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 Freeing the World
from “The Matrix”
The Purpose of a
Vanguard Church
September 8, 2002
The idea of using
something produced by Hollywood as a bridge to share the gospel may seem odd to some, yet it is more biblical than you might think. Think for a moment how Jesus related spiritual realities to his hearers: He spoke in their language, using metaphors from their culture to draw them into what he wanted them to learn. For instance, since most of them either farmed or lived close to farms, the word picture of a farmer scattering seed was the perfect starting point to illustrate how the gospel goes into the world. Just as Jesus used familiar images to communicate eternal truth through his parables, we can use the familiar images that we see in the parables of movies to accomplish the same goal.
And what a movie to do so with! The Matrix is so full of biblical metaphors that it begs for us to examine life in light of its message. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that The Matrix was made by Larry and Andy Wachowski in order to be a thinly disguised evangelistic Christian movie. It is rated R for lots of violence, and the Lord’s name is used as a swear word a number of times—this is not a movie you want your little kids to see.
But it is a movie that many of your friends, co-workers, and neighbors have seen. It is a movie that raises serious questions about life and reality. And I believe it is a postmodern attempt to grapple with spiritual issues. It is a postmodern, secular parable of the Christian message. That, of course, means that there is not a clear one-to-one correspondence between the Bible and The Matrix. The Wachowski brothers took plenty of artistic license. They are seeking do paint an analogy to the Christian message, and as with any analogy, it breaks down here and there. But even in spite of their artistic license and the break down in analogy, we learn a lot about the spirituality—if we look at it for the big picture, the over-arching message.
The movie makes us think through what is reality and what is not. We are to think about spiritual issues as we watch it. In the movie, we learn that everybody lives in the “Matrix”—a computer generated world that is pumped into the brains of everybody without our knowing it. Almost everybody is oblivious to this fact and continue living out their daily lives, without even questioning their reality.
 We meet Thomas
Anderson, who also goes by the name Neo. The names in this movie are significant. Thomas, you’ll remember, was the doubting disciple—and he does indeed at first refuse to believe the truth. Anderson literally means “Son of Man.” So, at first, this character is the “Doubting Son of Man.” But he stops doubting in the end, when he proclaims to his enemy
“My name is Neo!” Jesus, of course, was called the Son of Man in the gospels, only Jesus never doubted that he was indeed the Promised Messiah. “Neo” means “New,” and it is also an anagram of “One.” He is often called “The One” in the movie, just as Jesus was proclaimed to be “The One”—the Chosen One.
Neo knows that something is not right with the world in which he lives, and he is eager to learn the truth. He is offered the truth from a character
 named
Morpheus. Morpheus is the John the Baptist character—proclaiming and pointing to the coming Messiah that will free mankind from the Matrix. Morpheus introduces Neo to what the Matrix, saying, “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Neo questions the meaning of the concept of truth. Morpheus responds by saying that the truth is “That you are a slave Neo, that you were born in bondage. A prison that you can neither smell, nor taste, nor touch – a prison for your mind.” Morpheus then goes on to explain that no one can be told what the Matrix is; you have to see it for yourself. At this point, Neo is offered the choice of taking one of two pills. The red pill will take him into the “true reality”—showing him the Matrix, and the blue pill will take him no further, allowing him to remain blind to the truth. Neo opts for the red pill, and then undergoes a complete physical transformation, where he sees the Matrix, and is set free from its control.
Morpheus welcomes Neo “to the real world,” telling Neo that the year in which they are currently living is not 1999, but is in fact closer to 2199. Morpheus explains that at the beginning of the 21st century, the world was enjoying a huge celebration. Man marveled at his own existence as he gave birth to Artificial Intelligence (AI)—a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. There came a time when the machine race and the human race went to war. Since the machines depended on solar power to exist, the humans ruined the atmosphere so the sun could not penetrate the earth. The machines won the war and since they could not use solar power anymore, they now grow humans in order to feed off their energy. They created a computer-generated dream world that is electronically pumped into the minds of the billions of humans who are actually just
 lying in tubes generating energy—a vast deception built to keep the human race under control. That is “the Matrix.”
Neo can hardly believe what he is hearing; especially when Morpheus tells him that he believes that Neo is “the One” who will ultimately bring freedom to humankind. Neo is in for an adventure of heroic proportions! Neo is told that he must overcome the living computer programs that are dressed in dark suits in the Matrix—called “agents.” These agents are the gatekeepers and hold all the keys of the Matrix.
Stop and think for a moment how this movie is telling us profound truths in the form of a parable.
-Morpheus represents John the Baptist
who announced the coming “Chosen One.”
-Neo represents the Messiah, who will have the power to overcome the darkness of the Matrix.
-The Agents represent the demons that hold the keys to this world. They have the ability to jump into people and use them at their will, just like we are told by the Bible that demons that can do to people in this world if they are ignorant of them.
-We meet a woman called “The Oracle” who is a
Prophet, foretelling the coming Messiah.
-The crew of the ship Nebuchadnezzar represents the
disciples—they are excited about Neo’s arrival and hope that he is indeed “The One.” Tank says, “If you are, it’s a very exiting time!”
-There is the character Cypher, who is the Judas
of the movie—once one of the group but instead chooses to betray his friends
-The Oracle tells Neo that he will have to die to save Morpheus: “One of you is going to die. Which one will be up to you.” Neo later must decide to go into the Matrix to save Morpheus, knowing full well that he will not survive.
-Neo is killed—sacrificing his own life for the sake of his friends. He is killed at the door of room 303. In 3 days, Jesus arose from the grave—will Neo?
-Yes, he is resurrected…and by the love of Trinity! In the movie, the female lead is named Trinity, and we do not know why that is her name until the end. It is the love of the Trinity that raises the Messiah from the grave—with a kiss, breathing new life into Neo. Trinity says, “Now, get up!” I can imagine that’s what God might have said to Jesus in the grave.
-After the resurrection, Neo has unlimited power over the Matrix. He is able to defeat the enemy agent. This reflects what Jesus said after his resurrection: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” Matthew 28:18.
-At the end of the movie, Neo looks up and then ascends
into the sky. Exactly the way we last see Jesus in the Book of Acts.
This, then, is a mirror of what the gospel is all about.
 The Matrix is the world that is pulled over peoples eyes, so that they cannot see the truth. The world in which we live is not all there is to reality. We are living in a world that is ruled by an evil entity and his minions—they are called in Ephesians 6, “the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” We know them as Satan and the demons.
“Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, so they are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News that is shining upon them. They don’t understand the message we preach about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.”
(2 Corinthian 4:22, NLT)
The world in which we live is a world living in deception—most of the people around us are blind to the truth: that there is a God who created us and loves us, that this God has sent a Messiah to free us from our bondage, and that we must have faith in order to see with spiritual eyes rather than physical eyes. It was Jesus who said,
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
It will be interesting to see where they take this plot in the next Matrix movie, which is now in post-production and will be out soon. If I were the Wachowski brothers, I would continue the story like this:
Neo and his angelic host (Trinity, Morpheus, and Tank) begin recruiting people within the Matrix, calling them out of their life of being slaves to the evil rulers of the Matrix and allowing them to see the reality behind what they think is real. They tell people that they must take a leap of faith in order to see that this is true—they ask people to take the red pill of trust. They explain to people that they should believe that there is more to life than what they see, smell, taste, feel, and hear. They are told to believe that they are indeed slaves, and that the Messiah, Neo, has begun the work of redeeming them from their bondage. But that he is enlisting chosen people within the Matrix to carry out his plans.
These chosen people in the Matrix are asked to remain in the Matrix, but not be
of the Matrix—to be rebels against the evil schemes of the agents, and to be representatives of Neo in the world. They are asked to be a part of the team—while the angelic forces fight the demonic forces in the unseen world, these people are to be revolutionaries themselves. But it won’t be easy for them. All that they have known is the Matrix. They have to accept that there is more to their existence by
faith. They have to become a part of the greater purpose through
faith. And since they remain in the Matrix, it will not be easy to look beyond it into the spiritual dimension. They must realize that they are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against something beyond that.
The Fight
The Bible tells us that we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers. Look again at Ephesians 6.
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:10-13)
I can almost see us dressed like Neo and Trinity and Morpheus, going into battle against the spiritual forces—reminding ourselves that we must look beyond the physical and see the reality behind it. We must remember that we are not actually fighting against flesh and blood, but against
spiritual forces. It would be pointless to fight those bound in the Matrix in order to
destroy the Matrix. Our enemies are those black-suited agents—they need to be defeated in order to set the people free. We must convince others that we are all living in a vast deception—that we have been blinded by the god of this world, that we are enslaved to living lives bound to the ways of this world. We must seek to bring people to faith that Neo is the Savior of the World, and to trust that Neo, that is Christ, is going to win in the end.
This is the heart of the gospel. We must convince ourselves and others that everything around us is
NOT the way it should be. The world is not what was intended. Something is terribly wrong and when we think about it, it drives us mad trying to get at it. The world is not what it seems. We are not what we ought to be. We are living in a dream, a delusion, and we are slaves to the deception. We cannot wake ourselves from the nightmare, but if we are willing to take the risk to face the truth, God will wake us up to a new world.
The Choice
Like Neo, each of us must make a choice. At the beginning of the movie, Neo is offered a
blue pill that will allow him to return to his delusion, or a
red pill that will change his life forever. This is the trust decision that we hear preachers in churches ask each of us to make. Do we want to know the truth (the red pill) or do we just want to forget about it and wake up and believe whatever you want to believe (the blue pill). The color red signifies suffering or blood. Neo chose to suffer just as Christ did on the cross. And for us, who are now asked to take the “pill” of trusting God and being baptized, we are not choosing the easy way—there is measure of suffering for all those who want the truth. But the truth sets us free from our bondage to sin and slavery to this world and wakes us up to the deception and lies that are all around us. Remember that the truth is not the easy way, but it is better than living a lie.
The Training
And then there are the software training programs in the movie. In the midst of the awesome special effects of these scenes, we might miss the point. This training represents the Word of God found in the Scriptures that renew our minds; teaching and training us for the battle between Light and Darkness.
We are urged in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
We are told in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
 During the training program, a voluptuous blond in a red dress walks by Neo and give him a flirtatious smile. Neo, being a young man, stops and takes a look back at her. Just then, an agent appears with a gun pointing at Neo’s head. Morpheus stops the program and asks, “Were you looking at me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?” The bright, sensual attractions of the world can still distract us from our spiritual focus and power. The key to discipleship is discipline. And certain disciplines cannot be dispensed with, if we are to survive spiritually in the Matrix. That is why we believe in praying—to receive supernatural power for the battle. That is why we read and study the Bible—to receive the spiritual training we will need. That is why we get together to worship and to pray and to hear the word preached and to receive communion, to encourage one another toward this higher calling.
If I were the Wachowski brothers, I would make the next movie about the how a group of chosen people are called to be in the Matrix, yet seeking to free others from the Matrix—to participate in the battle against the evil around them, in order to free people from the bondage of the Matrix. It would be the story of the church!
Our Mission
Jesus’ tells the church that we have a mission:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
Our mission is to go into the Matrix and make disciples of people—asking them to take the red pill of faith, becoming a part of our band of revolutionaries by being baptized to shoe their solidarity with us. Then we will take them through the training they will need to obey the supernatural rules that Jesus gives us to overcome the Matrix. And Jesus promises that in our doing this, he will always be there, guiding us every step of the way.
That is “The Great Commission.” It is not to be taken lightly. This is not just a Hollywood script—it is the truth of spiritual reality. It is the command of our Lord, telling us that we are to stop being so caught up in the deception of this world ourselves, but to see our lives as being bigger than this.
Our Weapons
 We will not arm ourselves with machine guns and bombs like those in the movie, however.
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)
Our job while in the Matrix is to free people out of the deception by obeying God’s greatest commandment. Jesus was asked what that commandment was in Matthew 22.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
The way we will free people from the Matrix is with the weapon of love. We are to love people out of the Matrix. We will serve them and care for them and show them that we truly love the Lord our God, so that they will see that this is real. Remember, The Matrix is all that anybody really knows. The only way to open people’s eyes to spiritual reality is for us to be authentic and bold about it. To show how we genuinely love God, how we boldly obey Jesus no matter what, that all this has really made a dramatic difference in our lives, that we are no longer enslaved to the lies, but are increasingly being freed to live a life of joy and love and truth.
We are to be a vanguard church--full of people who are cultivating the existing relationships God has given us with the people trapped in the deception by
opening our eyes to see these precious people as God sees them. We
must recommit ourselves to
opening our hearts to the needs of the people, in order to genuinely show them that we care, and in turn that God cares. We
must recommit ourselves to
opening our hands to serve the needs of those people in our lives.
Our Residence
Are we so busy living life in the Matrix ourselves that we have forgotten that we are not residents here, but foreigners and aliens? Peter us,
“Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here. So I warn you to keep away from evil desires because they fight against your very souls. Be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbors. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will believe and give honor to God…” (1 Peter 2:11-12)
So, our mission as a Vanguard Church is clear. We are to see every moment for what it really is. Not just a football game. Not just mowing the lawn. Not just a PTA meeting. Not just borrowing your neighbor’s tools. Not just suffering through a cold or the flu or worse. Not just fanatical Muslims flying planes into buildings.
We are to see the programming behind it all. We are to see each moment as an opportunity to break ourselves and others free from the Matrix. I need to start asking myself, “How can I to pray for people?” “What can I specifically do to develop a spiritual friendship with at least one person?” “How can I model for my kids that I am really not as concerned for living in the lie of this world as I am in living in the reality of the spiritual world.”
Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, came into the Matrix to set us free! God created the world through him and for him, yet the world didn't recognize him, because the world is under the influence of the Evil One. Jesus is the awaited Messiah and the Savior of this world. He is our only way to get to God—he suffered and died and rose again, so that you could be set free from all the deception which comes from your own sins, this world and the Devil.
Each of us comes to the point in our lives where we must choose which pill to swallow. This is not a passive thing. We must choose. If we choose the blue pill, we may continue to live life in the deception. We will continue to live life in this mundane world—a world that keeps us blind to real meaning and real joy and real truth.
But if we choose the red pill, we will discover the truth, and the truth will set us free. Just as Morpheus says to Neo at the beginning of the movie, “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
God is calling each of us to make that choice—he has not forced it upon us. If you have already chosen the red pill of faith, it is time to recommit to the mission before you. Let’s start in earnest to free people from the Matrix!
APPLICATION
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:
1. Have you seen the movie, The Matrix? What did you like or dislike about the movie?
2. If you saw it, did you catch any of the Christian metaphors in it? In what ways is the world in which we live like the Matrix and in what ways is it not?
3. In what ways are we blind to the spiritual dimension of what is happening in
our physical realm? How have we allowed ourselves to live in the Matrix of this world instead of seeing beyond it and into the spiritual dimension? How would you live your life differently if you forced yourself to see everyone around you (and yourself) as being trapped in The Matrix?
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