The Red Pill Life

The Matrix – A story about a man named Thomas Anderson who to the computer hacker world is known as “Neo”. Neo has this nagging, pressing feeling that there has got to be more to life than just the day-in, day-out routine of work, eat, sleep. But he doesn’t know what that something more is. Neo's search for answers leads him to find a man named Morpheus who, it turns out, has actually been searching for Neo for years.

Morpheus offers to show Neo the truth about this life he has been living. The truth is that Neo and everyone else in the world he knows has been born a slave to a prison that cannot be seen, heard or touched. Unfortunately, this truth is something that cannot simply be told about, it must be experienced first-hand. The choice to follow this path toward enlightenment would begin with a decision to take a blue pill and turn down the opportunity to experience truth or take a red pill and like Alice in Wonderland "see how far the rabbit hole goes".

Neo chooses the red pill and learns that everyone is living a false existence that is fed to their minds through a machine that harvests humans so that robots can feed off of the power that their bodies naturally produce. The reality is terrifying and hard to accept. But even more terrifying is the thought that there are still billions of people trapped in this machine-driven life. It is a life without any real worth or value. It is devoid of any real meaning or hope.

Like Neo and Morpheus we, as Christians, have made an important decision to follow after the Truth of Jesus Christ. It is our Red Pill Life. But many tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of professing Christians have not come to the reality that just as Neo can never go back to the machine-driven world he once lived in, we too were never meant to return to the old sin and self-driven life. Sadly many Christians return to the old life monthly, weekly, or for moments if even only in their thought life. By doing so, you reduce the choice for Christ to a one-time decision instead of a life-long commitment to deny yourself and this world and become more like Him. There is nothing in the old life of sin and self that we need as Christians.

The Apostle Paul told the church in Phillipi that He counted all the things of his former life, bad or good, as heaps of smelly, disease-ridden garbage compared to the everlasting greatness of personally knowing and experiencing the Life of Christ. He counted all the suffering he went through in this new life as a wonderful God gifted privilege! How? He believed with everything that he was, that the daily experience of the true life, resurrection life, was only possible by first passing through death to himself from day to day.

Paul would openly admit that this concept of dying to live was a mystery to him. He didn't completely understand all the aspects or details of this new reality but that would not stop him from continually living a life of self-denial. One thing he did know with extreme certainty - there was nothing in the old life that he missed or would ever go back to. There was absolutely no going back for Paul.

We too leave behind a world that seeks to destroy us without regret. We must remain obedient to the call on our lives to serve the Kingdom of God alone. We should resolve to preach the Cross of Christ to those who are still lost in the world. And we keep our eyes fixed on our Master, our Savior, our Jesus and continually follow him down the Calvary road so that one day, like Paul, we too will be called heavenward to be with our God. There is no turning back and no going back for us.

You’ve taken the Red Pill. It’s now up to you. Do you live like you’re being forever changed by that decision or do you pretend like that one decision was good enough? The Holy Spirit abiding in you is a promise that all of Heaven has been poured out on you through Christ and Heaven will one day be ready to receive you. Will you allow the Holy Spirit to complete the work in you that it started the day you made the decision to serve God or will you deny it’s power? I say we see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Let’s sink into the death of Christ and allow ourselves to be forever changed by His Life.