The Matrix

Released in 1999, the Matrix is a movie that tells the story of Neo, a computer hacker who is brought out of the Matrix, a computer simulation that mentally imprisons humanity to provide power for a race of machines. Only a few humans remain free and fight the Matrix. 

One of the amazing things we see in this movie is that until seen from the outside, virtually no one even begins to doubt that what they know as reality is not real.  This points us to our own blindness: we see this world from the perspective given to us by our culture, and we see nothing else. It is not until we are brought out of our culture that we can see the world from another perspective, and we then realize that there is more to see than we could even have imagined. We live life with a huge number of assumptions about how things work, what is possible or viable, and what is not. The Matrix shows us that these are only assumptions, and therefore may not be true. But as humans, it's most comfortable to simply live with these assumptions and not questions them. This is shown to us by the character Cypher who is willing to betray the rest of the resistance in order to be reintroduced to the Matrix, forget about everything else and once more live in a life of ignorance. But as shown by Neo and the resistance, we are called to see more than just the Matrix; we are called to see the Kingdom God has envisioned. Our purpose is therefore to be redeemed from the evil of accepting our blindness by questioning our assumptions, and then helping others to do the same.

This leads us to some important questions:

What assumptions do we have? This question is difficult because we most often need another perspective before we can even doubt our own; this is why help from others is important.

What can we do to provide ourselves some alternative perspectives?

What is the hidden cost of living without questioning our perspectives?