Post 3: Redpill vs Bluepill or God and the Matrix

The Matrix is real! No really it is! Well kind of, but more on that later...

The other day I was thinking, as I am inclined to do from time to time, specifically about where I would be without God. In consideration of the fact that I know myself pretty well, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my life would be all about sex, drugs and rock n roll if not for God. First, I would have tried drugs in middle school (when I didn’t believe in God) had they been available to me, but fortunately they weren’t. Second, I am a man, and the inner recesses of a man’s brain are ugly at best and beyond disgusting at worst when it comes to sexuality and such. Suffice it to say my history would attest to this as well and I don’t feel the need to say any more on that. Lastly, the only thing that would motivate me to do anything would be music. I would not be in college. I would not care what my parents or anyone else said. I would be in constant search for the next high, whether it was going to come from sex, drugs, or rock n roll. That would be the extent of my existence.

To explain myself further, I am reading a book right now called Things Fall Apart in which there is a character called Unoka. Unoka is known in his village for being a flute player and a drunk. Whenever Unoka manages to acquire money, he always ends up squandering it on alcohol, so his life consists of drinking and making music. I won’t lie, my natural reaction to this is, “What’s so bad about that?” shortly thereafter I recognize the hollowness of that kind of existence and how that would be essentially living for nothing.

So then what is it about that lifestyle that has such appeal? Obviously any number of musicians live their lives this way, why? That life is easy, that’s why. You don’t really have to work at music if you know how to play well enough, the most musicians still do. I suppose I should take a moment to say that any music teacher would disagree with me here and say that you have to constantly be practicing and working on you craft but really, once a degree of competency is reached it can be retained and even slowly expanded upon with no more than leisurely practice and occasional performances. Thus living this life all one would have to do is play music, which they enjoy, and drink, which they also enjoy. There is no challenge (essentially) so it’s all play and no work. I won’t lie there is still some appeal there to me, so why don’t I do it? I love Jesus too much.

Most people would interject here with, “Wait, you could totally play music for God the rest of your life and that would honor him and be fantastic.” Except that’s not what he wants me to do. That life would bring surface level pleasure, my true joy however lies in learning to know and love my Padre better, why? Because it just keeps getting better. Right when I think God has shown me his glory in the most unimaginable way, in a way, which could never be beaten, he tops it! As the Beatles said, “It’s getting better all the time.” A week or so ago I found out my roommate Matt is quite the handyman and I told him, “You just keep getting better and better!” God is the same way but on an even grander scale.

Now I must return to why I am not a drunken musician and it has everything to do with the Matrix. To re-cap, God keeps getting better all the time; he keeps showing me new and greater love all the time. I know this very well, and, as my Mom says, there are some things you can’t “un-know” once you’ve learned them, now matter how badly you want to. You’re stuck with them the rest of your life. This knowledge is one of those things. Now we have arrived at the Matrix.

In the movie “The Matrix,” when Morpheus has his hands outstretched toward Neo with the blue pill in one hand and the red pill in the other he tells Neo he has a choice. Take the red pill, and be free, but you can never go back or take the blue pill, be none the wiser, and carry on with your mediocre (at best) life. This is, obviously, a tough decision, however, the thing is, even if he chooses the red pill, which he does, he still “can” go back if he wants to. All they would have to do is plug him back into the Matrix and leave him there till he died. The problem is that he would know there was something better out there and that is “the question that drives us mad;” what if I had chosen the better life, that’s why he could never go back.

Taking the red pill is just like choosing God, and just like choosing God it’s hard. He asks us to put his will first, to choose the red pill every time. I won’t pretend that every time God has asked me to do something I have listened. In my heart I am still an awful coward of a man who, despite being very out going, has a very hard time talking to people about God if they don’t know him already. For this I need to apologize both to believers and unbelievers. To believers I am sorry that I have not taken this love we know so well and told others about it. To those of you who may not believe in God right now I must apologize even more because there are a number of you who he has told me to talk to and I haven’t. He wants you to know he loves you, he love’s you enough to send a messenger to tell you that he is thinking about you and wants you back and wants to shower you with love, unfortunately, I killed the messenger, over and over again.

I am also sorry for any promises you may have heard about the ease of the believer’s life. Accepting God’s love is easy, the life that follows is not, but it is better. The life that follows is full of love and joy unimaginable. It is full of wonders in the mundane places but it is equally full of challenges but let me tell you from experience, it is better than being a drunken musician. I could never be happy as a drunken musician now because I would know that I was denying something far better.