“This 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. 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.” (This line is spoken by Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, in The Matrix (1999), directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski (1999).)
Your story begins at the beginning. At the beginning, we were made and lived in reality, knowing the truth and living with meaning and purpose and then…
Our first father listened to the lie. Beelzebul promised them more. He and she were told that there was a better world, an alternative truth, a place where there were no longer constraints, a world where we were free…a new “reality”
They believed the lie. They took the blue pill, entrapped in mortality and chained to failure. Their world became dark and grim. Life was not better, free and happy; but “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, Leviathan). They were trapped and so are we, born into a Matrix that enslaves us, longing for the freedom, meaning, security and purpose before our father took the blue pill.
We are born in the Matrix and told that we are free to create our own future, find our own meaning and purpose. We are trapped in corruption, failure and mortality. “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order” (David Gerrold).
Then, Yeshua came to save us from the Matrix, to return us to the real world, a world that overcomes death, failure, corruption and bondage. We are invited to come, take His name in Baptism, die with Him that we might be raised in newness of life.
Rom 6:3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for the one who has died is freed from sin.
In baptism, we are new creatures. We are restored to the reality of the world God made and to our true identities. We are new creatures in Christ.
2 Cor 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
We have been called out of our darkness, the shadow of our Matrix.
1 Pet 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
We have been restored as sons and daughters of God in Christ. We are all one in Christ.
Gal 3:26 For you are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
We do not end in death but everlasting life in Christ, living even today lives of purpose and meaning.
1 Jn 3:1See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are. For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
We are failures and corrupt and remain flawed and broken but we are forgiven and being renewed.
Reality is being a disciple, a follower of Christ, baptized in His name and commanded to advance His kingdom, helping to free others from the matrix of sin and death is reality. The real world is not the Matrix of sin and death but the promise and hope of victory for His Kingdom and His promise to us of everlasting life.