; but lost to us, for now.

Coming to faith can be described in many ways, but one way to describe it is to say you begin to realize for the first time there was another world, a world very different from the one we have always known. To believe in that first world again makes sense of so many things in this life, that it almost feels as if once upon a time you had known it, but then somehow forgot. And now, you remember it again.

And although our lives in this material world will still be broken and fallen and filled with sinners, including you and me; the more we pursue God... the more the reality of that first world begins to bloom in our hearts. And one day, those of us who know God, will be transported back to that first world, for real. Quite literally, a new heaven and earth will come down to us and replace this world.

But for most of humanity, it seems, this material world is so compelling, and anything and everything beyond it, so un-real, so in-tangible, so un-touchable – it is difficult to give that first world any thought, any consideration, and ever come to believe in it.

I still wonder at how God miraculously opened my eyes to the real story, to how everything in me was so attuned to this material world as the only world. I still wonder at just how He was able to get my attention, to wake me up, to rouse me, to woo me – all because He loves me so much and I had wandered so far away. So blind. So lost. So selfish, but in such denial.

The Matrix movie begins, and it is a contemporary time. Everything seems to be humming along in the city, just like in our lives today. A young man named Thomas Anderson meets a man named Morpheus, who asks him if he has ever had that feeling that he is not sure if he is awake or still dreaming? A very odd question.

And then Morpheus tells him, “Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I am talking about?”

Mr. Anderson asks, “The Matrix?”

Morpheus responds, “Do you want to know what it is?”

Morpheus explains, “The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

“What truth?” Neo asks.

“That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

And Mr. Anderson is getting ready to, he is getting ready to wake up. If you are a Christian, there came a time when you woke up too, for the very first time.

And I hate to say it, but this is a great place to stop. If you have not read my piece on this movie, entitled, The Real Battle is Inside My Heart, and Yours,” please do. It will make our discussion much more meaningful. Looking forward to next time.

Sam

₁ The Matrix, Warner Brothers, 1999.