So, I apologize for stopping so abruptly last time. These newsletters can only be so long.

Again, if you have not read my piece on the movie The Matrix, you can download it below. It will take some time, but it will be worth it. There is a great deal of gospel symbolism in this movie, deeply embedded, but so specific -- that when you begin to see it for the first time, you may be a little stunned.

Last time we left off with Mr. Anderson (Neo) being told what the Matrix is. Before we go on, we need to step back and explain the setting for this story.

In the movie The Matrix, the world had been destroyed some 200 years in the past. It had been a contemporary time, just as you and I have always known. But then, computers which had progressed to AI, somehow more fully “came to life.” And after they did, having a will and volition of their own, they decided to take over (tell me you haven’t been thinking about this lately!).

The machines weaponized themselves and effectively destroyed all of humanity, with the exception of small number of rebels, who still lived underground in a city named Zion. Besides for them, the rest of humanity only exists because the machines grow them as a “crop.”

You see, the machines need power, and the human body generates a lot of it. The machines figured out a way to take organic energy and change it into electricity. And so, humans, are artificially fertilized and then grown in small chambers in some sort of amniotic fluid, with wires attached to their bodies to siphon off their energy. The machines evidentially decided that their crop, millions of them, needed something to prompt them to just lay there and sleep. Their solution was the Matrix, a virtual reality program.

And so, Neo, does not know it, but since birth he has been one of these millions of humans, lying asleep his whole life, while his bio-energy is extracted from him. The Matrix virtual reality program is the world as it was, before it was ever destroyed. And so, in the Matrix, Neo goes to work, has a life, walks around, breathing and experiencing this world, and thinks everything is just fine . . . and guess what? None of it is real. It never has been. It is just a virtual reality program that the machines have been pumping into his brain, every single second of his entire life; including this visit with a man named Morpheus who is trying to explain to him what the Matrix is. In truth, he has been in utter bondage his whole life, but has never had a chance to “wake up” and see it.

Now, I have to admit, after having written on this movie on and off over the last fifteen years, and thinking about it quite a lot . . . after just spewing that out again for you, it really is quite incredible, is it not? Quite an incredible scenario? More than just a bit mind bending.

And guess what? What if it strikes us that way, not just because it is a crazy, cool science fiction plot; but because, in truth, you and me and the rest of humanity, have always been . . . JUST LIKE NEO!

Every single one of us. We have never been fully awake our whole lives, because there was former reality, a former world, and it was destroyed. And we have been living in an alternate one ever since, one that is just a fragment of the first world, of what it was, of what was meant for us.

You see, most people stumble when they see stories like The Matrix because they get too stuck in the detail. Every character or dynamic in the story is just a representation. It doesn’t matter that computers have never come “to life” and taken over the world, and they may never. If you breezed too quickly through this movie you missed the clear “message” that this is not about our future (although it may be), but about our past.

In The Matrix the creator is us, those who created computers. The “creation,” the machines, rise up and rebel, and are putting to death their creator. In our lives, in this reality, God was the Creator who created us. And guess what “we” did, the creation? We rose up, rebelled, and have been trying to put Him “to death” ever since. This is the one and only real story, if only we have the humility and courage to admit it.

And all we have to do is take one more, little symbolic leap, and we realize the real enemy, in truth; a very nasty, ugly, evil one, is not external to us, like machines that came to life and took over; not even other people, or nations, or the Hitler’s or Stalin’s and Putin’s of this world (although they are evil and a real problem) --- but our own fallen hearts. The real enemy is inside, not outside. Wars and strife only happen because the real war inside men’s hearts was lost a long time ago, and in millions of present-day episodes, continues to be lost over and over and over again.

Am I making any sense? I hope so.

Please do read my piece on the The Matrix, if you can. We may continue to talk about it for some time, for there is so much that is important.

Next time,
Sam