What "The Matrix" Is REALLY About | A Christian Analysis

Twas the month before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring except there's a brand new

Matrix movie coming out. We can't see it, but we're all trapped inside these strange repeating loops.

Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious.

But this is the moment for you to show us what is real. I remember this.

Oh, man, we are about to take the blue pill and go down the rabbit hole, okay? But before the fourth

Matrix movie comes out, you have to understand. I mean, really understand the first three films.

Well, that's what I'm here for. So let's get right into it. Perhaps you're thinking, what else can be said about the

Matrix? I mean, 20 years later, there's been a whole lot of ruminating on the philosophical slash religious slash fill -in -the -blank themes found in the 1999 film that became a cultural phenomenon.

For example, in Faith, Film and Philosophy, David P. Hunt argues that the Matrix and its sequels is a retelling of Gnostic mythology.

In Flickering Reality, F. David Peet suggests that the film is really about the Hindu understanding of Maya or the illusion of the phenomenal universe.

I once heard an iTunes podcast speculating that the Matrix is really a story about the Illuminati. For reasons that will come up later,

I believe the Wachowskis, which were the creators of the trilogy, chose to appropriate religious symbols and religious imagery to further their story.

But I do not believe that they were selectively utilizing one particular religious theme. Therefore, they would be just as happy with the

Gnostic interpretation of the film as well as with the Hindu interpretation of the movie. I would imagine just about anyone's religious interpretation of the trilogy is equally welcomed in the

Wachowskis' minds. However, I will argue that the Wachowskis had a decidedly non -religious idea in mind for the underlying allegory of the

Matrix. We're going to explore that, but first, let's revisit the story. Thomas Anderson, hacker named

Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is the typical everyman struck by a sense that something is wrong with his world.

His boss treats him like a number, his clothes don't quite fit him properly, and he can't quite shake the disoriented feeling of being caught between wakefulness and sleep.

His search for answers leads him to Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, and Trinity, played by Carrie -Anne

Moss. These are two leather -clad fugitives that have actually been searching for Neo as well. It turns out

Neo's world is a false construct created by sentient machines to keep human beings asleep.

But the deception is much more sinister. The machines are in full control, pulling the strings of power while the people are exploited for their energy.

Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, is followed by his gang of Smiths, which are guardian programs tasked with policing the

Matrix from troublemakers like Morpheus and Trinity and Neo. The Smiths can be anywhere and anyone at any time.

Their mission is to destroy the last bastion of humanity, the city of Zion. If you watch the movie, you'll find the story and fight sequences are still just as captivating after all these years, although bullet time has pretty much been run into the ground at this point.

Reeves' portrayal of Neo still effectively comes across as it should. He is subdued, unsure of himself, yet rebellious and curious enough to swallow just about any old pill placed in his hands.

Fishburne is inspired as Morpheus, Neo's mentor and friend, a kind of smoother, wiser

Han Solo. Moss is equal parts elegant, vicious, and vulnerable as Trinity, the motorcycle -riding, acrobatic heroine in Neo's love interest.

The reveal at the end, that Neo is the one, pays huge dividends. The shootout at the police station, the face -off at the subway, the final confrontation between Neo and the

Smiths, it satisfies our desire as an audience to see where his training is leading. And of course, in the last minute of the movie,

Neo's final threat and his ascension, like his literal ascension into the air, wets the audience's appetite for the coming war and the sequels.

Even though The Matrix World is programmed for 1999, the look of the film still feels rather contemporary.

The set designs and the costumes capture a timeless undercurrent relevant to the plot. That is, the real year is closer to 2199.

The dark streets and the shadowy rooms are of a richly noir -ish texture. The colors of The Matrix World, the blacks, the browns, the greens, they're juxtaposed with the pale flesh of its human inhabitants.

It's as if to reflect that their energy is being robbed by the machines in the real world.

The Wachowskis have not wasted any shots here. As a matter of fact, they brilliantly give us clues before the big reveal that Neo's world is a binary simulation.

Two quick examples of this. First, Neo's apartment number is 101, as in the binary code of computer programming.

Second, all of Neo's digital contraband is stored inside a hollowed -out copy of Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.

So it is obvious that a lot of attention and care was given to not only the story, but each specific shot in general.

Some believers like to tout the film and the trilogy as a Christian tale, or at least a story rife with biblical themes.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned a moment ago, the main allegory has nothing to do with religion. The religious aspects of the film are there specifically because the

Wachowskis have adopted particular language and imagery connoting those concepts, like Savior, like Trinity, and the

One. But, and this is an important distinction for those of us in the audience who are Christians to be aware of, the

Matrix is not espousing the Christian message. It is using Christian and other religious motifs to tell a different story.

This is not to suggest that we cannot use the movie to further our particular theological agenda in conversations.

I'm just simply suggesting that we should be aware that we do so in spite of the movie's purpose, not because of it.

Largely, the movie is a sociological commentary on the control of the masses through imagery in a consumer -driven society.

As I mentioned earlier, Jean Baudrillard's work Simulacra and Simulation rests on Neo's bookshelf. But this book is not an accidental prop piece.

In an interview for the documentary The Matrix Revisited, Keanu Reeves admits that the Wachowskis told him to read

Baudrillard before even opening the script. The central idea of this book is that innumerable simulations of objects have saturated us all such that we no longer have a grasp of what is real or the real.

Concepts like the desert of the real and models of control or matrices, they come directly out of the book and onto the screen in Morpheus' human battery speech.

What is the Matrix, Morpheus asks. It is control. A control brought on by a system of simulation causing a full disconnection from truth, reality.

Baudrillard argues that his third order of Simulacra has no referent at all. Now this comes directly from his writings.

Think of a simulation as the television show Keeping Up with the Kardashians and its referent as the real

Kardashian family. The television version is essentially a bad copy of the real family since it can only present them in a very limited, skewed way.

Baudrillard says that since people only know about the Kardashians through the bad copy, well then the only thing the bad copy can represent is itself.

More important to note, the bad copy is so pervasive and influential that it can actually turn the real into a copy of the simulation as well.

Therefore, people no longer have a grasp of real truth, only simulated truth. Baudrillard initially applies this notion of Simulacra to media, that is movies and television, and by extension to literature, to history, to politics, to social groups, and you name it.

He's talking about things that are prescient right now in today's culture. Essentially, he is suggesting that there can be no correspondence between what people perceive via the simulation and true reality.

That is, truth is no longer an objective fact that holds regardless of the shifting realities of the simulation.

Truth is itself constructed by the simulation. However, if truth no longer corresponds to reality, well then it has become relativistic.

So the first thing that we Christians must distinguish is that the Bible rejects Baudrillard's worldview.

John 1 -3 says that Jesus created the universe and everything in it. Jesus also said that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through him. But these are not words spoken by a character in a postmodern narrative.

Jesus is a real historical figure that walked the earth in the first century. What he said about himself and the world were spoken at a real time and geographical location in the past.

Since the Bible purports to be true and treats truth as a historical reality to be reckoned with,

Jesus' words are meant to match up with the world as it is. This corresponding relationship trades on philosophical realism, otherwise known as the correspondence theory of truth.

In light of this relationship, the Bible instructs us to value truth such that we keep it very close, as well as to seek it as something objective to be grasped beyond mere appearances.

It therefore rejects Baudrillard's theory. Interestingly enough, the first installment of the Matrix veers from a crucial aspect of Baudrillard's theory.

Remember, Neo wakes up from the Matrix into an objectively real world of human vats and spider creatures.

That is, he awakens to discover that there is a referent after all to the simulation. But this referent is in utter ruin after the humans blotted out the sun to thwart the machines.

This actually upset Baudrillard, who went on to bemoan the movie's misappropriation of the virtual for an irrefutable fact.

But notice what Baudrillard has done to himself here. According to his own theory, Baudrillard must assert that the

Matrix movie and sequels is part of the system of simulation. That is, it presents a slightly skewed or bad copy of his original theory.

Remember, according to the theory, a simulation can only represent itself, not its referent.

But Baudrillard argued in his interview as if the Wachowskis had not represented his book accurately.

So, Baudrillard does not consistently live in the world that he envisions. And I believe it is our duty as Christians to point this out to others who also commit

Baudrillard's mistake in similar ways. The Bible makes it clear that we are being controlled.

We are either controlled by our flesh, we are controlled by sin, we are controlled by the devil, or by the spirit of God.

This control is not necessarily due to imagery, according to the movie's allegory, but influence.

Influence from the temptations of our flesh, influence from the enemy and his schemes, or influence from the

Holy Spirit. Solomon said that like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.

In other words, in order to withstand the influences of evil, we must control ourselves.

Since self -control is a fruit of the spirit, Galatians 5, well then it follows that the way to control ourselves is to be under the influence of the spirit of God.

Romans 12 .2 says that we can render ourselves immune to the conformity of this world by being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

At a more fundamental level, if we renew our minds through various techniques, so for example like dwelling on what is true, which is what

Philippians 4 .8 teaches, we will be able to identify the lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God.

Now what I just quoted was 2 Corinthians 10 .5. Now what's interesting about 2 Corinthians 10 .5 is this description of what spiritual battle entails is one of the only ones

Paul gives in the New Testament, and for good reason. Ideas and speculations are what we Christians have always been facing.

False ideas about the beginning of the universe, the nature of the world, the existence of Jesus divinity, the plausibility of miracles, the list goes on and on.

And each new false idea pulls someone away from the truth and further into the world's system of control.

We cheer for Morpheus's Nebuchadnezzar crew because we must be like them. We must always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks, to be alert and sober and to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

We must be vigilant and on the lookout for those who are willing to wake up from the world's system of control.

I mean this comes through much prayer, through reading scripture and familiarizing ourselves with crucial subjects like philosophy and science.

If we can do these things, we will then be able to stand firm in the faith and be strong.

This notion is expressed in a quick exchange during Neo's training. Neo asks Morpheus if what he's being trained for is to dodge the smith's bullets, to which

Morpheus replies, when you're ready, you won't have to. Likewise, if we can always be ready to make that defense and stand firm in our faith, then we won't have to dodge the enemy's arrows.

We will extinguish them. In my opinion,

The Matrix is one of the greatest movies of all time, particularly because it contains such rich fodder for thought along the lines of spirituality and religion.

But remember, the main allegory for the film has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with control of the masses in a consumer -driven culture.

That's where Baudrillard's book Simulacra and Simulation has a lot to do with the film, and that's why a lot of his concepts are spread throughout the movie.

But that doesn't mean that the movie itself cannot be used as a conversation piece to talk about Christian themes, because some of the themes in the movie run directly parallel to what we find in the scripture.

So I encourage you, as the fourth film is about to premiere in theaters, go back and watch the first movie, and see the rich imagery.

But when you do, understand it for what it is. If you liked this video, I'll make another one looking at The Matrix Reloaded, okay?

And we will descend further down the rabbit hole with a discussion on its particular philosophy, as well as the

Wachowskis' appropriation of religious imagery and how Christian theology connects to the film's question of control.

I got a lot of thoughts on all of that. Like this video so I know that you want to see the next one. Also, tell me what you think in the comments.

Did you like The Matrix? Did you think it was a horrible movie? Are you ready for the fourth one? What do you think is going to happen in the fourth one?