A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than steak with someone you hate. -Proverbs 15:17 (NLT)
In the 1999 film The Matrix, it’s revealed to the viewer that the world we live in is an illusion…a lie. The world isn’t how our fooled eyes see it at all, but only those who’ve been awakened from their induced slumber would ever know…and see the world for how terrible the world really is.
At the same time, however, our knowledge of the actual world and how it functions lets us operate in truth, and do our best to awaken others as well. Some, however, would prefer to deny the truth and live the lie.
In The Matrix, Cypher, one of the awakened people re-enters the Matrix and chooses to side with enemy agents. Much like how the Pharisees paid Judas thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, the enemy agents promise Cypher the luxuries of the Matrix (fame, importance, no memory of past pain) to betray his awakened brethren. Cypher enjoys a succulent steak at a fine restaurant with the agents, but acknowledges that it’s not real…and that he doesn’t care, and prefers it to the hard realities of the real world.
As a thinly veiled allegory for our own world, the Matrix is a shiny but hollow lie. Once we’re awakened to the truth of the world, and who its ruler is (Satan), we cannot side with it…revel in it…chase its false idols (money and material things). We pursue God. Live in the truth, because He carries us here in this world, and is the only way to the next!
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