The Matrix Uncovered

The Matrix has been my all time favorite movie most of my life.

I always knew the writers of the Matrix studied religion, primarily Christianity, before writing the movie. I could tell from the first time I saw it that Neo was supposed to represent Jesus, as the Savior of all mankind. He was a Christ-figure. What I didn't realize was how almost the entire movie is full of biblical allusions.

For example Cipher, who betrays Morpheus and Neo, is supposed to represent Judas Iscariot. Judas betrayed Jesus for money, silver, and Cipher also does it for money. He tells the computer at his steak dinner that when his body was reinserted he wants to be rich.

The beginning of the movie I think represents a Christian before they become a Christian and their eyes can see. Neo does not become "Jesus" per se until he believes in himself. At the beginning he is like an atheist, then he is like someone who is searching for the truth but is still filled with doubt and does not have faith yet. After he comes into the real world it is like he is a believer, but still a baby Christian, which is why he reacts to the truth in frustration at first. Finally, at the end of the movie, he gets it. He understands and finally sees the power within him, which in Christianity we would say is the Holy Spirit.

It is often raining at the beginning of the movie. I think this could represent what our lives are like in sin, when we are slaves to sin before Christ regenerates us. Also, when he wakes up in the primordial pink soup looking thing he notices that he is bound by cords; this could represent how we are slaves to sin before Christ, as Paul talks about. He then is released from all the cords, the bondage, and flushed down a tube naked, which looks a lot like a birth. I think this is to represent that he is being reborn, spiritually reborn, as Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be. This is when we die to ourselves and come alive in Christ.

Neo still has the plugs on his body the rest of the movie in the real world, which could represent that our past sin still affects us. Just because we are a new creature in Christ, we cannot forget old memories or old sins. We cannot forget the way things used to be when we were of the world.

I heard in a sermon once that, even as Christians, we still carry around our old man suit, and sometimes we put it on when we aren't thinking. Thus Romans 8, the struggle between living life in the Spirit and in the flesh. No one is perfect; not Christians either. We all will, as long as we are on this earth, struggle with sin.

The moment when Neo takes the red pill I think represents the moment when we are physically baptised. Him taking the pill, like baptism, is a physical way that we show our faith. It is the turning point. It is when we decide that we will take things seriously from now on. We will take God seriously. It is when we decided that we really do want to see the truth, as he did in the movie.

When Neo is brought into the real world he is on the table getting acupuncture. He hears Morpheus and opens his eyes but asks, "Why do my eyes hurt?" Morpheus says, "Because you've never used them before." Aka. You have been blind, but now you see. He was spiritually blind before. He was walking in darkness. But once he decided to take the red pill, to see the truth, his eyes were opened for the first time so that he could see the truth, he could see everything.

When he first woke up in his cage, his womb like capsule, he looks around and sees the fields of human beings in capsules, in cages. He sees for the first time reality, that things are not as they seem. All of them aren't really walking around in the world, hanging out with friends. In reality they are in bondage, just as the majority of our world is. They are energy slaves for the computer, and the computer is playing games with their minds, hypnotizing them, so that they will not wake up and see reality for what it really is. He sees that humans are being used as slaves, just like we are slaves before God saves us through our faith in Jesus and regenerates our minds and spirits.

Morpheus' name is interesting. I think Morpheus is meant to represent God the Father. The root word of his name would be morph, so to morph into different things. God is three in one. He is at the same time one person, but he is also three, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Neo is supposed to represent Jesus, the son of God, and Morpheus trains him. And Trinity, I figured out, is supposed to represent the Holy Spirit. She believes in Neo, the one, Jesus. She supports him, just as the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus when he as on earth. And she and Neo are in subjection to Morpheus, as Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in subjection to God the Father.

I think Neo in the movie is supposed to represent Jesus in his second coming, not his first coming. When Neo wakes up the first time in the real world, Morpheus told him of a man born inside the Matrix who was smarter and realized that he could break the rules of the Matrix. He saved the first of them and started the city of Zion. This describes what Jesus did in his first coming. He broke the rules of nature by performing miracles and raising from the dead. He saved many and founded the first "city of God," being the early church. He freed his disciples and they freed many more, from Satan, from the Matrix of our world.

Morpheus tells Neo that is was prophesied that this man would return and save mankind. Morpheus believes that person, the one, is Neo. Neo's name means "new, revived, modified." Neo is supposed to be Jesus at his second coming where he rides onto earth as a conquering hero on a white horse, when he will throw Satan in the dungeon and take his people home to be with him. According to Christianity however, this will not be the whole world that he will save, but only those who have put their faith in him, Jesus.

At one point Morpheus says to Neo, "They're watching you Neo." He was talking about the computer, the agents. The computer is supposed to represent the principalities of evil; Satan and his demons. Satan is watching us, trying to figure out when he can attack us. When Neo has his first meeting in the room with the agents I think that is supposed to represent Jesus' temptations by Satan in the wilderness. An agent tells Neo that his slate can be wiped clean if he will just turn in Morpheus. Likewise, Satan tempted Jesus with power etc. if he would just worship him, Satan, instead of God. Neo, like Jesus, refuses the temptation. Jesus quotes scripture to counter act the temptations of Satan. Neo brings up his phone call, which is how he has been communicating with Morpheus. Both value their connection to the Father, as Morpheus is to represent God the Father, more than what the agent or Satan can offer them.

Morpheus also tells Neo that if the computer knew what he knew, Neo would probably already be dead. In history, Satan knew that Jesus was the son of God, but biblically Satan could have no power over him until Jesus handed over that power, which he did when he died on the cross. It is quite possible that Satan entered the Pharisees in a sense and drove them to crucify Jesus. Sure they were religious people, but they never really got it. They didn't really have a relationship with God. Jesus called them children of the Devil. Therefore, they very likely could have been possessed. In the same way, the computer, who represents Satan in the movie, keeps trying to kill Neo towards the end. They realize how powerful he is and they want him dead, they want to stop him. Just as Satan saw more and more how powerful Jesus was and therefore wanted to kill him. So Satan controlled the Pharisees, got into their minds, and convinced them to plot death for Jesus.

At the upper room, in the last supper, it says when Jesus dipped the bread in the wine and handed it to the man who would betray him, Judas. The Scripture says at that moment Satan entered him. So Satan very much had his hand in Jesus being crucified. Of course he would, he is the enemy of mankind after all, and Jesus was coming to save mankind. Satan wanted to keep us in bondage.

When Morpheus fights Neo in Kung Fu, he is training him. This is like the time when Jesus fasts for 40 days in the wilderness. Jesus was being trained in that time to deny himself. He was God, yes, but he was fully man as well. Therefore he had all the desires and temptations that we all face. He never sinned, but I think this time of fasting was a time where Jesus began to gain control over his human body and to increase his faith that it was God who sustains him as a human being, not food.

Fasting does that. It makes us die to ourselves and increases our faith. It challenges us, just like Morpheus did in the fight with Neo. It makes us become the best person we can become. It helps us to die to ourselves, to die to the flesh, and walk better in the Spirit. It increases our faith, as Morpheus tried to do in the jump training program with Neo. He told him "free your mind." Fasting is a way to free our mind. What thoughts usually dominate some one's thoughts, "What will I eat next?" Right? But in Jesus' fasting for 40 days he did not have to think about that, so he could focus on God.

When Morpheus fights Neo he explains that some of the rules in the Matrix could be broken. This is like how Jesus broke the laws of nature when he did miracles. He rose the dead, made the blind see, healed the lame etc. He broke the physical law of entropy, that everything tends toward disorder, just as Morpheus broke the law of gravity when he flew across the roof tops. :) Jesus made things better, rather than allowing things to become worse, as they naturally do left to themselves. He inserted his power to change the natural order of things.

The jump program also made me think of the verse, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains." If Neo had faith as small as a mustard seed he could have jumped, or flew, across the roof tops, but he didn't.

It takes awhile for us as Christians to build our faith. Satan keeps trying to keep us from having faith. Look at the scene when Cipher talks to Neo and he places doubt in his mind. He told him, "When you see an agent, just do what we do, run." Cipher didn't have faith and he tried to prevent Neo from having faith.

When Morpheus takes Neo into the training program where he sees the woman in the red dress, he points out that anyone inside the Matrix can turn into an agent at any time. This reminded of that fact that anyone who does not belong to God can become possessed by Satan at any time. We never see the full on possession that is talked about in the Bible, or maybe we do.

I think any type of mental disorder that science tries to explain away as a neurological issue, could actually be a form of possession. Schizophrenia, hearing voices, sounds a lot like someone who is possessed. Epilepsy and seizures look a lot like how possessed people are described in the Bible, as not having control over their bodies etc. We never know who the enemy might be using around us. This is why Paul tells us to be alert and to know that "the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." He is more active in this world than we realize. We are not to be terrified of him, but aware and alert, and always praying for God's protection over us.

Neo's training is interrupted in the movie by "squids" that are searching for their ship. This made me think of how Satan tries to interrupt our times with God, our prayer times, our Bible studies. He tries to mess up our experience at church by dividing us with those we go to church with sometimes. Like the parable of the seeds, he tries to snatch up the seed that God is trying to plant in us every day before it can take root. Satan is afraid of our growth. He is afraid of our success. He is threatened by us. So he wants to prevent us from growing as God would want us to. In the movie, the computer, the agents, may have known that Neo was learning and being trained and so wanted to stop his progress, his learning.

The crew on the ship I think are meant to represent disciples. They had been trained by Morpheus, as we are trained by God the Father. They were united as one, except for one mole on the inside, the betrayer, Cipher.

Cipher's name is interesting. A cypher is a code, a secret, a puzzle, an enigma. Cipher acted one way but really was another. Just as Judas acted like he was one of Jesus' disciples but was secretly stealing money from their money bags the whole time and ended up betraying Jesus n the end. He was a puzzle. He appeared one way but was another.

In the movie, Cipher coughs when they are in the walls, which is how the agents could spot where they were. This is like when Judas kissed Jesus to reveal who he was and betray him. Morpheus then breaks through the wall to save Neo. This is where the analogy in the movie breaks down, because God the Father did not try to save his son Jesus when he was going to be crucified. Why? Because that was why he sent Jesus. God the Father knew what had to be done. Jesus was to pay the penalty for any sin ever committed in the history of the world. God the Father knew this had to be done, so though he could have saved him and stopped it, he didn't. Jesus asked if "this cup" could pass from him but either God was silent in response or he said no. So Jesus went to the cross, as was planned before the creation of the world, and died for you and me.

The scene where Morpheus is suffering could represent that God the Father may have suffered mentally the whole time Jesus was on the earth. I'm sure he hated seeing Jesus almost get stoned several times and attacked verbally by the Pharisees. Perhaps it was torture to God that he had to allow all this to happen to his one and only son. He had to just sit back and watch so that Jesus could save mankind. And how hard would that be, to know you had all the power in the world to save your only son, but you knew you couldn't. You knew that wasn't the plan. You knew what had to be done, but you had to watch your son get beaten and spit on and whipped and nailed to a cross. You had to turn your back on him because he became unholy for a moment when he was covered in sin. You had to disown your own son for a time in order to save the people you created and loved. But Jesus did was not tortured forever. He conquered death and rose from the dead. Amen! :)

At the end of the movie Neo is shot several times and seems to die, but then he raises from the dead as Jesus did, and he is far more powerful than before. He defeats death and therefore is able to defeat the machines, just as the Bible says Jesus made a public spectacle of Satan and the evil forces when he rose from the dead. He showed himself to be more powerful than death and Satan.

The movie closes with Neo saying over the phone, "I am going to tell these people what you don't want them to know. I am going to tell them the truth." Satan does not want us to know the truth. He does not want us to know that we ourselves are in his Matrix; his matrix of TV that distracts us from the truth, his matrix of pitting people against each other in anger and dividing us, his matrix of the lies of reason and science to blind us to the truth.

Satan wants to keep us in the dark. He does not want us to come into the light, to see the light. As long as we are in the darkness he has complete control over us. But when our eyes are opened, and we begin to see the truth, we see him for what he is. We see through Satan's matrix games of drugs, sex and success by which he tries to trap us in his web. We see that he uses sin to trap people and ensnare them. But we have to decide to open our eyes first. We have to decide if we really want to see the truth, or if we want to stay in darkness.

Have you opened your eyes yet? Or are you still trapped in Satan's Matrix of lies? May God give you eyes to see and ears to hear the truth; that Jesus is real, that he was the son of God, and that his death on the cross is all that is needed to save you from hell and from the matrix of this world, from sin. :)

Sometimes it takes art to open people's eyes to see the truth. Sometimes it takes something indirect; something that speaks to the soul and the heart rather than the mind.

I am asking you to believe, if you do not already. Believe that Jesus came to save you and accept his free gift of grace to cover your sins. See that Jesus is all powerful and that he loves you perfectly like nothing else can.

You could chose to believe and take the red pill like Neo did, or remain in darkness, unable to see, a slave to sin and to Satan. The choice is yours, dear reader. :) I pray that you will choose life, take the red pill, see how deep the rabbit hole goes, and God will reward you. :)

Grace and peace be with you. :)