The Matrix: Part Two

We watched The Matrix last night. I requested to watch it again because my favorite lines from the movie have been on my mind as of late. Now, I dare not treat this movie as if it is an allegory for spiritual matters, but, as I've said before, I love it when secular people tell the truth. I love it when songs, books, or in this case, scripts, reveal what's going on on the inside of us all. I'd like to use some of the dialogue to help further explain what's been stirring in me.
The Matrix was the first R rated movie I'd ever seen. My dad took me to see it because of the metaphors for the spirit world that struck him when he saw it. It has a lot of language (that I'd forgotten about) and plenty of violence, some in slow motion to ramp up the "cool" factor, so don't take this as a recommendation to go see it if you'd prefer not to hear or see those kinds of things.
Here is a section from the dialogue. I bet you'll catch the significance right away. This is when Neo, the searching character who later grows to be the hero, meets Morpheus, his future teacher and mentor, for the first time.

Morpheus: Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix.
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
Neo: Yes.
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

I LOVE THAT!!! We were all born into bondage. In our case, a prison for our spirits. We all have a nagging, searching, empty feeling. Until we put off the old man and are made into new creatures, our spirits are listless and unfulfilled.
Morpheus' description of the Matrix reminds me of a couple of things. Our world of the five senses is NOT the real world. The real world is a spiritual battle ground where a great war is raging for the human race. The spirit world is the real world. The eternal is primary, the temporal, secondary. Because of this fact, Christians are living in a Matrix of sorts, where the bodies we see only represent the spirits, bound or free, that are temporarily living inside them.
What does this mean for me? I struggle with the desire to be the "cool Christian friend." (I have to say that this becomes exponentially more important because of my home schooled background) I want to be the interesting one, the fashionable one, the intelligent one. I want to break any preconceived notions people have about Christians believing blindly in a God who can't be seen while wearing denim jumpers and gasping at "shoot" or "darn." I don't want to be easily offended. I don't want to shove the Bible down any one's throat. I don't want to alienate. I don't want to try to convert. Um, this isn't really going in a good direction, is it?
I need to get a really good firm grasp on the fact that the temporal is not important! The eternal spirit of that friend of mine will be around long after all those invites to social functions, mental sparrings and intelligent discussions. What's more important?
I can illustrate this best by a brief anecdote. Remember that college friend that I exchanged so many pages of emails with? He mentioned something about many of the Christian friends he had in college strongly feeling the need to convert him. He felt he couldn't just have a conversation with them without being told that something in his life needed to change or that he wasn't good enough for some reason. He was turned off by this and doesn't remember these experiences fondly. I sent him a message to ask if I was one of those friends. As I clicked "send" I wasn't sure what I wanted the reply to be. When I was writing the message, I was thinking smugly to myself that I was on the list of those he did not have an uncomfortable moment with. What an accomplishment considering the amount we debated about faith! Then, I wondered, do I want to be the one that never really told him he had to make a decision, that the debate required an answer, that Jesus' life demanded a response that was for or against and not just ponderings. He wrote me back. No worries, I wasn't one of "those."
*sigh*

Here is another quote from the movie. Neo is caught by an Agent (actually a part of the artificial intelligence that has enslaved humanity) and is being questioned, FBI style.

Agent Smith: It seems that you've been living two lives. One life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.

I want to choose the life that has a future. I want to say and do things in my life that will have an impact on the future, not just the future of the world and this life, but on people's spirits for eternity to come. Neo, the computer hacker, searching for truth, discovering things the AI did not want him to find out, for fear the knowledge would spread and truth would set people free... that's who I need to strive to be like. The truth I know is the truth that can set people free for eternity.

That's all for tonight. Still more to come...