let's face it, Christianity is linear in how the story is typically told today by the conservatives. There is a beginning, there is an ending, and everything is about following the through-line and reaching the happy ending. Balance? there is no balance. The world was good and supposed to be that way; then the world turned bad, and we have to restore the world to good.
The Matrix is far more eastern, with its overriding deterministic elements, the continual recycling/rebirth concept, and the need for good and evil to balance since they are just part of the same whole.... although I still think it merges those elements with Christian-style elements such as sacrifice / giving up control / accepting one's fate out of faith, etc. There were still many things i could identify with, Christianity-wise, in the latter two.
I think there is a false dichotomy between balance oriented world view and linear oriented world views.
I don't understand why anyone would say that Christianity is not about balance. Not about evil/good balance sure, but the most central doctrine of Christianity is the trinity which teaches that God is actually three persons living in perfect harmony and balance with one another.
I don't think dualistic worldviews are necesarilly non-linear. Isn't the journey from unbalanced to balanced a linear one?
Ah, yes. The same reasoning that takes Jesus from saying "if you want to enter the Kingdom, sell all your possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Me" to meaning that Jesus has no problem with rich people, and that God materially rewards the faithful on Earth. Riiiiiiiiight.
This is really a gross mischaracterization. Nobody interprets that verse as supporting greed... but, many christians in their pursuit of wealth simply ignore it.
Jesus was speaking on a personal level. The point of that verse is not that people must give up their possessions, but that they must give up anything they treasure more than God. For the rich young ruler that was his possessions. But, this is no new concept since the very first commandment is that "you may not have any other gods before me."
Essentially, the logic goes something like this - "I'm a Christian. I like X. Christians like Christian things. Therefore, X is Christian."
I won't deny that this is often the case. But, the source of this view is Abraham Kuyper who believed there was an organic unity between between special (the bible) and general (all other observable truth) revelation.
Kuyper once famously said: "Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'
This was in opposition to Augustine and those that taught that there are two distinct worlds a kingdom of man and a kingdom of God. Kuyper has won out in contemporary evangelicalism and so Christians are constantly trying to find truth in the world that is in unity with the truth of their faith. It gives them a sense of wholeness when the world they live in matches up with the world they have faith in.
While I typically agree with that (and it's one reason why I don't have much issue with it, because I'm probably more gnostic in my leanings), there's a lot of pragmatic rubber-meets-road stuff in there. If there is anything evangelicals love, it is pithy, individual bits of concrete symbolism, so you get one guy telling Neo that he's his own "personal Jesus Christ," you get someone named Trinity bringing "Jesus" back to life, you get what amounts to demons (agents) body-hopping, the speeches about how the world is an illusion and there is a deeper reality, about how the world is against the Elect (who happen to be anchored in Zion) because they are of the world but it's not their fault... they're just blind... comments about "walking the walk and talking the talk," etc. The list is kind of endless, but it's actually all stuff I have heard within evangelical circles in sermons and conferences during my time there. So the movie sort of swiped a lot of language used in that modern Christian circle, which let it resonate with that group.
I find this to be largely true as well and obviously I'm an example of a Christian who likes to swipe small pithy statements and use them to further my argument. I never meant to defend the matrix as a thoroughly orthodox christian movie. If it was then it would probably have been thoroughly lame as lately Christians have been making really bad movies that are overtly about christianity.
I can't begin to tell you how many of the evangelical (not fundie, but evangelical + more liberal) churches have used this movie in study group settings. It was hip AND resonant.
Out of interest what would be evangelical + more liberal?
I'm not saying that evangelicals can't be liberal I'm just curious what this means to you since both terms are very difficult to nail down.
