Will You Take the Blue Pill or the Red Pill?

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

I’ve been giving the subject of community and church a lot of consideration recently. I’ve basically been considering the whole concept of community in relation to Christians. I intend to publish some blog entries about this soon. For now, I’d like to share an analogy which I thought of today. This analogy is based on the film The Matrix (1999) – so it won’t make much sense unless you’ve seen the film.

The Blue Pill

The typical church-going Christian is like a person who has taken the blue pill. He drifts along in an illusory world, feeling as if he’s going somewhere and that things will all work out well…someday. But in actual fact, he is just being duped by the system, which actually has him brainwashed to believe that the world in which he lives is real – when it is not.

In church, the blue-pill Christian claps his hands in delight in response to being told to go-all-out-for-God and other such challenges. Little does he realise that Christianity is not about being “challenged” or being told to keep rules – Christianity is all about being persuaded of God’s love for the believer in Christ.

Blue-pill Christian gets all excited when the pastor preaches that he will reap a harvest if he sows his finances in the right soil (which is his church); he laughs at all the pastor’s jokes – even though he’s heard them time and time again; he pretends that he really likes the people who meets and greets in church – oblivious the fact that, to be honest, he really can’t stand them; he is willing to commit to roles and duties in church that he simply cannot stand – anything to simply fit in with the crowd and to not draw attention to himself, in the wrong way.

Taking the blue pill causes a Christian to get all excited when a Televangelist announces his or her latest book or CD offer; he simply must buy the latest Joyce Meyer or John Bevere book which gives a mixture of grace and law, which simply leads to frustration, guilt and wasted time and effort.

Mr. Blue Pill just assumes that all is well in his world and that his efforts are actually making a difference to the unreal world in which he finds himself. Little does he know that his efforts are getting him nowhere and he is just drifting along with a belief system which is actually poisoning his life.

The Red Pill

When a believer takes the red pill – he is suddenly shaken free from his comfort zone and thrust into an unknown and somewhat scary new existence. He does not know what will happen next - but it is exciting, fresh, invigorating, new and full of potential. He decides that he would rather forfeit his right to exist in a comfort zone and drift along with the status quo – than to be denied the truth.

Truth becomes more important to him than a cosy exist of conformity to the accepted norms; even if it means disrupting the world that he has known all his life; even if it means questioning all the concepts that he has been told are true most of his life; even if it means losing the friendship and support of those people who he has known for years and considered to be close to; even if it means falling out with his own family.

If you take the red pill of truth you don’t always know what will happen. The message of grace seems to be the latest chapter in the great Book of Life – in which we all play a part. Taking the red pill can cause you to draw unwanted attention and criticism to yourself from believers you once had an accord with.

The red pill will not necessarily give you a super-duper anointing which will bring peace showering down from heaven so that everyone around you likes you – neither will it draw to you instantaneous riches and fame.

When you take the red pill your eyes might hurt – because you’ve never used them before. When you live in an illusory Christian world – you give away your power to other people, and therefore, your own powers of discernment diminish.

Taking the red pill will not guarantee and easy life – but it will invite the truth and it will allow you to live in the real world and to live in integrity.