Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-107 (General Information)

GOD-TALK AND ‘THE MATRIX’

by Terry Mattingly

The words of the scripture are clear: everything changes when someone is born again.

“Before his first or physical birth man was in the world of the matrix. He had no knowledge of this world; his eyes could not see; his ears could not hear. When he was born from the world of the matrix, he beheld another world,” wrote Abdul Baha, son of the Bahai prophet Baha’ullah, nearly a century ago. Truth is, “the majority of people are captives in the matrix of nature, submerged in the sea of materiality.”

When freed they gain a “transcendent power” and ascend to a higher kingdom.

Perhaps even to Zion.

Wait a minute. Does this mean that millions of moviegoers lining up at 8,400-plus theaters to see “The Matrix Reloaded” will witness the Bahai version of a Billy Graham movie? Or is this trilogy a door into a kung fu vigilante Buddhism?

Or is it some kind of neo-Christian parable?

The World Wide Web is jammed with sites offering precisely that spin. Isn’t Keanu Reeves playing a super-hacker called Neo, a messiah whose coming was foreseen by the prophets, a Christ figure that is reborn, baptized, murdered and resurrected? Isn’t his real name Thomas Anderson (Greek “andras” for man, thus “son of man”)? Doesn’t a character named Trinity save him?

Acolytes have compiled pages of similar references. Isn’t Neo’s teacher Morpheus a John the Baptist figure? Why is their ship called the Nebuchadnezzar? And it’s a “Mark III, no. 11.” Perhaps that is Mark 3:11, which says of Jesus: “Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ “

There will be plenty of fresh clues in “The Matrix Reloaded” and the upcoming “The Matrix Revolutions.” When it comes to spiritual goodies, this franchise that critics call the “R-rated Star Wars” has something to intrigue or infuriate everyone — from Hollywood to the Bible belt.

No one questions the impact of “The Matrix,” which grossed $170 million in the United States, $460 million worldwide and influenced countless movies, computer games, music videos and commercials. But the devotion of its true believers is revealed in another statistic. It was the first DVD to sell more than 1 million copies.

Meanwhile, Andy and Larry Wachowski have religiously avoided doing interviews that might dilute the mystery surrounding their movie.

But a fan in a Warner Home Video online chat session did mange to ask: “Your movie has many and varied connections to myths and philosophies, Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, Arthurian and Platonic, just to name those I’ve noticed. How much of that was intentional?”

To which the brothers replied: “All of it.” While calling their beliefs “nondenominational,” they did confirm that Buddhism plays a major role in “The Matrix.” When asked if their work was shaped by the ancient Christian heresy called Gnosticism, they cryptically replied: “Do you consider that to be a good thing?”

While the first film draws images and details from many conflicting traditions, its worldview is deeply rooted in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Gnosticism, according to Frances Flannery- Dailey of Hendrix College and Rachel Wagner of the University of Iowa. Clearly, the big idea is that humanity’s main problem is that it is “sleeping in ignorance in a dreamworld” and the solution is “waking to knowledge and enlightenment.”

Writing in the Journal of Religion and Film, they note that the Gnostic messiah brings salvation through a secret truth that lets believers wake up and escape the shabby reality that surrounds them. Through training in the discipline of “stillness,” this savior learns that what appears to be the real world is an illusion he can manipulate with his will. It’s a gospel of esoteric knowledge, not repentance and grace.

But Wagner and Flannery-Daily ask: Where are the Gnostic gods in “The Matrix”?

“Divinity may … play a role in Neo’s past incarnation and his coming again as the One. If, however, there is some implied divinity in the film, in remains transcendent, like the divinity of the ineffable, invisible supreme god of Gnosticism, except where it is immanent in the form of the divine spark in humans.”

God-talk after “The Matrix” —————————

Predicting the future is dangerous, especially when a world-be prophet puts her thoughts in writing.

But that’s what author Phyllis Tickle did two decades ago when she wrote: “Books are about to become the portable pastors of America.” That turned out to be true. Now, in light of “The Matrix,” she is updating that prophecy about how Americans talk about faith.

It helps to flashback to a statistical earthquake that rattled the book business.

In 1992 the company that dominates sales to libraries saw a stunning 92 percent rise in its religious trade. Then in 1994 religious sales by the giant Ingram Book Group soared 246 percent. In a few years this niche grew 500 percent, said Tickle, who has covered this trend for Publishers Weekly and in several of her two- dozen books.

The growth “was malignant,” she said. “Bookstore owners kept telling me people would vanish into that back corner where the religious shelves were and stay for hours. When they did that, you just knew they should have been going to see their pastors. But they weren’t doing that.”

These seekers didn’t buy into doctrines and denominations. They didn’t want “theology.” They wanted new ideas, images and spiritual stories. They wanted what Tickle began calling “God-talk” and millions started finding it with the help of cappuccino and Oprah.

And in 1999 everything changed again.

“When ‘The Matrix’ came out, it became the best treatise on God- talk that has ever been made,” said Tickle. “It could not have been done with a book. It could not have been done with words. … The primacy of place in creative, cutting-edge God-talk has shifted from non-fiction in the 1980s to fiction in the 1990s and now it is shifting again to the world of the visual, especially to the kinds of myths and stories we see in movies such as ‘The Matrix.’ We’re talking about the manipulation of theological fantasies and this is a natural fit for visual media.”

“Theology,” she said, is found in the world of doctrine, history, academic credentials and ecclesiastical authority. But “God-talk” thrives far from most pulpits. Its standards are flexible, evolving, user-defined and rooted in small communities. This is a true “democratization of theology,” she said, and can been seen as an extension of Protestantism’s division into thousands and thousands of independent denominations, movements and churches.

But God-talk leaders are more likely to work in popular media than in religious institutions. As creators of “The Matrix” trilogy, Andy and Larry Wachowski are touching millions of lives. The first film grossed $460 million worldwide and shaped countless movies, computer games, music videos and commercials. Now, “The Matrix Reloaded” — on a record 8,517 screens — topped $130 million at the box office in its first four days. “The Matrix Revolutions” hits in November.

Writing in the Journal of Religion and Film, James L. Ford of Wake Forest University argues that these films offer a powerful fusion of themes from Buddhism, clashing brands of Christianity, Greek mythology, cyber-culture and legions of other sources.

“It is impossible to know what narratives will become the foundation myths of our culture,” noted Ford, in his “Buddhism, Christianity and The Matrix” essay. “But epic films like The Matrix are the modern-day equivalent of The Iliad-Odyssey … or various biblical myths. Indeed, one might well argue that popular films like ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Star Wars’ carry more influence among young adults than the traditional religious myths of our culture.”

Tickle can trace this trend for decades, from the generic God of Alcoholics Anonymous to the nearly generic God of “Touched By An Angel,” from the rise of the self-help publishing industry to waves of immigration that brought the mysteries of Eastern religion to Hollywood.

Mainstream religious leaders can argue about the ultimate meaning of all this, she said. But they cannot ignore it.

“The Matrix” has “posited a new theological framework,” she said. “Now we have to find out the details. What is the primal cause for this world? Where is God? Who is God? Does what is going on in these films support or oppose a basic Judeo-Christian approach to morality? We don’t know the answers to these questions yet”

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Terry Mattingly (http://www.tmatt.net) teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.