Over the last several newsletters we have delved into the physical aspects of this life, how complex all of life is, how it points to a designer, not to anything less. But on most days, we are consumed with the details of our lives and forget about the larger questions. On most days, we are consumed with ourselves, are we not? Maybe we should be. Who else is gonna be?

But I certainly hope there is a better story. There’s that word again. And don’t begin to worry — I don’t think it’s very likely we will err in the other direction and forget about ourselves very soon, become too selfless, if that’s even possible. The better question may be, how can we come back more to the middle and consider others at least as important as ourselves?

When asked, what was the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus responded with:

“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it. ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40

The point? It’s not about us.

There are many ways to look at and try to understand the Fall; but for us, this may be the one thing that has the potential to help us the quickest, to wake us up when we are in the midst of all our self-ruminations and self-criticisms, to realize all of that never ends anywhere well . . . so, we might as well ask the Spirit’s help to bring us back to something bigger — to God, and to others.

Enter . . . The Matrix. I was surprised when I realized we haven’t discussed this story before. I actually had to look back through all of the newsletters to make sure. Maybe I was saving it. If you have ever seen this movie, it is hard to forget it. The sequels were not nearly as good, and the symbolism more blurred, or lost altogether. But the original? Wow.

This movie has gotten most of the attention it has because the main character, a young man named Neo, is said to be the one who has come to save the world. And so, he has understandably been seen as a Christ figure. But that is not what this story is all about, not really.

We have been trying to grasp why it seems so easy for us to forget the larger questions, the more important ones. Why does the norm seem to be that we are so lost in ourselves? From time to time we can wake up to the larger questions, but it doesn’t take long, at all, before we are lost again in the details, in ourselves.

In the Matrix, the protagonist wakes up, for real, to a much larger reality. He had been lost in his own life, in the busy world he had always known; very similar to all of us – and then he learns a very startling truth. There is a greater reality, something much different and hidden from him and everyone else in that world. And the more alarming truth? The world he has always known, is not even “real.” It has been manufactured. By AI.

Now, I know if you’ve never seen this movie, and you’re trying to follow along here; you probably think I’ve lost it, or just really like this strange movie for some reason; but none of this has any relevance to the greater spiritual things we are trying to deal with here.

And I understand that, I really do. But some of the time, to understand symbols, you have to go deeper, much deeper. You have to become much more general with the things that are being represented. Let’s try this again, a different way.

When you first became a Christian, a real believer, if you are — how would you describe your experience? Was it not like waking up from one reality, to another? You had always believed that this physical and material world was all there was, what we have always known. There might be a God, or spiritual things beyond this realm; but it was all very general and vague, and not really important, right?

And then, after circumstances in your life led you to a growing awareness of God, and then finally to accepting Him and His Son as real and even preeminent, your view of everything began to change, did it not? The Kingdom of God, He Himself, but everything He values first and foremost became real in a way you never imagined possible. And as they did, you began to see everything in this world as still important, it’s still real, but as . . . created. As secondary, not primary. Right?

And so, if you really want to be honest you went from believing there was only one world, to believing in two; and the new one you had come to believe in, was really “more real,” if that makes sense, than you one you had always known.

In the Matrix, Neo has the exact same experience. He had always thought there was just one world. And then he “wakes up” and learns there are really two, and the one he has always known is secondary, created, not really “real,” if that makes sense.

We have to stop here, for now. This story, this movie, may represent in symbolic form our real situation, and especially our real dilemma, better than any other story I have ever known. How we tend to be blind and even asleep to the most important things most of the time, and lost in something much less significant, and sadly, usually none the wiser.

But there is always hope that we can wake up . . .

Sam