Worthless pursuits - Worthless dreams
Every few months my husband has to watch the movie "The Matrix". It is almost a compulsion as he tries, yet again, to make sense of it. It's a fictional story about a man living in a false worldMorpheus: ...Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix.
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
Neo: Yes.
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.
Morpheus looks out a high rise window and points out to Neo the people far below. He says something like: "Look at them., Most people go about their daily existence totally oblivious to the truth; and pacified by this fantasy, they have no desire for the truth."
The bondage we are born into is sin. The real world, the one most people are oblivious to is the world of Grace. We live in a supernatural world inhabited not only by ourselves, but also with angels and demons.
People of our age have been seduced by the fantasy world that is provided by the film and television media, to the point that they are no longer able to separate reality from fantasy. This is most noticeable in our young people who watch the violence, murders, theft and total disregard for others that is portrayed in many films and TV programmes these days... and then go out and emulate their role models. Then they are stunned when they realise that in the real world there are consequences for their actions, and they will be held accountable.
Sure, a villain is caught, shot or sent to prison in the movies or shows, but in a few week, there he or she is playing a different part.
Morpheus : "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is...you have to see it for yourself."
St. Paul: "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them." (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Jesus said of His disciples: "...they are still in the world...but they are not of the world, even as I am not of it." (see John 17:6-18)
Worthless Pursuits
So many young people today are disenchanted with their lives and the futility they feel when they consider the future. They are experiencing that emptiness inside themselves and are trying to fill it with things that will fail to satisfy them: sex - drugs - alcohol - fame etc.. Unfortunately that hole is God-shaped and can be filled with nothing less. As St Augustine of Hippo said: ""You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."