Remember That Steak in The Matrix?

Thoughts on missing the certainty we once enjoyed.

As an ex-pastor, Easter always reminds me of one scene in The Matrix.

(Yes, I am fully aware of how Gen X that sounds.)

The main character, Neo, discovers that the world he’s been living in—our world—is actually a computer-generated illusion. The real world is dark, broken, and painful, but it’s real. And once you know the truth, you can’t go back.

Unless…

Unless you’re like Cypher—one of the crew members who decides he wants out of the truth.

There’s a moment where he sits at a fancy restaurant inside the simulation, a glass of wine in one hand and a perfectly cooked steak in the other. He lifts the fork, takes a bite, and says:

“I know this steak doesn’t exist.
I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.
After nine years, you know what I realize?
Ignorance is bliss.”

And honestly?
I get it.

There are days when I miss the certainty.
The “everything happens for a reason.”
The “God has a plan.”
The clean lines and confident answers.
The illusion of safety that came with feeling like I was on the “right side of truth.”

Was it real? No.
Was it always good for me? Definitely not.
But it was comforting in the same way that Cypher’s steak was—warm, familiar, and easy to swallow.

Deconstruction is a gift.
But it’s a passage through chaos. It can be scary and uncertain.

Some days you miss the ease of belonging to a group that had all the answers.
Some days you long for the emotional security that came from believing someone up there was orchestrating every detail of your life.
Some days you just want to feel like it all makes sense again.

And that doesn’t mean you’re going backward.
It just means you’re human.

Here’s what I try to remember when those feelings creep in:

Certainty may feel good, but it rarely makes us good.

What makes us good—what helps us grow—is curiosity. Humility. Openness.
Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when the steak is fake and the answers aren’t easy.

At the beginning of The Matrix, Neo is offered two pills:
A blue one to go back to sleep, and a red one to see the truth—even if it’s hard.

Morpheus looks at him and says:

“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.”

He takes the red pill.

Most of us did too.
Not because we wanted pain.
But because, deep down, we knew we couldn’t keep living in a story that felt unstable and contrived. Especially if reality was out there somewhere to be experienced.

So yeah, some days I miss the certainty.

You likely do too.

It’s okay.

Because a good steak is fine and all…

But we don’t really want to go back to sleep.

P.S. It’s Holy Week as I’m posting this. Tomorrow is Good Friday, and Sunday is Easter. For some of us, that stirs up a weird mix of feelings—guilt, anxiety, relief, numbness. For others, it’s just another Sunday.

If you’re on the struggle bus a bit, maybe debating whether to go to church or not, I made a short video on my TikTok you might want to check out:

@deconstructedpastorAs a deconstructed Christian should I go to church on Easter? #deconstruction #exvangelical #easter #holyweek

Tiktok failed to load.

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