The Matrix Reloaded
by:
Frederica Mathewes-Green
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If you can read this, you're probably not waiting in line at a movie
theater. If you don't know why people might be waiting in line at a movie
theater, you need to come out of that fallout shelter. Fans have been
anxiously anticipating the release of "The Matrix Reloaded" ever since
the house lights came up at the end of 1999's blockbuster, "The Matrix."
"The Matrix" is surely the most over-analyzed movie since they invented
Christian film critics. Type "Matrix" and "Christian" into a search
engine and you'll come up with 13 pages of books and college seminars,
youth group studies and evangelism strategies. The Christian themes in
the film are so obvious that even non-believers can spot them across the
room. A site that offers free essays to kids who cheat on their homework
includes one with this title: "Christian Themes in the Matrix."
What are those themes? That this world is in the power of an evil force.
It devours humans, while keeping them distracted with material pleasures.
A small band of brave humans know the truth, and seek to free the race
from destruction. "Neo," the One, is clearly the savior. (This role is a
bit of heavy lifting for Reeves, who is not the most thoughtful of
actors, but the first half of "The Matrix" is ideal for his talents.
Reeves can be effortlessly convincing at portraying a confused person.)
In the first film Neo dies, rises from the dead, and rockets skyward
making threats that sound more Terminator than Life-Giver. Neo is
attended by "Morpheus," who fills a John the Baptist role, and a brave
young woman named "Trinity." The underground camp of free humans is
called Zion.
You get the picture. It's a mix of names and themes from many religious
traditions, and hardly the screen equivalent of a "Four Spiritual Laws"
tract. But the presence of any Christian resonances in a mainstream movie
is so intoxicating to some Christians that they embraced it with glee.
But I believe there's one big flaw in the Matrix's theology. It's the
idea that the beauty of creation is a deceptive lie, generated by evil
forces. Real reality, the way Neo and the others discover it, is ugly,
dirty and gray. The temptation they must resist is the desire to return
to the illusory world of flowers, birdsong, and sizzling steaks.
Courageous humans instead must remain resolutely in their muddy realm,
wearing their dingy clothes. (Not to be a pest, but if the struggling
liberated humans can have clothes that are brown and gray, why can't they
have clothes that are purple and green? And if they can whisk all around
the time-space continuum, why can't they locate a laundromat?)
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It might occur to you that this actually sounds more like Hinduism than
Christianity. Christians don't believe that this whole world is deceptive
illusion ("maya"). We believe that it is created good, very good, and
filled with the presence of God. "The heavens are telling the glory of
God" (Ps 19:1). All creation reveals his presence. It isn't saying, "Look
over there!" to keep us distracted from him.
In fact, the testimony of saints through the ages is that, the closer you
draw to God, the more the beauty of reality unfolds. Puritan preacher
Jonathan Edwards wrote that in prayer "God's excellency, his wisdom, his
purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and
stars, in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees, in the
water, and all nature." Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote "The
world is charged with the grandeur of God; it will flame out like shining
from shook foil." Quaker founder George Fox found that, after his
conversion, the world *smelt* different.
The world that "The Matrix" presents as "real" is the phony one. It is
made in the image of a vague romantic idea that "facing reality" means
embracing grim, unpleasant truths, and beauty is a trap to distract us.
But God clothed the lilies of the field in splendor, because it shows
what he is like, and indicates what he has in mind for us too. Creation
has not been made beautiful in order to distract us from uglier truths,
but to awaken our desire for the one who himself is Truth. Reality is not
opposed to beauty. Beauty is the secret of God's living, breathing
presence in our midst.
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Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com
posted May 2003 |
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