Spoilers Ahead!
The Matrix is a science fiction film that debuted in 1999 starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving. It was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers (now the Wachowski siblings). It won Academy Awards for best film editing, best sound, best sound effects editing, and best visual effects, all while competing with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Watching it again, I believe the film holds up very well. The action is riveting, the suspense is intense, the philosophical musings are rather deep and intriguing, and in all its cyberpunk glory it remains cool and edgy. And like any good science fiction dystopia, it is thought provoking and warns us against our own hubris.
It is hard to believe that it was 26 years ago that I went to see this movie with my unchurched cousin. We came out of the movie theater, and I exclaimed, “Wow, that was an a rather interesting movie – a real Christian allegory!” My cousin looked dismayed, “Did we even watch the same movie?!? What on earth are you talking about?”
Parallels between The Matrix and Christianity
After discussing with my cousin, I made the following main points to prove that The Matrix contained elements of Christian allegory:
- Neo, the main character (Thomas Anderson), is a Messiah type figure expected to free the people from the Matrix, like Christ who comes to save people from sin and oppression.
- Neo’s coming is predicted by the Oracle, like Isaiah, and proclaimed by Morpheus, like John the Baptist, who proclaims the coming of the Lord.
- Neo works with a team of followers, like Christ and His disciples.
- Neo is betrayed by one of his followers, like Christ who is betrayed by Judas.
- Neo must die and rise again to fully save people from the Matrix, like Christ who dies on the cross and then rises on the third day.
- Neo must re-enter the Matrix, destroy the agents, and dismantle the Matrix, like Christ and the harrowing of hell where all the righteous are freed from their captivity.
In the end my cousin agreed that I made my case.
It is interesting that despite this Christian allegory, The Matrix went on to be a cult classic. Thomas Anderson, whose hacker name is Neo, is a type of Christ-figure. He is contacted by Morpheus, a type of John the Baptist, who faithfully insists that Neo is the “One” who will free humanity from the Matrix. As it turns out, most of humanity unwittingly lives in a virtual reality. While their bodies are hooked up to machines, their minds believe they are living ordinary lives.
The choice
Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills, one blue, the other red. If he chooses the blue pill, he will stay in the Matrix and never know the difference. If he chooses the red pill, he will discover the truth about reality.
Thomas chooses the red pill and learns that the world he knows is a computer-generated illusion. He was actually never born; instead, like most of humanity, he was “grown” by machines in a chilling techno hellscape worthy of Dante’s Inferno. His escape from the machinery is a kind of baptism into the real but dismal world where the remaining humans wage a continuous battle against the ruling machines. The “One” is meant to free all the people who are being held captive in this false virtual reality world of the Matrix.
Like Christ, Neo is assisted by a group of “disciples.” As well as Morpheus, we encounter a team of freedom fighters and computer geniuses including Trinity, Tank, Apoc, Switch, Dozer, Mouse, and Cypher. One of them, however, turns out to be a Judas who betrays Neo and the entire team. He decides that he’s tired of the constant dreary life filled with pain and suffering and so he makes a deal with the “agents” to live in the Matrix.
The agents patrol the Matrix, and they are like demons, led by Mr. Smith, who wants to destroy Neo and his followers. It is their job to keep humanity blissfully unaware of their enslavement. We also encounter the mysterious Oracle who, like the Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, foretells the coming of the Messiah.
Just when you believe that Neo has destroyed Smith, Smith returns and kills Neo. When Trinity confesses her love for Neo, he resurrects with new abilities that allow him to see the Matrix for what it is, at the coding level, and he can easily destroy Smith and the other agents. The people are now freed from the Matrix, and they must discover the real world full of endless possibilities.
Parallels between The Matrix and Gnosticism
Upon further analysis I discovered that The Matrix’s Christian messaging owed a great deal to Gnostic Christianity rather than orthodox Christianity alone. Gnostic ideas existed before the emergence of Christianity but took a new form in the 2nd century once merged with the new Christian religion. There were several Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas that were rejected by orthodox Christianity very early on.
Although there are varying views, in general Gnosticism teaches that the material world is bad and created by an evil god, a Demiurge. For Gnostics, the Demiurge is the god of the Old Testament. Christ is a purely spiritual god who comes to bring knowledge to humanity. With that knowledge, people can escape their evil material bodies and ascend to the purely spiritual world. This is a variant of the same heresy, Manicheism, that St. Augustine battled in the 3rd century.
The fact, however, that a 2nd and 3rd century heresy about a false world created by an evil god could have any relevance to the 21st century is rather startling. We learn in The Matrix that the machines were first created as A.I. (artificial intelligence – didn’t realize that term was being used in 1999!) and then became sentient. Eventually the machines learned they could harvest human beings as an energy source to stay alive. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this film predicts a great deal and provides a warning to all of us. When we allow technology to be our god, we lose our humanity.
The agents really play the part of modern demons. They are sentient programs with supernatural powers. They protect the Matrix to keep humans enslaved, used, and objectified thus maintaining their own existence as they prepare to replace humanity.
Agent Smith compares humanity to a disease, a virus, and a cancer. Ironically, most humans would rather stay in the Matrix, like Cypher, and remain enslaved and disconnected from their real bodies to enjoy the illusion of pleasure. Like most of us today, they would rather avoid hardship and suffering, cling to our comforts and our addictions, than experience real freedom.
In the end it is Neo’s willingness to die inspired by faith, hope and love that leads him to save Morpheus and confront Agent Smith. It is Trinity’s love that brings about Neo’s resurrection. And as the Chosen One he now sees the coding in the Matrix and transcends the illusion and easily defeats the agents.
Although there are Gnostic and Buddhist elements, there are many parallels to the Christian story. Classic Christianity teaches that salvation is living a truly embodied existence, not an artificial one, despite the possibility of pain and suffering. Even though they will have to rebuild a society, a planet really, ravaged by war and destruction, they choose real life, and real love, over an illusion.
What about The Matrix and parts work?
Neo can be seen as the inmost self – the core or true self – the spiritual center who, like the unregenerated nous, is initially living in darkness. Once he recognizes the truth that the “world” he knows is in reality false, then he begins a journey to accept the new reality and its implications. Eventually Neo also accepts his new role to lead the system to freedom. Our inmost self is often darkened and blended with burdened parts. We must recognize the truth that our parts carry with them wounds and false beliefs. The inmost self must emerge out of the darkness and be reborn to accept its roles as healer and leader, with Christ’s help, of the whole self-system.
In Christian ascetism, especially in the expression of the early Desert Fathers, there is an attempt to leave the sinful world of passions, both the actual secular world and the inner life consumed with sin, to become detached, dis-passionate, and a-pathetic. This detachment is positive because it is a move away from being controlled by disordered passions and facilitate the freedom to truly choose love.
In leaving the cities, the Desert Fathers, like Neo and his followers leaving the Matrix, left the perceived safety of the city and faced the sometimes-harsh realities of their inner and outer worlds. Once they overcame their passions, they experienced tremendous physical and emotional freedom. In a similar way, life outside the Matrix is not easier, in fact it involves facing the realities of a dystopian post-apocalyptic life, but it also involves freedom from enslavement, honest love, and the possibility of restoring truth and goodness.
In contrast, Cypher is a firefighter part ruled by his passions; he would rather live in a prison world with his juicy but make-believe steak than continue the arduous fight for freedom. He would rather stay exiled, stay numbed, stay disconnected than grow in virtue. To be fair, we have parts like this. We would rather stay disconnected from others with our sports, our video games, our phones, our tv shows, and our many addictions. We often prefer fantasy to the reality of the world. We have lost touch with true beauty, perhaps because we have been traumatized by the ugliness of the world. Perhaps we can all relate to Cypher, not in his complete betrayal, but in his weariness and his longing to escape suffering.
We may also have pure and innocent manager parts like Tank and his brother. They were rare, born in the natural way, not grown in the Matrix. Tank retains a purity of heart and despite his wound, he comes back to defeat Cypher. He is the duty-bound and heroic manager who is skilled and dedicated, fearless, loyal, and compassionate.
Morpheus is the leader of the resistance. He is a skilled manager part, but also an idealistic and fierce visionary. He is a man of faith, and he believes in Neo even when Neo does not believe in himself. He is willing to sacrifice himself for the cause.
Redemption analogy
Trinity is interesting. She is also a strong manager part, skilled, and effective. She has a somewhat androgynous appearance and a stoic exterior, which makes her unlike a typical female archetype, and yet her beauty is not obscured. When she is free to express her love, it is powerful, redemptive, and life-giving. Like the Holy Trinity, which is Love, her love is transformative. Without that love the story would have had a very tragic ending. So maybe she’s more than a part… perhaps she represents a kind of grace, a love of God, and a connection with the divine. In any case, the union of Neo and Trinity destroys the Matrix and allows for something new, a new Kingdom perhaps, or at least a new beginning.
Once the love of Trinity resurrects him, Neo who represents the inmost self, is no longer darkened, and no parts are blended. He is fully alive, fully connected, fully confident, and fully present. He unequivocally discovers his true identity, and the prison world has no hold on him. Once he accepts the fake world’s false-ness, he transcends it in his mind, and he can no longer be killed even by bullets while in the Matrix. He is transfigured.
From a parts perspective then, The Matrix is the story of the redemption of the self-system from the enslavement of the world. It is the re-discovery of the inmost self, the recovery of the parts, despite some betrayal and loss, to bring about a greater restoration. It is not only the self-system that is saved, but the larger system, the cosmos itself, which escapes the enslavement of the machines. In the same way, we are called to our own inner healing and recovery while also being called to build a Kingdom of love, a transfiguration of the world itself.
Dr. Gerry Crete is the author of Litanies of the Heart: Relieving Post-traumatic Stress and Calming Anxiety Through Healing Our Parts which is published by Sophia Institute Press. He is the founder of Transfiguration Counseling and Coaching, Transfiguration Life, and co-founder of Souls and Hearts. Check out all Dr. Gerry’s movie and TV series reviews in our “Parting Thoughts” archive.
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Resources at Souls and Hearts
Are you looking to understand some topic in human formation or psychology from a parts and systems perspective, grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person? Check out Souls and Hearts’ resource page, where we index much of our context in alphabetical order by subject matter.
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Check out Souls and Hearts’ therapist list. All the therapist on this list are orthodox Catholics with some interest and background in Internal Family Systems.
Looking for attachment-informed prayers for Lent?
A few years ago, Dr. Gerry wrote the “Litanies of the Heart” – the Litany of the Closed Heart, the Litany of the Fearful Heart, and the Litany of the Wounded Heart. These prayers have moved thousands of hearts to a better place. Check them out on our litanies page – we have downloadable, printed, and audio versions available, and a free guide to praying these litanies. Large packs of printed litanies are available.
Just a little more room…
Abby Roos has three seats left in her Foundation Experiential Group, which starts on March 14, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Eastern time on Fridays – this group (max capacity is nine) is for formators (counselors, coaches, spiritual directors, priests, etc.) who want to work on their own human formation. Find out more about our Formation for Formators community and the Foundations Experiential Group here.
And a lot of room…
Our first Formation for Formators retreat will be at the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Bloomington, Indiana from August 11 to 14, 2025. Priests, spiritual directors, coaches, therapists, and other formators – any adult Catholic who individually accompanies others in their formation is welcome. More details and registration are here.
The Resilient Catholics Community
The RCC is now closed for new applications until June. You can get on our interest list for the St. Jerome cohort which will start registration on June 1 by visiting our RCC landing page.
Pray for us
Please pray for us at Souls and Hearts as we engage with the reality of our fallen human condition, especially in our human formation. No blue pill for us. And thank you for your prayers and support.