Order, Chaos and Change

One of the questions this week in the parallel guide of our year 1 EfM text is to consider the relationship of order and chaos, whether their relationship is mutually exclusive or whether they are opposite parts of the same whole, what their benefits are and what deficits they produce. The context of the question is the creation story of the Priestly writer of Gen 1:1-2:4

Chaos is defined as a disordered mass, confusion or lack of regular arrangement. People often define their lives as pure chaos when things seem out of control, messy, unpredictable and disordered. it’s not a comfortable state for most people although the bedrooms of teenagers (and some adults) seem to at least partially contradict that generality. Chaos leads to misunderstanding, lack of boundaries, unpredictability and loss of control, both self-control and control of others as well as the world about them. The friction comes when every person decides what, for them, are the rules and give no thought or or care to rules and boundaries others might have. There is no interest in harmony or organized group living. Power is the only goal.

Order, on the other hand, is where everything has a place and everything is in that proper place. There is structure and neatness, and there are very few surprises. Order is what most people (anarchists excepted, perhaps) strive to maintain in their lives by control of themselves and their environments. They know what is expected of them, they know where the boundaries of proper behavior and thought are, and, for the most part, they obey the rules that keep the society moving smoothly.
In Taoism, balance is expressed by yin and yang, equal parts of black and white but each having a dot of one color laid on the other to show that neither one can be considered purely one color or the other. It is a combination of the two, equal in size and intensity but opposite in character and hue.

In the P creation story, the waters represented chaos. Large bodies of water such as the ancient peoples knew were unpredictable places. One minute they would be smooth as glass and reflecting the color of the bright blue sky while in the next minute they could be angry, gray, foaming with whitecaps and very, very dangerous to anyone caught out in a small boat or raft. God's separation of the waters with dry land represented bringing order out of chaos. The ground almost never moved (well, they did have the occasional earthquake which was unsettling and destructive) but the shakes only lasted a short while before they subsided and the ground became firm once again.

In the story of creation, every action has an opposite reaction. While the formless void was totally dark, God created "light" which balanced it. The waters below were separated from the waters above and so "waters" and "sky" came to be. Then God separated the waters by putting dry land between them and so there was "earth"  and "seas". Barren land became carpeted with grass and shaded with trees, decorated with flowers and fruitful with grains. The light and the dark found their opposites with the creation of the sun and the moon. Animals were made to wander the earth and to burrow beneath it, birds to fly above it, fish and great mammals to swim in the oceans and rivers. The final creation was of humanity -- male and female -- which, like all the rest of Gods' creation was balanced so that not one thing overwhelmed the rest.  God had created the world, and so, to balance the work, God rested for a day, contemplating what had been created and pronouncing it "good" and "very good."

One final balance was to be introduced later in Genesis, though, and that balance came through two trees which the man and woman were forbidden to touch. One tree was labeled "The Tree of Good and Evil," the fruit of which was alleged to contain the wisdom of God in knowing what was wise and right and what was foolish and wrong. To balance it, the tree had a companion in the garden, the "Tree of Life" which, by the rule of balance, had the unstated name of its opposite, death. To Adam and Eve,  had they not tasted the fruit of the first tree, they would never have known the true meaning of the second.

Without some chaotic moments, growth and change would not really ever need to take place. Everything would hum along, there would be no reason for conflict because everybody agreed with everybody else, and the earth would continue to turn on its axis. That isn't how life goes, though. Rules change when conflicts arise, discussion arises when questions come up, fights break out when perceptions differ, and even the earth stretches and contracts causing earthquakes and landslides. Chaos is painful but, without it, we would never be challenged in our life, our decisions, our learning or our faith.

And that's the way I think God planned it all along -- maybe as a contingency plan, but a plan nonetheless.

Of course, to quote MadPriest, "I could be wrong."