Order from Chaos--A Cycle of Life

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

Order from Chaos

A Cycle of Life

When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light…  Genesis 1:1-3a, The Jewish Study Bible

I don’t think we really read what Genesis 1:1 says—and doesn’t say. It does not say that in the beginning of earth’s creation there was nothing, and God created the world out of nothing. It does not say that. Now, simply pointing that out makes my Christian friends turn red with anger and start blowing out veins in their foreheads, and they accuse me of denying the power of God the Creator. I am saying nothing of the sort. I’m simply pointing out that Genesis 1:1 does NOT say that there was nothing. To quote from the commentary in The Jewish Study Bible,

To the modern reader, the opposite of created order is ‘nothing,’ that is, a vacuum.

To the ancients, the opposite of the created order was something much worse than

‘nothing.’ It was an active, malevolent force we can best term ‘chaos.’ In this verse,

chaos is envisioned as a dark, undifferentiated mass of water.

In Genesis 1:1 there was not “nothing,” there was preexistent matter, and it was in chaos. Now, notice the phrase that the commentator used in The Jewish Study Bible: “created order.” From chaos God began the process of creating order, and thus He brought this planet into its present being.

Order from chaos. Powerful words for the mystery that is one’s life. But it is what God does, and it is a powerful, wonderful thing. He brought order and harmony to this planet—He created light, dry land, “time” (day and night, regular seasons), plants, animals, and finally, Humanity.

Who then brought chaos back into the order. One of my instructors once said that when Humanity fell, Creation fell with us. No one knows this better than someone who lives in tornado country. Uncertainty and unpredictability can often result in chaos.

Chaos and its uncertainty and unpredictability are parts of the order that is this world and the Universe. Some of you know how fond I am of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Simply stated, there are things that happen in this created, orderly Universe that are chaotic, unpredictable, and therefore uncertain. They cannot be predicted. Now, these things do not change the predetermined course of the Universe, but it does add uncertainty and unpredictability to the Universe, and with that danger and the possibility of chaos.

Just recently we had the largest, most massive tornado ever recorded—a monstrous behemoth of destructive chaos. One of the weathermen told everyone in the El Reno and Mustang area to head south, because the tornado was moving northeast. People got in their cars and headed south. To the shock of the meteorologists, so did the tornado! The thing stopped on a dime and headed south. Totally unpredicted, making the course of the tornado uncertain.  The meteorologists were astonished. (Above is a picture of that tornado).

As it is with nature, so it is with human life. Or is it the other way around, since Creation fell with us?—as it is with human life, so it is with nature? Life is full of uncertainty and unpredictability. At times life falls into chaos, and nothing fells worse than chaos.

Every Friday night I do a 12 hour shift at a large metropolitan hospital, usually in the state’s only level one trauma center. I see lives that have plunged into chaos, their world spinning uncontrollably, like being caught in a tornado. The parents who’s “high school star” son shot himself in the mouth. They told the doctor they had no warning signs whatsoever—this was totally unpredictable. The man fighting for his life from what turned out to be a fatal gunshot wound, all because he was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time between two rival gangs as he was going out to his car in the parking lot. The young teenage girl who was told that her teenage brother died in the accident—the accident in which she was the driver. Her scream still haunts me.

Chaos. Lives, solar systems, galaxies spinning out of control in a Universe that is falling apart. That’s how it seems. That’s how it feels when our world is out of control, falling apart.

A co-worker recently told me that her husband was called into the office, was thanked for 12 years of excellent work for the company, but that his position is being eliminated--immediately. As of that moment he had no job. There was no warning whatsoever. The room began to spin.

I have heard Christians in my tradition say that God is the God of order, and Satan is the author of chaos. Chaos needs to be simply rebuked in the name of Jesus. It needs to be rejected. Cast away. I told a family that the beloved member was not going to survive his fatal wound. For the daughter and parents, their worlds collapsed in on itself. The grandfather gathered the large family around for prayer and said, “Lord, we do NOT accept this. We rebuke the enemy!” The family member died.  

The God I read about in the Bible is the God who uses chaos at times, makes it His tool to bring about His purpose. He brought order from chaos in Genesis one. In the Old Testament He brought the armies of other nations to Israel to punish His people for their obstinate rebellion. He brought the Babylonians and allowed them to do the unthinkable—the very thing the Jews believed God would never, ever allow, no matter how rebellious they were: destroy the Temple in Jerusalem. But He did. Israel was in chaos, it’s brightest and best hauled away to Babylon for 70 years. And then God used another army, the Assyrian army, to deliver His people from Babylon, brought them home to rebuild the Temple. New order from chaos.

Jesus predicted chaos in Matthew 24: the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple once again, in 70 A.D. And like a true prophet of God, Jesus predicts it in “End of the World” language, because it was the end of the world—their world. But from the chaos came a new order.

This is how God works in lives. From death comes resurrection. From chaos comes order. New order.

I don’t think God always brings the chaos upon us. I think more times than not the chaos hits us just from the fact that we live in a Fallen World. It comes from a driver that runs the red light, from the diagnosis of terminal cancer, from the tornado that stops on a dime and heads south, from the death of a spouse or child from something that is sheer accident—no one’s fault. But when the chaos hits, we panic. We freak out. We feel like just collapsing on the floor. At least, I do.

But then, if we cling to God, we watch Him bring order from the chaos. Sometimes quickly, sometimes its years later. But He does it.

Order from chaos is a powerful act of God’s grace in our lives. Life from death. New growth from beneath the ashes. Chaos sweeps away the old—and the familiar that we cherish so much and try so desperately to hold on to. The new is so scary—so unpredictable and uncertain.

We like “newness,” change, new order, in small doses. Like one minister in my tradition said at a youth council meeting, “We implement change in the church in small doses so we can control the outcome.”

Well, so much for faith. And so much for leaps of faith.

We like the familiar, and we like change in small doses, so we can have control—control is the opposite of chaos. Chaos is the loss of control. But chaos, uncertainty, unpredictability—those are parts of the mystery that is my life—they are things that help deepen the mystery.

Or, we believe that chaos violates the control of God. If things are in chaos, God is not in control. Remember the story in Mark 4:37-41—Jesus and His disciples are in the boat, and Jesus is down below, sound asleep. A sudden storm arises, and the disciples are scared to death that they are going to drown, and the go below to wake Jesus, crying, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?!” And Jesus is not only perfectly calm, but basically asks why they aren’t calm as well. There was a belief in that day that God is SO in control that He can take a nap—He can go to sleep—and nothing will happen in the Universe that is contrary to His will. Not even during the deadly chaos of a storm at sea.

The existence of chaos in our lives does not mean that God is not in control. Quite the contrary. Genesis 1:1 tells me that God can and often does use anything in our lives, even chaos. Uncertainty and unpredictability.

In the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, those unpredictable and uncertain things that happen in the Universe do not deter the Universe from its predetermined path. In my life, because of God’s grace, chaos, unpredictability, and uncertainty do not deter the course of my life from its predetermined path, because of what God can do with them in my life. What a wonderful mystery!

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

~Romans 8:38

Your Fellow Traveler Through the Storms,

~Steve