Genesis 1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. The word "chaos" comes from the Greek word for formless matter. It does not have a shape that lasts through time. It is not predictable. Chaos is all the random, patternless, haphazard stuff in our universe. Ever feel as if your life is pure chaos? In a condition of complete confusion? Disordered, random and disjointed, sort of like the state of the universe before Creation? Hey, join the club. There are thousands of books on the topic, including: Absolutely Normal Chaos. Yes, that s right- Absolutely Normal Chaos! It must be a first-person account of life with a toddler! But you can also pick up Agent of Chaos, Applied Chaos, Angel of Chaos, 1
Beyond Chaos, Bordering on Chaos, Thriving on Chaos, ad infinitum, ad nauseum! Some of the best thinkers today are straining their brains over Chaos Theory, which is the study of forever-changing complex systems using advanced mathematics. Chaos Theory techniques have been used to model biological systems -- which are, as you might guess, some of the most chaotic systems imaginable. Systems of equations have also been used to model everything from population growth to climate change. Super String theory seeks to resolve the conflicts between quantum physics and Einstein's theories. Did you know that there's a Chaos Washing Machine! It supposedly produces cleaner and less tangled clothes, but of course, continues to lose socks! Long story short: Chaos rules! Or does it? When God gets to work, he creates ex nihilo, out of nothing. The first step in creation is chaos! Genesis 1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Chaos is not an evil reality that persists beyond God's ordering activity, providing a negative backdrop and potential threat to God's world. The Bible asserts that there is no reality independent of God that can pose a threat to his creation. God uses chaos as part of his ordering of Creation. With a word God flips on the first light, and then he splits the light from the darkness! Clearly, God rules! God moves confidently from chaos to creativity, making something good out of the raw material of the formless void. God causes order to rise from disorder! Perhaps the same is true for us, as individuals and as a community. In the Lord's unpredictable and unfathomable plan for us, membership in the Chaos Club may be the best preparation for a life of creativity. MIT economics professor Lester Thurow writes: No society that values order above all else will be creative! At the beginning of the 15th century China's curiosity, its instinct for exploration and its drive to build had created all the technologies necessary to launch the Industrial Revolution -- something that would not actually occur for another 400 years. China had it all: 3
blast furnaces for making steel; gunpowder and cannon for military conquest; the compass and the rudder for exploration; paper and movable type for printing; rotary threshing machines and mechanical seeders for agriculture; the decimal system, negative numbers and the concept of zero for sophisticated mathematics. Seven major Chinese expeditions explored the Indian Ocean with ships four times as large as those of Columbus. But the Chinese rejected and forgot the technologies that could have given them world dominance. What COULD have happened did not! They blew their big chance. Why? They became uncomfortable with chaos. New technologies were perceived as threats, rather than opportunities. Innovation was forbidden. Imperial rules and regulations prohibited the building of new oceangoing ships that would take people away from China. Membership in Club Chaos became strongly discouraged. By the end of the 15th century, the demand for ORDER had overridden intrinsic human curiosity, the desire to explore and the drive to build. Creativity demands a certain amount of chaos, like the "formless void" out of which God created the heavens and the earth. 4
Christians and the Church need a chunk of chaos, a healthy measure of raw material, in order for creativity to happen. The Good News of the gospel is going to fly farthest if we launch it into cyberspace! The joy of the Lord is going to erupt most enthusiastically if we innovate in worship! The mission and ministry of the church is going to transform more lives if we take it beyond our sanctuary walls. Let's not become so obsessed with order that we choke our spiritual growth. On the other hand, membership in Club Chaos does not include carte blanche for craziness or an invitation to anarchy. Lester Thurow also drives home the point that creativity will disappear without some degree of ORDER. In Russia during the last 75 years before the Revolution, there was an amazing amount of creativity! There were great authors, magnificent musicians, artists and world-class scientists. Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Pavlov and Mendeleev. But this creative movement was doomed to fail. Without some degree of ORDER, it was impossible for the Russians to develop a successful economy. Chaos led to 5
more chaos, and ultimately to the Russian Revolution. When an oppressive new order was imposed by the Communists, creativity keeled over and died. Consider the 1st chapters of the Bible. God spoke chaos into existence and then ordered it. And it was all good! The ultimate expression of his creativity he saved for last. Genesis 1:26-31 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion So God created man in his own image male and female he created them. And God blessed them And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good! He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and gave free reign to their creativity within the context of order. One law, one rule! Genesis 3 And the woman said to the serpent, 6
We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate What happened? By rejecting the order that God had placed on his creation mankind brought the chaos of sin, death and destruction into the perfect world that God had created. It was nothing short of a revolution against God! And then that chaos grew until we read in chapter 6: Genesis 6 5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. 7
Chaos was coming back to the earth in the form of a great flood but some order would remain through Noah and his ark. After the flood the people rebelled against God s order once more. God told them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth! They said, Come, let us build and make a name for ourselves! As God s people we need the right combination of chaos and order if we are going to help build up God s Kingdom! With too much order, we'll choke our spiritual growth and end up like China in the 15 th century. Are we perceiving online technologies as threats, rather than opportunities? Are we forbidding musical and dramatic innovation in our worship services? Are we passing rules and regulations that prohibit mission work and spiritual exploration? Are we discouraging membership in Club Chaos, and allowing only participation in groups that have been formed, framed, and even fossilized for generations? But, remember, with too much chaos, we'll spin out of control and self-destruct like Russia did. 8
Not crazed by confusion, nor disturbed by disorder, we can move confidently from chaos to creativity, making something good out of the raw stuff around us, and finding ways to manage the tension between order and disorder that doesn't let either get out of hand. When Adam and Eve threw over God s order, grasping for equality with Him, God stepped in and made a promise. He said that one born of a woman would one day make the payment and sacrifice necessary to restore God s order to our lives so that we could be forgiven and live forever with our Creator, overcoming sin, death and the devil. That is the Story, That is what this whole book is about- restoring us to a loving relationship with the One who made us. God doing what we could not do for ourselves that we might be His own people! Jesus Christ, God and man, offering his perfect life on the cross as the one sacrifice for all sins. Jesus offering victory and eternal life to everyone who believes in him and then letting us participate in the great mission to let the whole world know what God has done! So, let s be creative in getting this Good News out to a world in chaos! 9