Introduction – Order – Chaos - Conclusion
If someone would ask you to portray God, would chaos be part of your description?
Does your experience of God point to an element of unpredictability?
What shapes our concept of God? Are we willing to put our faith in a God who is bigger than our theological constructs, whom we allow to incarnate into our world, surprise us and be endlessly changed by him? Or do we settle for a hand-out, a tradition passed on to us?
For those who say their concept of God is solely shaped by Scriptures and say: Ap. Paul makes it clear that “God is not a God of disorder”, I have some questions: don’t we betray our claim to be inspired by Scriptures (by all 66 books) when we base our understanding of God on Paul (alone) or on certain passages in the Bible? What are we to make of all those stories that seem to catch us off guard in their depiction of God? Can we be faithful to the witness of the sacred texts and hold an honest view of complete order to God’s activities, in that they are always, totally predictable?
What about our experience? Can we say existentially that God is a God of order? Does our experience reflect complete order? Or to put it another way, is “order” the best overarching description of life? Is there cause and effect in every aspect of our life showing a linear development? Does always B come after A and C after B or sometimes C comes after A and B comes after H? In other words can we honestly say that life, in its entirety, is predictable?
This Monday I’m starting a four-part series on order, chaos, God and their interaction in our lives by asking some questions. As we reflect on these, it would be helpful for our conversation here to get your perspective. How would you answer these questions? Although I have an idea of where we’re going with this (I am not totally clueless when I ask these questions 
), I’m looking to be stirred by you as we navigate these waters together. Invite others to participate in this.
And now, indulge us with your comments …
God is a God of order….His order. Just becuase many things may seem to be chaos to us, this is only because we are not the ones dictating the order (and I, for one, am happy about this). Personally, I do trust Scripture alone (all, not just Paul). I tend to believe a God powerful enough to create the universe, as well as good and loving enough to die for our sins is also good enough to be trusted in the whole revelation of Himself He has handed down to us. Bear in mind, the Bible does not tell us everything about Him, but everything it does tell is accurate. I see chaos, but only because it isn’t MY order.
Do we really need to equate chaos and unpredictability? I seriously doubt. Yet, order (humanly understood) and predictability, most surely go together.
As for me, I see God as unpredictable, yet a God of order. His order.
Good questions! It would be hard to answer without first defining what you mean by the terms “God” and “order”.
I think the violent normalcy of empire is predictable. I believe that is what history and also our Christian myths teach us. Following Christ means breaking this predictable pattern of human violence by undertaking non-violent opposition to the normal cycle of violence. So in a way, being Christian means supporting a particular kind chaos against a particular kind of order.
Order appears to be fairly subjective. Is a cancer cell chaotic or ordered? One cell’s order may be another cell’s chaos. The Roman Empire’s main goal was to create far reaching peace and order, but this “order” for the empire was not so great if you were a first century Jewish peasant. It might be better to talk about whose order we make out of our chaos.
Mike, I love the way you’ve opened a new door for conversation.
Major influence in my life regarding the understanding of the Kingdom of God was Dallas Willard and his book Divine Conspiracy. Understanding the favorite concept of Jesus, the Kingdom of God being at hand, was like being born again, again.
Although Willard never said that, this concept was a door into non-dualistic worldview for me. Up to that point, I could think of Christian faith only in dualistic terms, but through Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God, I realized that there is more to life than my life, my perspective, my order, my well-being. EVERYTHING happens under God.
I am still a dualist, but I hope my heart and mind and life grows deeper than that.
I think Florin is taking us to another direction, however, not less fascinating, that of science, perception, and philosophy.
Exciting,
Samir
By creating the universe from nothing did God break a certain order?
Why is order perceived in the extremes: total peace or death of the spirit?
Whenever I heard people in church talking about ‘order’ and God being a ‘God of order’, it was very clear that they were refering to their own understanding of order and what that should look like. Projecting our own ideas unto God is nothing new. Nietzsche was right in accusing Descartes that he did not discover God through his reasoning: ‘I think, thus I am. I am thus God is.’ Nietzsche said that Descarted discovered the Super Human, and not God.
You don’t discover God by starting from human beings, namely ourselves. Much too often we think God is more or less like us, with all the human qualities taken to their maximum degree. That’s idolatry. The same applies to God’s order. We have little knowledge of what that looks like, and we can only take our clues from Jesus, who gives us glimpses of who God is and what God stands for. As far as ‘order’ is concerned, I’m very anxious that we don’t confuse God’s order with ours…
This is a good post and a great discussion. I read Walter Brueggemann’s book, An Unsettling God. It follows this line of think very closely.
Thanks for the post.
To answer these questions with any accuracy at all we must define order. If you look this word up you will find dozens of meanings and implications. One meaning reads “a condition in which each thing is properly disposed (placed or arranged) with reference to other things and its purpose”. With that being said, what may seem chasotic or out of order to some may very well be the way God wanted it. One way to look at it may be to look at the result of the supposed chasos. If it has drawn man closer to Him can it really be out of order? Just thinking…
I am tackling these issues from our human perspective (after all, isn’t that our realm of existence?). If there is order in everything God does, but I don’t understand it, that for me is chaos. Isn’t this chaos that activates our faith and trust in God? If we could (which I doubt) have a complete understanding of God’s order would we need Him?
All we can say, from our experience (from our human angle), is that God is not always orderly, He seems to display chaos in His activity.
“as high as the heavens are from the earth, so are My ways higher than yours, and My THOUGHTS higher than your thoughts.” i believe that God’s understandings and thoughts are so much higher, that something that He sees as order, we can’t seem to with our humanly minds. this word ‘order’ can also be replaced with ‘confusion’. which would state that “He is not the God of confusion”, meaning just because He can be unpredictable we can still accept it as being understandably God’s character (which is orderly) keeping in mind we don’t even know God completely, yet. so that when we do, it will finally make since to us. and whatever God does that’s in His character (which it will always be) can be classified as orderly because He is good and nothing less. if He were to do something wrong and then good and so on, this would make Him a God of disorder or confusion.
I think i will propose it
What an interesting subject. First of all let us understand that we are talking about God, the Almighty, whose ways are not our ways. Therefore, all the characterics of Him which relate to us,he has clearly stated in the scriptures. Things like his faithfulness, his justice, his mightness,his goodness,his love..etc which mostly are subjective in occurence. For he has purposely made it so,for us to understand his will.
However,there are other attributes of God which we cannnot easily understand for they may hold several meanings incontext they are applied. Mostly these characteristics are not even objective to us as humans, one of which is Gods order. As we know “order” may mean one thing in House of parliament, another in cellular almagamation, another thing in “House of Fraser (Shop)” and another in the house of God, hence the misunderstanding of Pauls “Order”
Nevertheless, one thing is clear,through scriptures and our own experiences,is that God is Unpredictable in his activities and also orderly, sometimes this is not easily depicted for we are but just mere mortals, learning about His wonderful being as the Almighty God.