We have been talking about the movie The Matrix for the last several times, it is a well of many treasures.

It is time to speak more specifically about the climax, about what everything in this story is leading up to, about the fact that things can truly be different, that finally, humanity can break out into a place of greater redemption and freedom.

In this story, the enemy are aliens, and specifically alien agents who exist in the virtual reality Matrix world. The agents have been programed with greater power and fighting skill than all the humans when they are in that virtual reality; and with this the case -- how can any human ever defeat them? How would you win a video fighting game if the computer was your adversary and it always had more programmable skills? There would only be one way.

You would have to be smart enough to reprogram the video game, to get into the code and change it or interrupt it. And so, on the one hand, you could remain in that video game and still be in that world; but, on the other hand, you would have learned to “stop listening” to it and be able to do something else, something autonomous.

In the movie, Neo’s teacher, Morpheus, uses a virtual reality fighting game to illustrate this very point. Confused, Neo asks, “Can I dodge bullets?” Morpheus simply replies, “When you’re ready . . . you won’t have to.”

Now, we could go on and on about the movie and the symbolism and if it really means what I believe it means spiritually, all the things we have been talking about over the last several newsletters. But let’s just make this easier. All I will say is simply this:

Every time you disappoint yourself because you have just been taken in by sin once again:

Because some aspect of your flesh just tempted you once again to satisfy it, and because you got lost in the delusion, again, that that aspect of the world, whatever it was, was really just that important:

A chocolate chip cookie (okay, maybe that’s just me)

Or envy towards a person you know who possesses something you don’t

Or you’re depressed or feel inadequate, once again, about just how good you are, or not, at your job, or as an artist, or at golf, or how beautiful you are

Or you can’t stop thinking about how much you want the praise of other people in regard to this or that . . .

and I could go on and on, but I won’t . . .

Does it not, or should it not, occur to you that it sure would be nice if you could resist that temptation right when it begins, before you begin to fall for it? Just how, might you be able to do that? Not on your own, that’s for sure.

And this is exactly what Neo learns. He tries to fight the agents on his own, in his own strength, and he does better for a time, but then they kill him.

Incredibly, in this story, one of the rebel women, named Trinity, has secretly fallen for Neo. As he lays there, dead, she can’t help but kiss him on the lips. And somehow, miraculously, or magically . . . love’s kiss brings him back to life! Was it not Jesus’ kiss that brought you back to life when you first embraced Him? The kiss of perfect love, Who chose to die for you for this very purpose?

Now, risen back to life, with the Holy Spirit on board, Neo faces the agents again. But this time he is able to be in that reality, but somehow, at the very same time, to step out of it, beyond it, to not be constrained by all its “rules.”

The lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life call to us, oh so powerfully, that it seems they are the only things which exist, the only things that are true.

But with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we can look at them, just as Neo looks at these virtual reality agents, and similarly, see that they are digital pieces of information, nothing more. For us, the things of this world can finally become, in our mind, one way of interpreting the world, “true,” if you very much want to believe that, but not, at all, absolutely true. They are just one way of looking at the world. And if they are just one way of interpreting the world, you can choose to believe it . . . or not. And hopefully you will more and more come to see they are only lies. Lies we have all believed since Adam and Eve fell in the garden.

Next time, we will try to bring the Matrix to an end.

And if you want more, a lot more, I am attaching a chapter from an unpublished manuscript, on this movie and all the treasures it holds. Hope you enjoy.