“There is no spoon”

There’s something about The Matrix that just encourages me every time I watch it. I watched the film again the other day and was reminded of how there is more to this world than what our senses perceive. Also, we, as human beings are more than we appear to be. As Yoda so eloquently put it to Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. C.S. Lewis agrees, and says in his essay The Weight of Glory that, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

In The Matrix, the people were so distracted with the reality that the machines had constructed that they did not pay any attention to the thought "like a splinter in their mind" that said that something isn’t right. It is the same way in our own world. We are so consumed with the comforts and concerns of this world that we are enslaved to them. We long for a savior but see no relief in sight. Luke Skywalker had the same problem. He saw the condition of his X-wing fighter, and how stuck it was, and upon failing to free the aircraft from the swamp he complained that it was too big, and that Yoda demanded the impossible. And as Luke stomps off to pout, Yoda, focusing on the size of The Force rather than the size of the problem, manages to lift the X-wing completely from its watery prison. Neo also must learn that he must walk the path. He knows that he can free Morpheous but he doesn’t know why or how, he just knows he can. What if we focused on the size of our God, rather than the size of our circumstances?

Too often we humans, image bearers of God, given an immortal soul to live in communion with God or in separation from God, in seeking for the truth often say, “God, give me a sign that you’re real.” Then when he doesn’t deliver we say, “I knew it was all a lie” or “God has abandoned me.” But that isn’t it at all. The truth is that God knows that even if he were to provide some sign the heart that asks for a sign would not be willing to accept it anyway. Much like the Pharisees of Jesus day who watched Jesus heal the lame, restore sight, and free people from demon possession, and after all of this still asked Jesus to provide proof of the authority by which he performed these miracles. We delude ourselves into thinking that as long as we considered the idea of God, we have done all that we can do. Instead, God asks us to surrender to Him, to show Him that we are willing to trust Him and submit to Him, before He will show us His wonders.

God wants us to know Him, and He wants to show us more of Him and who He is but He also wants us to get the full effect which is only accomplished when our hearts are receptive to what He has to show us, not when we are skeptical of His existence to begin with. He wants to show us the world that Neo found, without rules or roads, borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible…because He is the God of the impossible. But first we must realize the lesson of the spoon; if the world is going to change, the change must begin with me.