No. 5: Matrix

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I have been thinking about the matrix lately. I am not talking here about the movie starring Keanu Reaves. What I am referring to is the ideological matrix from which our thoughts and ideas spring.

The word “matrix” literally means “womb.” It is taken from the Latin root “mater,” from which we derive such English words as maternity, maternal and mother. The Merriam Webster Dictionary tells us that the word “matrix” first appeared in 1555, and was employed to define a female animal used for breeding.

Have you ever considered that each of us possesses an ideological womb, an internal core of beliefs which feed our thoughts and ideas? Where do our ideas come from? What feeds them? This would be our internal, ideological matrix.

As Christians, we certainly desire for our ideological womb, our internal matrix, the seedbed of our thoughts and ideas, to be feeding our minds with Christian ideas. But the big question is whether or not our seedbed is complete.

Does our internal matrix favor the New Testament more than the Old? The gospels more than the epistles? Or do we have a fundamental understanding of the whole story—the big picture or the metanarrative as it is often called?

Is the metanarrative to which we subscribe bookended by Genesis and Revelation? Are we familiar not only with the creation story, but with the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph? Do we have an understanding of Moses, the Passover, the deliverance from Egypt, the forty-year wilderness wandering, and the impartation of the law? Can we make a connection between the wilderness tabernacle, the Levitical priesthood, and the ministry of Jesus Christ? What do we know about Samuel and David and Saul?

These are more than just wonderful Bible stories about individuals and their faith and failures. These stories and lives and imageries weave a tapestry, the whole picture, the metanarrative of God, His creation, and His purposes among men.

If we are casting about our lives with only a part of the story, only a minimal knowledge of the ministry of Christ from the Gospels, and we cannot see Him alive and at work throughout the Old Testament and indeed ALL of history, then our matrix is incomplete. Below are seven seeds that each of us should be cultivating in our ideological matrix-womb. Please examine them and consider how well your matrix-womb is seeded:

• The Inerrancy of Scripture
• A Creational View of Earth’s Origins
• The Trinitarian Nature of God
• The Moral Depravity of the Human Race
• The Covenantal and Sacrificial Love of God
• The Providence and Sovereignty of God
• The Holiness and Perfections of God