Those of you in my generation or older will understand this reference perhaps better than the younger folk: When the first Matrix movie with Keanu Reeves came out in 1999, there was a lot of talk about the Christ imagery contained in the film. Reeves plays Tom Anderson, also known as "Neo". He is rumored to be the chosen one. Near the end of the movie, Neo dies. Yet, after encouragement from his girlfriend, named interestingly, Trinity, he comes back to life. His "resurrection" and saving of his team are often what people point to with this Christ-imagery.
But there is something else I think worth noting. If you are unfamiliar with the Matrix movies, the premise of the series is that we are all living in a post-apocalypse world where machines have taken over. They use our bodies to fuel themselves, and so have harvesting fields full of human beings. However, the majority of people are unaware of what is happening because they are plugged into a very elaborate virtual reality system. They are asleep in the real world, living only in the virtual one.
Most people, even when their reality is challenged, prefer that reality to being awakened to what is real life. At one point, the machines explain how at first, they created a kind of utopian world, but the people kept rejecting it because it wasn’t believable. So, then they created a world that was flawed, with illness and violence and dying and all that stuff, and the people no longer questioned it. They settled. They accepted. They never questioned their reality.
Neo was different. He always felt like something was not right, but he didn't know what. There is a prophecy about the chosen one, and the human survivors living in the real world think Neo's it, so they go seeking him out. They tell him he'll have the answers he's looking for if he takes the red pill - but, once he does, he will never be able to go back to not knowing. His life will never be the same. He takes the pill, and it wakes him up to the real world. He wakes in a harvesting pod, naked, plugged into the machine's system. He breaks free and is "flushed" from the system, where the other survivors find him and rescue him. They want him to be the leader, but he struggles with his new reality.
Here's where I see a parallel. There's a phrase being tossed around quite a bit. It is thrown out often as an insult, though that wasn't the meaning of it initially. The phrase is "woke". What does it really mean?
Most people are probably unaware of where the phrase originated. Most white people, at least. The phrase originated in the 1930's in a song by Blues singer Lead Belly, encouraging the Black community to 'stay woke', meaning to be smart and alert to racism, in particular that of white versus black. It wasn't until the Black Lives Matter movement of the 2010s that this word became a broader description for being aware of systemic injustices and inequalities. Or, in other words: having your eyes open to the injustices around you and promoting social justice for all.
In this sense, I think all Christians should be "woke".
I consider myself woke. The things I have seen, the things I now know, I can’t unsee them, and I can’t unknow them. There is no going back to the virtual reality experience of living in the church world bubble. I "woke up" by engaging hands-on with immigrants, with refugees, with children and women who were victims of patriarchal and violent systems, and with other vulnerable, marginalized, and left-behind groups.
I can't unsee what I have seen.
The call to justice is written in blood from cover to cover in Scripture. God cries for the vulnerable, for the least of these, as we leave them behind. Jesus lived a life of social justice, aiding the most in need and loving the outcasts, even when criticized by the elite and religious. Even when taken to a cross.
My prayer as we face the next long four years, is that the Church in America will wake up. Wake up to the realities of their neighbors. Wake up to see the racism, the hatred, the oppression - and the church's implicit and complicit part in it. Wake up to realize how they've been led astray by promises of power and influence and protection, led astray to worship a false messiah and a flag over the real Messiah and a cross.
There are a lot of people still sleeping, who would rather believe the comfort of the lies than the truth. I don’t blame them in some ways. It’s probably more comfortable. It’s more familiar. And waking up to reality strips away everything we thought we knew about ourselves and the world and even God. It requires going through a deconstruction process of undoing all the lies and deceit, of taking an honest look at ourselves and at the Church. Then, building a new construct, a new worldview, one more aligned with Scripture and more challenging to live.
Take up my cross and follow me... sounds an awful lot like "take the red pill" and wake up to see.
Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Once you know it, you can't unknow it. There's no going back.
But there is moving forward.
The far right claim the "woke" are coming after them - or perhaps, after Christians. The progressives claim it is the far right we are coming after them - or, again, maybe it's the Christians. As someone who is Christian and woke, I feel as though nobody’s happy with me, lol. I don’t fit in anywhere. But I’m slowly finding my tribe. My people. It is comforting to know I’m not alone.
Because sometimes when you’re woke, you feel crazy. You feel crazy as you try to talk to people who are still sleeping and they look at you like you’re two-headed. It is also frustrating. Why can’t they see it?
I was speaking to someone the other day who told me she didn't believe racism still existed. That it was something from a long time ago that doesn't still affect people anymore. I told her that was a position speaking from privilege. Those who experience racism don't have the option of believing or hoping it doesn't still exist.
She's still sleeping.
What helps me have some grace - is remembering how I was asleep for a long time, too. It wasn't entirely my fault. It was the environment I was raised and the churches I attended. It was the culture around me and the voices which influenced me. I didn't know any different. It's not their fault, either, not entirely.
Waking up to the real world is hard. It's painful. It's a grieving process. It's a letting go of hopes and dreams and perceptions. It is not for the faint of heart.
But it's necessary, if we want to move forward as a Church.
I wish sometimes that I had woken up earlier. There are so many things I would go back and do differently. But that's not my story. This is where I am now.
I pray that my position as of having lived in both worlds will help me bridge the two.
Oh God, use me as a light to your Church. Use me as a Nathan in this time to help them wake and see you!
I don’t know if the church in Germany ever recovered after falling in line behind Hitler. I don’t think they did. The only way we will ever recover or experience revival is if we repent, falling on our faces before God, laying down our idols of greed and consumerism and comfort and privilege, turning back to Jesus, and remembering: we follow a cross, not a flag.
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