The Matrix is a film that puts forward the dreadful, insane doubt that in some dystopian future, and perhaps even in the present, people are unknowingly trapped inside “the Matrix”, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as a power station.
The protagonist, Thomas Anderson, (a code name for a doubting Thomas who is a symbol for the Son of Man, Ander meaning man) under the hacker alias “Neo”, is red-pilled (this film being of course the origin of that expression), and so joins the rebellion against the machine overlords.
Some people who struggle with their sanity (as all sane people inevitably must in these days) may well believe that we are all trapped in some similar Matrix, and that rabbit hole is very deep; some say we might be in fact “brains in a vat” and do not exist at all except in a simulation that we merely believe and experience as reality; but of course such a belief would be a disaster for our personal relationships.
It was the philosopher Alvin Plantinga, in his book “Of God and Other Minds,” who pointed out that the same proofs of rationality that we accept unquestioningly that show us that other minds exist, can also be applied to the universe, that God exists.
But for those in the Matrix, this is little help, for they fear that God is not good. And it is their bodies that they think are not real, in this age.
Insofar as I can tell, the earliest cogent Western example of this precarious philosophy is the ‘great’ philosopher Descartes; it is a sort of dark hole Descartes falls into unwittingly, from which he subsequently tries to reason himself out.
This is how Descartes describes this poisonous deception he courts in the name of progressing his rationality:
I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity; I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, yet falsely believing myself to possess all these things; I shall remain obstinately attached to this idea, and if by this means it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power [i.e. suspend my judgment], and with firm purpose avoid giving credence to any false thing, or being imposed upon by this arch deceiver, however powerful and deceptive he may be. Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy transl. Elizabeth S Haldane.
How lucky we are, if we are children and can believe in God with the simple faith of a child!
At that time Jesus declared, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” Matthew 11:25
In the same book, soon afterwards, Descartes puts forward the aphorism, Cogito ergo sum! “I think, therefore I am!” as the solution to this dilemma, this paradox, into which his elemental thinking has led him. I think Descartes confused things.
Surely our ability to think is inferior to the awareness of our being? Surely our existence is the necessary precondition to our being able to think, or to thinking at all? Therefore, “I am - therefore I think,” might be a better expression of the experiential reality of our existence.
In the end, confusing consciousness with rational thought was the great error Descartes made. (How many abortions, how many euthanasias, have been conducted upon this faulty assumption?)
So Descartes’ great intellectual substructure is built on shaky ground to begin with. Sand. For he starts with doubt instead of faith. He begins with a proposition that he ought to have known is a lie.
(Incidentally, did you ever notice, ‘being’ is an anagram of ‘begin’?)
But for those without hope in Christ, the ground of reality, the world might well be thus. Edgar Allan Poe said “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
And it’s not a new idea; Zhuangzi or Change Tzu, meaning Master Zhuang, (369 BCE to 286 BCE) had the same idea, really; only with butterflies.
"Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Transl. Lin Yutang.
Yes, we all know the human mind is frail and reason often turns out to be an unreliable guide.
Indeed, we have seen this often in the last two years, in the so-called Coronavirus so-called epidemic, in which those so-called government bodies most certain of their rationality have behaved the most irrationally, and the so-called compassionate human beings (who were really most willing to condemn others) have in retrospect turned out to be the ones doing things most worthy of condemnation, i.e. encouraging people to take a poisonous medication.
It was a difficult thing to cling to our rationality in those times, like an ant clinging to a straw, swaying in a storm wind.
So it may be that rationality itself is a deceptive goal. For even if we were able to be rational, as Godel’s famous Incompleteness Theorem points out, complete rationality is a self-referential system that in the end cannot even weed out simple paradoxes, such as “This statement is not true”.
The real-world consequence of this in our lives in the Twenty First Century is that every computer system, every mobile phone, every smart TV, at some point in time, crashes, despite the complete rationality of such devices, being machines merely performing logical operations on 1s and 0s automatically; the epitome of the tree of knowledge in which everything is a duality, either/or, on/off.
The crash happens, you see, when a computer program encounters a paradox and gets stuck in a goto loop, essentially, returning to the beginning again to try to resolve the conflict; having no consciousness, no awareness, being just a machine, it can’t ‘see’ how ridiculous and absurd it is to go back to the beginning time and time again.
And even if every individual program on the computer is a semi-isolated unit, such as it is in the operating system of an Apple Mac these days, the whole system is still a system in itself, too, inevitably, for it is as a whole a self-contained system too, still, and at some point that greater system runs into the paradox that cannot be resolved - the ‘this statement is not true’ of that system - and gets stuck in the goto loop that goes on forever, until a human being presses the RESTART button.
But when our society is stuck in a loop, what can we do?
To the contrary, however, this is a silly question, for we are not computers, neither individually nor in aggregate. We are human beings, with a will and a spirit. And we can see the paradoxes in all their glorious, ridiculous irony, even if a computer or a mathematical system cannot.
Humour, on a natural level, can help us see what is really going on, when we’re stuck in paradoxes.
Poor Pinocchio.
But humour cannot save us; it can only alert us to the irony of our absurd predicament.
Yes, trying to use humour to save ourselves, we might as well be just throwing insults at a hurricane, for our predicament is so much greater and more powerful than we are, like Job’s Leviathan, in that enigmatic passage in Job chapter 3, when Job in his suffering is cursing the day of his own birth, “May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.”
The Voice from the whirlwind that spoke to Job speaks of the Leviathan too; the Voice of one Who certainly can pull Leviathan in with a fishhook:
Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?
Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?
Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words?
Will it make an agreement with you
for you to take it as your slave for life?
Can you make a pet of it like a bird
or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
Will traders barter for it?
Will they divide it up among the merchants?
Can you fill its hide with harpoons
or its head with fishing spears?
That Leviathan is the force behind all the irrationality that surrounds us, which, as often as it is an oppressive force of propaganda and the social force of peer pressure, injustice and evil, imposed from outside, is also the cause of the protective shields that people create for themselves, the walls that human beings put up to protect themselves from others and from God, the armour that they create to protect themselves from everything that they regret and everything they feel guilty about. And everything we feel good about, too; for we construct our idols as compensation for the lack of meaning and fulfilment in our lives; fulfilment that in the end can only come from God.
But, then, we ask, who actually can save us from this Matrix, the Matrix of faulty, sinful human minds and corruption and society?
Forgive me for the solution I propose, for it is a solution most unfavoured in these times, but it is really the solution proposed in the Matrix, in a coded form.
Neo. The New Man.
Yes, there is only One who can save us from ourselves; and I’ve said His Name already: Jesus Christ.
It is all in His book, the Bible. Read it.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
This medication, the word of God, is a pill that we can take that alone is able to penetrate to the very heart of the matter.
The word of God pierces all these barriers we put up to avoid God, Who is a loving Father who only wants to touch our lives and free us from our sin, but we cling to our tawdry, twilight existence, fearing to have our cherished idols - and ultimately, our sinful self - put to death.
For it is a great and terrible death, to die to self, to admit one was wrong and come to God for forgiveness.
Yet Jesus tells us our true situation:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:24-25
And this Bible that tells us that Jesus says this is the Word of God in microcosm, which came into the world, to be light and life for us:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not grasped it. John 1 BSB
Yes, the true light has come into the world.
The true Light who gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God. John 1:9-13
Jesus on the cross when he died, took our guilt away; and our sin was nailed to the tree with Him, Jesus even put death itself to death.
All we must do to come into His kingdom, the kingdom of truth, is admit to Him that we were wrong, and our sins can be forgiven.
But that is the hardest thing to do, for human pride gets in the way; no one wants to admit they are wrong. Especially to God, who to perverse minds seems like a judge; when truly, He is a loving Father who only wants to forgive. God give us grace to know this.
But once we receive His grace, then we can begin to build our lives again in a different way. Instead of doing things, to feel loved, we know we are loved, and so we do. It is neither “I think, therefore I am,” nor “I do stuff to feel loved,” but “I am loved by God, therefore I do His will.”
For the Word of God, incarnate in Jesus, is the only reliable foundation for building knowledge of truth in intellectual life, indeed, life in all its fullness, love for neighbour, literature, music, art, engineering, caring for children, family life, everything that is worthwhile is empty without Jesus.
And it is God's Spirit Who enlightens the believer inwardly about the reliable nature of the Cosmos that God created.
It is by God’s Spirit that I know that the universe is real and not a lie.
And this is the only way out of the Matrix.
Is the red pill not a symbol of the blood of Jesus?
Psalm 65
For the director of music. A psalm of David. A song.
Praise awaits you, our God, in Zion;
to you our vows will be fulfilled.
You who answer prayer,
to you all people will come.
When we were overwhelmed by sins,
you forgave our transgressions.
Blessed are those you choose
and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house,
of your holy temple.
You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds,
God our Savior,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas,
who formed the mountains by your power,
having armed yourself with strength,
who stilled the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
and the turmoil of the nations.
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
where morning dawns, where evening fades,
you call forth songs of joy.
You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it
You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing.
Change Log
Added “And it is their bodies that they think are not real, in this age.” plus a few other minor improvements.