CONTINGENCY PLAN
There are dozens more analogies in the MATRIX film series. The MATRIX is the most extraordinary platform for discussing the nature and implications of the nature of reality ever created. But I am pressed for time. As Morpheus said, “they’re coming for you, Neo.”
An analogy is not a game. I’m not taking a fictional science fiction movie and reading more into it than I should. I’m not out to discuss philosophy. I’m not here to talk, but to act. All I’m doing is the obvious: I know something about the Bible which most of you have never seriously considered , and I’m framing it in terms you can understand, for a purpose. I know you know every line and scene in the MATRIX film, and that you understand what all the many details mean, and all I’m doing is comparing what I know you know, with what I think you probably don’t know.
READY YET?
Something drew you to this site. If you’ve been reading through the episodes, something is telling you to keep going. At the bottom of every episode I’ve been giving you a choice, either to go on to the next episode or to select “I’M READY NOW.” This episode (“Contingency Plans”) is the one you need to read and understand and act on. It’s the one that’ll show you what you must do if you are, “ready now”.
I’ve called this episode “Contingency Plans”, because I need to remind you that you need to have a contingency plan just in case we can’t go on with the routine “business as usual.” By this I mean I, could probably drag on this series of analogies for the next few weeks. But I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to inform you. To convince you. To help you escape. To get you to unplug.
The reason I’m being so straight-forward is because I’ve been trying to post this blog for a week and have just been overrun by distractions. Most of these distractions have come from people wanting to argue about the Bible, about Christendom, about philosophy, about religion, about atheism, about evolution vs. creationism. There’s nothing the devil likes better than a good argument. He especially loves intellectuals who want to debate why they think atheism is now all the rage. Atheism is now so cool—it’s “the thinking man’s religion”. Frankly, I’ve heard all the arguments. I was an atheist. I had good reason to be an atheist: because most religious people were crazy. They were always pretending they had all the answers, but could never give me any when I asked them. I’ve since found out that most churchgoers are sponges for stories out of the Bible, they love to sing and wave their hands and attend services, but only one out of a hundred are even aware that the people all around them are LOST.
SEEKING LOST SEEKERS
What’s it mean to be lost? There’s actually two aspects of this and they’re both valid. Jesus said, “I am come to seek and to save that which was lost.” [Luke 19:10] There’s two principal meanings to the term lost.
One, in the sense of “lost your way”, like in the woods or in a labyrinth. The other in the sense of “we’ve lost him”— what we say when a man dies despite every attempt to revive him. In this sense we are saying, “he’s dead, there’s nothing more we can do to bring him back”— his life is OVER.
When as a Christian I say that most of the people around me are lost, I’m saying both simultaneously. They are lost in the sense that they don’t know where they’re going, and lost in the sense that they are already as good as dead.
People who don’t know the Bible can’t understand this. They think that as long as they have their wits about them and are still breathing, they are in control and in no danger and certainly not “as good as dead.”.
That’s why I like the MATRIX so much. It’s the first movie to show how that having your wits about you and still being able to breath isn’t enough. The people plugged into the MATRIX, lying in their pods, have their wits about them in the sense that they think they are experiencing and interacting in “the real world”. But they’re not. They’re in an artificial reality, being manipulated by forces beyond their understanding and beyond their control. There is absolutely nothing they can do with their brains to either analyze their situation, understand their situation, or fight their way out of the prison they are in.
What’s it like to be “free” in a reality that is carefully manipulated to keep you from the truth?
What’s it like to suspect there are answers but never being able to find any? In this world, we are given so much opportunity to exercise our free will and analyze our situation, and this intellectual search for truth is so wonderful, so stimulating— but in the end, after years of searching, what do you really know for sure?
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.
There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.
The Logical Song; Roger Hodgson/ Supertramp: Breakfast in America/released on 29 March 1979 by A&M Records [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHOpYmVcPT0]
CAN YOU TELL ME WHO I AM?
“I know it sounds absurd, but please tell me who I am.” How can a person really know WHO THEY ARE without knowing where they came from, where they are NOW, why they are here, what is the purpose of life and reality? These are the questions that are never answered and are indefinitely deferred. When I started high school I asked these questions, and after a half dozen philosophy courses in university I discovered the ultimate answer is that “life is what you make it. You have to find your own purpose for life.”
This is such a cop-out. This is saying that the UNIVERSE, the reality in which you are now living (what Jon Anderson of YES describes as “sad creature nailed upon the cupboard door of time”)[1] has no ultimate communal or universal purpose, that all individual human beings have to make up their own purpose. Folks, that’s philosophical bankruptcy.
Even the SF movie the MATRIX has more honour than that! The Wachowskis are not expecting you to decide what their movie is about. ( I have a woman friend who after she saw the MATRIX for the first time said, “Wow there was a lot of action there, but not a lot of plot.” Did she ever miss the point!) The movie has a PURPOSE. How can a Hollywood movie have a PURPOSE and yet all of reality, the UNIVERSE ITSELF, not have an overarching purpose?
You see, the philosophers have hijacked the world. They have put people to sleep and are feeding them doubletalk. The System itself seems to be designed to put you to sleep and keep you asleep.[2]
WAKE UP!
Now take another perspective, the Bible perspective. The Bible doesn’t tell you to “smarten up”, it tells you to WAKE UP! This is a one-time event (not a lifetime of studying philosophy) . The Bible is offering you a “contingency plan”. Go ahead and fill your head with all that philosophy if you insist. But remember, you are resting your SOUL on hopes that one of these ideas might be true. My strategy is to always have a contingency plan. Find another way OUT. Check out the Bible. Surely all those different philosophies can’t all be right. What if they’re all wrong? So just in case, even if the Bible’s wrong, what have you got to lose…it’s still smarter to try it than to not try it!
But remember the System has a heavy bias against the Bible, and you’ve probably been taught this bias since you were a kid. So try for a moment to get the bias the System teaches about the Bible out of your head. The things critics and sceptics say about the Bible are as far off the mark as critics of the Matrix who say “The violence is excessive, and the action unbelievable. People can’t really move that fast, or jump over buildings.” Critics of the Bible most often haven’t even read the book in context, they don’t understand it, yet they pretend to be experts!
You’ve got to see the framework of the Bible. The Bible was written by the Creator to warn all his creatures that Earth, and LIFE, and the Universe, all have one over-arching purpose. The Creator has given us all a lifetime to decide which we prefer— good or evil. As I’ve shown you in previous episodes, we are all sinners, naturally BENT towards evil. Our sinful nature holds us prisoner, and our enemy Satan uses us to his advantage as pawns in his war against God. So we are double prisoners. If we die in this condition, we will be resurrected to stand before God and have to account for our choices while we were alive. (Never heard this? No wonder! Keeping you in the dark is all part of the plan.) The ultimate result of this judgment will be a second death. The Bible calls it hell, (which could probably be better understood if we suggested hell is LIKE “beyond the event horizon.”) In any case, it is eternal cognizant existence without God, without people, without purpose. Nothing in the Universe could be worse!
ALREADY AS GOOD AS DEAD
The Bible wasn’t sent to condemn you. Those of us trying to warn you are trying to wake you up to save you, not condemn you. Ephesians 5:14 says, “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” What this means is that unless you ACT, you are already as good as dead. Christ is giving you LIGHT by sending you this warning. God is not out to destroy you, to torture you, to make your life miserable, he is out to rescue you from death.
All of my readers will know this verse because it’s the most popular and well known Bible verse in the whole world: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” [John3:16]
What this means is that God sent his son Jesus Christ into this world to die on a cross to pay your sin debt, so that you don’t have to die, so that you can have eternal life.
But look at the next five verses to gain a better understanding of how this works:
JohN 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
JohN 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
JohN 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
JohN 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
JohN 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
These verses say that the Bible’s not sent to CONDEMN YOU TO DEATH, it’s sent to warn you so you can escape death! Anybody who admits they are a sinner and who calls on Jesus Christ to save them from their sin debt, will be saved from death.
And why would anybody not want to hear this truth? Because the sin nature (which loves darkness) and the devil (who loves darkness) are our enemies. They keep us feeding on sin, mesmerized by the “fun” that sin offers, keep us crawling around in the darkness, rather than following the light.
In the terms of the MATRIX, Neo followed the splinter in his mind, which is the “light” that God shines into every living human soul. This light leads to the truth, to our “unplugging” from the artificial reality of “this” world. In the terms of the Bible, this light leads us to eternal life, to a new understanding of the universe, to a new freedom, to a whole new “life”. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Want to unplug from this artificial world? Follow the light!
“You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.”
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I’M NOW READY TO MEET…SHOW ME HOW
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Footnotes
[1] “And You And I”/YES/ Jon Anderson/ All the LYRICS sites say “colored door of time” but this MUST be a misheard lyric, as the metaphor doesn’t make sense. The idea of being hung up in a cupboard and forgotten is exactly our situation in a Universe without purpose. YES lyrics are property and copyright of their owners.”And You And I” lyrics provided for educational purposes and personal use only. [youtube=http://youtu.be/H-rdL2KkvzY?t=5m47s]
[2] “Comfortably Numb”/ PINK FLOYD/ Roger Waters/Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd., Pink Floyd Music Publr. Inc., Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd., Artemis Muziekuitgeverij B.V., Pink Floyd Music Publisher. PINK FLOYD lyrics are property and copyright of their owners. “Comfortably Numb” lyrics provided for educational purposes and personal use only. The LYRICs include these lines:
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb.
WHAT DREAM? May I make a suggestion? The dream that somehow reality has some overarching ultimate purpose. That maybe one day some Speaker will come to the podium to say, “Today is the day of reconciliation! Your many years of study and hard work are about to pay off. THIS IS THE DAY YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! Let me introduce to you the Creator of this whole Universe, who will speak on “WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF REALITY?” Roger Waters is simply saying, “We are now told there is no Speaker. There will be no speech. Go on home, we have nothing more to say.” THE DREAM IS GONE. You see, the beauty of a dream is the hope that it will one day come true. When we were children, we caught a glimpse of what I call “Premonitions of Eternity”… now we are told, “Aw, GROW UP! Only children believe the story has a happy ending!” After a lifetime of intimations that there’s a glorious purpose (a genuine happy ending) we’re supposed to believe, “There is no WRITER. There is no story. There is no glorious end to the story. It’s all up to YOU.” This is completely opposite of what is taught in the BIBLE… the Bible teaches the CREATOR has a marvelous plan for everybody, for the whole Creation. [Check out 1 Corinthians 2:9]