What's really going on in the matrix? What story is being told? Many have speculated about this. There are critiques of government, power, capitalism, and so on. There are spiritual elements. But what is the rock bottom story being told? To really understand the matrix and what is happening, and why it's so profound and hits us so deeply, we have to understand theology. So yours truly is here to help.
You may find this conclusion astonishing, but stay with me, as I explain the parallels. But yes, your mind is about to be completely blown.
The matrix, the entire series, including resurrections, is about an attempt to stalemate God. The goal, to defeat God, force God into a truce, and circumvent the world system that God has created. I know, sounds crazy doesn't it? But stay with me here.
The matrix is the coded reality in which humans are kept under control. Agents protect the system. There are convening powers, machines, that designed and set up the matrix. Humans are trapped within it.
Fundamentally, the matrix is portraying a view of the universe we all currently live in, from the perspective of rebellion against God's system. So the matrix we see in the films, is how someone like Lucifer (Satan) would view God, the universe we live in, and the human race.
I'm going to draw a diagram here of the theological comparisons, let's take a look:
The Matrix = the planet earth as it is today
Agents = angels (servants of God who protect and defend the system and the people in it)
The Architect = God the Father (the designer of the matrix system)
Agent Smith = Jesus Christ (God in human form, machine in human form you might say)
The War between humans & Machines = the great spiritual battle for the souls of humanity
The Scorching of the Sky = The Fall event in Genesis
Zion = hell
Hovership crews = demons
Residents of Zion = people in hell
Morpheus = the false prophet of revelation
Neo = the anti-Christ
The Oracle = the oracle at Delphi typological figure (perhaps Satan)
Trinity = the sacred feminine
Fight between Neo and Smith = Final battle of Armageddon
Where do these ideas come from? It has a certain flavor of Gnosticism, Greek philosophy's theological response to Christianity. It accepts many of the attributes and baselines of Christian theology but twists much of it. In Gnosticism God is viewed as just one of many deities. God is actually viewed as a lower deity who is capricious and evil, sort of a bizarre tyrant that the human race is trapped under, and needs to escape from. It tends to view Jesus and Lucifer as brothers with equal power. But it's not quite Gnosticism.
You might say it's Gnosticism blended with the ancient mystery religion of the Babylonian society, and perhaps even Satanism. But I'm not going to speculate too much on roots, that's not the purpose here.
We see in the films that the plight of Zion is extremely severe. They exist in the last human city, near the center of the Earth (similar to how hell is often characterized.) Then you have the hovership crews, hacking into the matrix, to "set souls free" from the matrix system. But when you see the power of the machines, coupled with the power of the agents to defeat the hovership crews that access the matrix, you get a taste of what it must be like to be a demon attacking the Earth.
They must travel from hell, through whatever "heavens" exist between here and there, and they work attacking and destroying people in the matrix, the Earth. Angels, God's messengers protect the system and they protect Christians. Demons are absolutely no match for angels. Angels crush demons with ease, just like agents are able to easily defeat even the most skilled fighters, like Morpheus (see the fight between Agent Smith and Morpheus in the first film.)
It's a hopeless situation for Zion and the various humans still left fighting the machines. In the same way, it's a hopeless situation for rebellious humans, demons, and their leader Satan. But in many ways these demonic forces are no longer what they originally were.
Satan used to be Lucifer, a leader in God's community, in God's reality, what we call "heaven." And demons used to be angels, workers, builders, clerks, and various functionary positions within God's reality.
But at some point in the infinite past, apparently this Lucifer leader, making use of free will, and a grand delusion, decided he ought to rebel and encourage rebellion against the God of heaven. Lucifer must've been a very convincing being, because according to the Bible, one-third of the angels joined his rebellion (Revelation 12:4). They rebelled, and were quickly defeated. How that played out, I would love to see it for myself, what exactly happened, but at this point I'm not aware. We do get some hints in Ezekiel though, from Ezekiel 28:13-19 "You corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor." Perhaps Lucifer was on a quest for greater and greater wisdom in God's realm, but that quest led to a sort of cancer of the mind, that spread, in realization of himself, and a self-focus that grew and grew, until his own genius, beauty, and wisdom became his main concern. And the madness spread like a cancer, destroying him.
In any case, this rebellion was quickly stopped by the Creator. I have to marvel at the profound madness of rebelling against the first cause of everything. On what level of thinking does that appear as anything that could ever succeed? Can I rebel against the wind? Can I rebel against the sky, or the stars, or the universe? How could I ever succeed? How can a limited being, who didn't even exist before 1985 hope to succeed in war against a being so powerful it literally has no beginning or end, whom invented all the five senses, and crafted my soul from nothing? Truly a bizarre quest, how could the angels who joined him think they could succeed?
But in any case, I've digressed, the point being, Lucifer and these rebel angels under-went a transformation of a terrible nature when their rebellion failed. They were judged by God, at the same moment that Adam and Eve fell. These rebels went from angels of light, to beings of profound darkness, twisted and evil. At the same moment humanity went from innocent to fallen in conscience.
If you want a possible visual, from the Darren Aronofsky version of the Noah story, when the angels fall, they become sort of "rock monsters" in the movie. Interesting visual for the concept, if nothing else.
The only purpose that Lucifer and the rebel angels have anymore, is as Satan and demons, horrid creatures of evil. Was God wrong to judge them in this way? No I don't think so. He simply transformed them physically and mentally into what they had already chosen to pursue, rebellion and evil.
Satan and demons' only purpose now is built into the cursed Earth system, to tempt, deceive, and destroy humans. Why are we as humans subject to that? Because let us not forget, we as humans joined the rebellion. Our ancestors did anyway. We put ourselves under the sway of the deceiver, and now we find ourselves in that predicament.
But there is still hope for us as humans, unlike the demons. Their judgment is set.
So the agents are angels defending the system, and Morpheus and his hovership crew are demons attacking the system. But they stand no chance against the angels.
So they are waiting for the prophecy of the one who will come and bring the grand victory over the matrix system. That is the prophecy of the coming of the anti-Christ.
The anti-Christ seems to appear to be the real Christ, he'll be heralded by a prophet, he'll rule and reign, he'll defeat his enemies and so on and so forth. He'll have total control of the world. The anti-Christ is essentially a forgery of the real Christ.
In the films some have theorized that Neo is not really the one. They are correct. The one is Smith. Smith represents the Christ, who "found a way to copy himself." This fits Christian theology somewhat, in that Christians among other things are considered "little Christs" or "the hands and feet of Christ in the world." Similarly Smith copies himself, until the entire world is a copy of Smith.
Of course we know that Neo comes, he fights agent Smith, and he is killed. Similarly the anti-Christ is said to receive a wound in his life, but was miraculously healed of it (Revelation 13:12). Neo is killed by Smith, but comes back to life in the first film, and he now sees the matrix and understands it, and is then able to overcome it.
In the next films the battle rages on between humanity and the machines. It culminates in the final battle between Neo and Smith at the end of the third movie. Christ vs. Anti-Christ. We know this moment also comes in the Christian Bible, in Revelation, Christ returns and defeats the beast, the false prophet, and the anti-Christ, and sets up his millennial kingdom on the broken Earth. Very interesting, right?
But this is where the Wachowski brothers depart from that timeline, in hope of another. I suppose this is the hope of many of those in our world who reject God, hate God, and view God as evil and even monstrous. The hope is that somehow the anti-Christ will be able to defeat Jesus, or defeat God, or destroy God somehow, or perhaps force God into some sort of stalemate, where they can create their own world, apart from God's universal system.
That is of course the desire, or perhaps better stated the deception of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, If you disobey God, and take the fruit, you'll become like God, and you can redefine good, evil, right, wrong, reality itself to be whatever you want it to be. I'm paraphrasing.
Neo, and Trinity must journey to the machine city, and somehow negotiate a deal with the machine consciousness. Neo ends up before the "baby-face" machine face, a classic depiction of God as evil, or simplistic, somewhat like viewing God as a kid with an ant-farm, you might say, a gnostic tyrant, simple and wicked. But none-the-less in total control. Neo negotiates with the machine-consciousness to bring an end to the cycle of war, and force a truce.
Philosophy, theology, ideologies, simulation, reality, free will, determinism, predestination, choice, all of these ideas are explored in the Matrix films, which is what makes them so powerful and appealing.
For me as a Christian, I could see early on many of the Christ-like qualities in Neo, and a sort of John the Baptist motif in Morpheus. And the spiritual battle to win people to Christ in the efforts of the hovership crews to free minds. But over time as I've thought about it, I realized I was wrong.
I truly under-estimated the brilliance of the Wachowski brothers. They crafted something very special here. But it is definitely, as far as I can tell, a sort of allegory about God, and the great controversy of the Lucifer figure. Then again, they may have pieced this together with completely different motives, but none-the-less the central theme of the great controversy, the spiritual battle for the souls of humanity wrote itself into the narrative without them even realizing it. Such is life, believe me, it writes itself over and over across all of reality. Why? Because it's the actual truth, beyond all the views, philosophies, ideologies, perspectives, and delusions out there.
But in the Matrix series, the heroes of the story are not God and Jesus and the angels, the heroes of the story are Lucifer, the anti-Christ and the demonic forces of the power of the air. Never-the-less we see the most important themes of our reality, our universe, our lives play themselves out in the world the Wachowski's crafted.
It really all does come down to choice. It comes down to free will. The entire universe is watching right now, as you decide which choice you will make. It's like the final scene of The Matrix Resurrections. The huge, massive, intergalactic moment of choice, for Neo and Trinity, at the coffee shop. That's your life. You're the one making the choice.
Indeed we all make the choice everyday. Most of us are completely deceived by Satan's system. The crazy thing is, though the matrix is a creation of God, in our world, we do really live in a matrix of Satan's crafting according to Christianity. He has temporary control over this temporary construct. As the book says "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19).
The matrix is real, we're in it. I kid you not! I don't simply mean that in reference to the power of Satan to deceive us. I mean this world, this universe is a simulation created by God, apart from what's actually real. But then again it's real enough, given it's ramifications. But it is a temporary construct destined to be destroyed.
It's a last opportunity, for humanity, for every human, to escape into the real world. The real world is out there. We are indeed in a matrix right now. It's our last chance.
But the one deceiving us is Satan, he wants us to think he's the good guy, and we need to remake reality to suite ourselves. Why do we assume that the end all be all comes down to our own personal preference? That we shape reality? It's the great lie that was planted at the tree. A great part of you believes it. But there's another part of you that knows the truth is out there... there's something more you're missing.
This reality, this matrix we currently reside in, is the grand moment at the coffee shop, between Neo and Trinity. The moment of the choice. It's an impossibly difficult choice. We must choose Christ, and righteousness, things we internally despise, because we're programmed to this broken system. Indeed, most choose the matrix, they choose this life, with it's petty pleasures, money, food, power, sex, and all that. From what I can tell something like 99% of people choose the matrix. And they receive an eternal punishment, in a place called hell. This reality is so difficult to bear, it's unthinkably terrible, but here we are.
What about you?
What will you choose? The blue pill keeps us asleep. Just believe whatever you want to believe. Believe men can become women, women can become men. Believe there is no God. Believe nature is all there is. Believe that you can make utopia if you just get enough technology and scientific progress.
But there is that red pill available. The extremely difficult truth behind it all. We're sin. We're the problem. And only Christ can make us new, give us new birth, rebirth, resurrection, you might say, so that we can be part of a new world. Truly, the real world, and escape this temporary matrix that is destined for destruction. The matrix will eventually be deleted. And dual realities will be revealed, the reality of heaven and the reality of hell.
Heaven is reality as it truly is. A "new" universe and a "new" Earth. But it's simply as they were always intended to be. Indeed, this is the matrix. Right now. Literally, right now, we are in the matrix, as I write these words. Crazy scary stuff right? So why doesn't God just come out and show himself? Choice, my friends. Free will. You would not have a free choice to make, you'd be forced in a way to believe. Your free will is sacred. Your choice is sacred.
Hell is also a reality. From NDEs I've studied, it seems to be made up of infinite cubes. These cubes are prison cells of a sort, quarantine zones, for those who have rejected the Christ, and made the wrong choice.
So here we are, seated in the coffee shop, everything is telling you that I'm insane, I'm evil, I'm a liar, you've been propagandized up and down by this world to hate God, to resent God, to think God is evil and bad, how interesting that we're all constantly told that by the media, Hollywood, the world, isn't it? Fascinating really. In fact, you hate it yourself. Just like Neo, when he became sick on the hovership, in the first film, realizing the horror of the nightmare scenario he found himself in.
Truly we do find ourselves in a nightmare scenario. We're in the matrix. We're condemned, in fact, found to be sin, a cancer on the system that must be wiped out, destroyed. The fall took place, it's real, and it affects us without even realizing it. It's written into our personalities, into who we are, yet here we are. Will I believe a lie? Will I take the blue pill? Or the red pill?
We have one last opportunity. In the flickering darkness, that we can hardly see, a God-man two thousand years ago, nailed to a tree, to wipe out our sin, to clean away the problem, and make us new people, pure, and as such able to access true reality, outside this broken, fallen, ticking clock matrix. The world will end, as the oracle said to Niobe.
But here is your option, you could continue to believe that humanity will overcome death, that humanity will find a way to turn the Earth into a utopia apart from God. You could believe that Lucifer is here to help you, and demons are your friends. You could believe that with technology, science, and philosophy humanity will become immortal. Many seem to believe things along those lines. The blue pill.
God himself is watching right now, to see what choice you make. Could you really make that impossible choice, to turn to Jesus Christ, and become part of the new world that will soon be revealed? Could you escape this deception-filled matrix of horrors? Or will you burn, in the pit of eternal fire, in separate cubes, one by one by the billions, quarantine boxes, for those souls that could not quite turn to Jesus, who refused Christ, and embraced evil? The red pill. Such a hard pill to swallow. So few take it. But... here is your chance matrix fans.
What is your choice? Maybe I'm a liar? Maybe I'm not. You must decide. Could you do that terrible unthinkable thing... and deny yourself?
