Chaos and Creation - the Message of the Genesis 1 Creation Story for Us Today

It seems to me our nation is in a state of chaos. 

We are highly polarized, viewing those who hold differing political views as enemies to be feared and to be defeated. We no longer have any objective source of truth. The news media is viewed as biased and untrustworthy - fake news that is not to be trusted. The work of scientists  is discredited as a hoax - from the COVID pandemic and how to address it to the challenge of global warming. Conspiracy theories promoted by fringe groups are treated as reality. The work of our national intelligence agencies is dismissed as political propaganda. The news you believe is determined by the political party with which you are aligned as is the leader you believe. We are turning on one another with fear-baited anger and open hatred. We have seemingly lost the capacity for civil conversation or the capacity to hear the concerns being voiced by one side and the fears expressed by the other side or the capacity for a compassionate response to anyone whose experience is not our own experience. 

We are engaged in a cultural civil war in which one side is seeking to establish its view of who we should be as a nation and the other side is seeking to preserve who they believe we have been as a nation. The two sides operate with differing understandings of our national history. One side argues that they are not treated equally under the law; the other side seeks to preserve the way things have been. One side pushes for more diversity and inclusion and voice; the other side seeks to protect the power and privilege and position it has historically enjoyed. It is as though we are having to deal with the issue of race yet again ... as though the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement never happened. (Black Lives Matter and protests about police brutality are race issues. The angry reactions to BLM and the protests are race-based issues. The resurgence of white supremacist groups is a race issue. The struggle - refusal ? - to recognize the systemic issues of white privilege is a race issue.) A nation engaged in civil war is a nation in chaos. 

The COVID pandemic has compounded the chaos, exposing the fault lines in our society. Our politicizing of the pandemic has wrecked havoc on our economy, not to mention the health of our citizens. The death toll from COVID is over 190,000 ... but that number, too, is refuted and dismissed as part of the hoax. Our polarization prevents us from pulling together and working together to defeat this faceless foe. We can't even agree that we have a problem to address ... much less how to address it! 

We are a nation in chaos. We seemingly have nothing that can pull us together as one. We seemingly have nothing that can provide stability or strength or direction in the face of the chaos. We even fight over how to interpret our founding documents - the constitution and its amendments - while seeking to manipulate the institutions they created to our personal advantage.

No one - well, almost no one - likes chaos. We like stability. We like predictability. We like feeling safe. We like being in control. We like having things our way. 

Chaos is what we experience when we are not in control. Chaos is what we experience when those things that provide stability and predictability are taken away. Chaos is what we experience when the way things have always been is questioned or challenged. Chaos is what we experience when the familiar and comfortable is replaced by that which is new and different and unfamiliar. Chaos is what we experience when things are not going the way we want. Chaos is what we experience when our sense of right and our sense of place and our sense of power are threatened.

We don't know how to deal with chaos.

Because chaos stirs fear, we react. We frantically fight to get back in control. We seek to protect and preserve those things that make us feel comfortable and safe. We fight to protect and preserve our sense of place and power and right. We fight to protect and preserve "our way." In doing so, we react with anger toward those whom we perceive as a threat to "our way" and the way things have always been. We see them through the lens of our fear and anger. Consequently, we see them as an enemy to be feared, attacked, and destroyed. 

Reacting out of fear blocks our ability to think. We cannot be afraid and think rationally at the same time. Acting out of fear and thinking rationally are mutually exclusive. They come from two different parts of the brain.

We like to believe we are rational. Just listen to us argue, defending our position as right and attacking the other as wrong. Our arguments are generally just fear-based rationalizations, used to reassure ourselves because we feel threatened and out of control. We just beat the same old drum, parroting what we have always believed. They reflect more fear than thought. They do not reflect critical thinking in light of a new reality.  

Ironically, chaos calls for our best thinking ... and it gets our fear-driven reactivity. 

Which raises a question: what role does faith play in the face of chaos? 

For faith to come into play in the midst of chaos, we have to move beyond fear so we can think theologically. 

We have to move beyond fear-based thinking and reacting. "Be still, and know that I am God!" (Psalm 46:10). "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid" (John 14:27). Jesus's original language was "stop letting your hearts be troubled; stop letting them be afraid. You are troubled and afraid; move beyond it." Paul said the same thing in Philippians 4:6, "Do not worry  about anything." The original: stop worrying - you are doing it; move beyond it by means of prayer. The result: the peace of Christ will guard your hearts and minds (Philippians 4:7). Faith cannot shape our response to chaos until we move beyond our fear-based reactivity. 

Moving beyond fear positions us to think theologically. 

God does God's best work in the midst of chaos ... when we are powerless. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Perhaps God is able to work best in the midst of chaos because we are finally open to that work. As long as we are determined to be self-reliant and seek to be in control, we cannot know the strength that comes from God. 

Chaos - facing the uncertainty of the unknown - being out of control - puts us in a position to experience God's grace, know a strength beyond our own, and be a part of the new thing God is doing (Isaiah 43:18-19). 

Israel's experience of exile in Babylon underscores this great truth. They lost everything that gave meaning and structure to their lives when Babylon defeated and destroyed their nation. They lost their homes, their Temple and worship (their means of connecting with God), their king, their nation, and their land. Everything but their lives was taken from them. And they were deported to live in a place that was foreign to them, far from the land they viewed as God's gift to them. Their experience of chaos robbed them of everything. 

As would be expected, their experience of exile created a theological crisis. They questioned their identity as a people chosen to live in covenant with God. They questioned God, God's power, God's love, God's covenant. As they struggled to understand their experience of chaos and to make sense of what had happened, they came deeper understanding of God and their identity as the people of God.

Their deeper understanding is reflected in the great poem we know as Genesis 1, the creation story. The story proclaims how God worked in the midst of chaos to bring forth that which was good, very good. (Although the poem if found at the very first of our Bibles, it was composed during the Exile in Babylon - after 586 C.E.).  

The story begins with a description of the heavens and earth as "a formless void" (Genesis 1:2). That two-fold description provides the structure for the poem - formless, void (empty). It reflected the experience of Israel in exile. Everything that gave structure and meaning to their lives had been taken from them. Their lives were formless and void (empty). The description is amplified by the phrase "darkness covered the face of the deep" (Genesis 1:2). For the Hebrew people, darkness was the realm in which evil worked. The deep or the sea was a symbol for chaos - that which was beyond their ability to control. Again, the people's experience in exile is mirrored. The life they had known had been destroyed by evil (Babylon's violence) so that chaos reigned. So the heavens and earth were a formless void in which evil and chaos reigned. But "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). The wind or Spirit of God was moving over the face of chaos. God was at work in the chaos. The Spirit's work led to the six days of creation. In the first three days, God created structure in the midst of that which was formless (note the separation: light from darkness, verses 3-4; waters below and above, verses 6-8; water below from dry land, verses 9-10). In the next three days (days 4-6), God filled that which was empty and void: sun, moon, and stars in the light and darkness, verses 14-19; fish and birds for the sky and seas, verses 20-23; living creatures and humankind for the land, verses 24-31. And the result was good, very good. The chaos was replaced with structure and fullness that was good, very good ... through the work of the Spirit.

The New Testament writers proclaimed the same truth. They spoke of resurrection - new life on a deeper level that comes through death. Paul proclaimed to the Roman churches that God was at work in all things for good, to conform them to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). He proclaimed the great truth that nothing in creation was beyond God's ability to transform for our good. Nothing, including our experience of chaos, "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). 

We do not like chaos. We do not like feeling out of control. We do not like the loss of stability, predictability, and comfort. But chaos provides a unique opportunity for the Spirit to work ... to bring forth life and that which is good, very good. Chaos provides the opportunity for us to experience God's grace. Chaos provides the opportunity for the Spirit to mature us spiritually-emotionally-relationally. Chaos provides God an opportunity to give us what we would not receive any other way. 

If we can move beyond our fear and reactivity, if we can think theologically!

(BTW: this truth applies to our churches as they struggle with the impact of the corona virus. How might God work in the chaos the virus has created to lead us to a different, deeper expression of what it means to be the church? If we can stop reacting long enough, stop fighting to preserve what was!)