Some thoughts on Gnostic Dualism...

It is interesting that I ran across this little quote today from the Quran:

The life of this world is merely a sport; it is only an adle pastime. The true life is the life to come—if you only knew it.

-Qur'an, Al-'Ankabut, Surah 29:63-64

It reminds me of some of the conceptions in the movie, the Matrix.

However, in The Matrix, you transcend the rudimentary Gnostic Dualism, because Neo goes inside one of the Sentinals and destroys it from within. In a word, Neo goes inside the Matrix and is able to begin systematically destroying it from within. (Thinking of the Matrix as a "web of sin" in the Christian conception.)

Never mind The Matrix. That might be a little to far fetched for some and it is confusing enough in its own rite.

Let's take the work of Christ for example in the incarnation. The incarnation is all about God showing us that True Life (as they call it in the Quran) is happening both in this world and in the world to come. So you cannot take the Muslim position: let the world go to Hell so long as we save everyone's soul (or worse still: kill the body to save the persons's soul). On the contrary, life in this world is real life, because we transorm that life into something REAL through Christ.

Cheers!
Basil