Tag Archives: chaos

The Sacred Territory of Good Order

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Spring is upon us. Do you want to know how I know this? Migraines.

Every year at this time, the migraines set in. I never experienced them growing up in Illinois. Here in Michigan, surrounded by the Great Lakes, the temperature and barometric changes are more drastic, making their probability and frequency more prevalent.

Do you want to know one of the places with the least barometric fluctuation resulting in migraines? Florida.

Yes, Florida is a peninsula, which means it’s surrounded by water. Still, coastal regions aren’t as chaotic when it comes to barometric changes. They’re relatively ordered. I suppose that’s why I feel great while there. In fact, my chronic back pain typically disappears, too.

I read that tropical regions near the equator are the best places to avoid migraines. However, moving to an off-the-grid village somewhere outside of a place like Macapá, Brazil, probably wouldn’t work for me. I know that stress levels play a part in migraines, and I’m guessing my first trip to the bodega for supplies could result in a new kind of headache. While I’m generally disinterested in material things, I do appreciate creature comforts, such as air conditioning and pasteurized milk. My stress levels would almost certainly increase when these things are only occasionally (if at all) accessible. It’s also why I’d last maybe three days before packing up and moving to a place with more reliable electricity and steady internet access. I need to impose my ramblings upon the world around me, if not for you but for me. My constant need to type something—anything—helps maintain my brain’s order. I’ve written before that my need to write is almost disease-like. It’s an itchy affliction. If I don’t scratch it, I’ll unravel.

I wasn’t sure where this was leading just yet, but I think I figured it out. I’m a man who appreciates good order. My body is in complete agreement, and my seasonal migraines are a reminder.

Jennifer insists among our children that they keep themselves in order with calendars, planners, and the like. Our oldest son, Joshua, is married now, has a son, and works a full-time job. It’s funny how he’ll hug his mom and say, “You were right about keeping things organized.” He has come to realize, as many of his age eventually do, that disorder breeds unrest. The Bible certainly affirms this. In fact, it interprets disorder as sin’s regular product.

Saint Paul insists somewhat plainly that rejecting God and His natural law results in a “debased mind,” which is little more than a condition of mental and moral confusion (Romans 1:21-22, 28). Saint James writes, “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16). Isaiah offers, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). The implication is that sin distorts moral clarity, ultimately confusing right and wrong.

Again, disorder is sin’s fruit.

Relative to this, I should say that I appreciate simplicity. Sinful humanity tends to complicate things. Sure, the mechanics of almost any issue are vast. In a way, I attested to that last week when I wrote about the need to read more, not less. Still, the point of sifting through the swirling details of any particular issue is to find a way through the confusion to something better. When we do find that way through, we often discover that the fix was not as complicated as we thought. It may be difficult getting there, but when we do, it won’t be hard to understand the what, why, and how of it all.

I wonder if this is why I’m oddly captivated by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. While the United States government swirls with chaotic dysfunction, here’s a guy who has stepped into the middle of all of it and found a way to make its complicated mess into something crisp. His brainiacs have devised algorithms that can gather the chaos, sort it, identify the good and bad, and find a way through to an objective fix. When I observe this through a Gospel lens, there’s something strangely biblical about what Musk and his nerds are doing. No, not in the “mark of the beast” kind of way that the Revelation-twisting junkies and modern-day prophet-following weirdos try to suggest. First, I’m led to more of a David-and-Goliath image, where the unlikeliest champion throws a stone at the lumbering establishment, and the whole system wobbles. My second inclination goes far deeper.

Whether he realizes it or not, Musk has stumbled into sacred territory. A binding thread inherent to natural law is God’s desire for order. Saint Paul affirms this in 1 Corinthians 14:33 when he writes, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” In Titus 1:5, he tells Titus to “set in order the things that are lacking” in the churches of Crete, making it clear that the Church itself requires structural clarity and good governance. Even in Acts 6, when the early Church faced the initial challenge of caring for widows, the Apostles responded with an administrative order. They appointed deacons to handle the task so that the administration of the Word remained central. It’s here (as it was with 1 Corinthians 14:33) that we see God’s deepest desire for order, which Saint Paul highlights in 1 Timothy 2:1-6 when he writes about the need for Christians to interface with earthly authorities. We do this to help maintain good order. And why? In verses 2 through 4, Paul says the goal is “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (v. 2). He continues, “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (vv. 3-4).

The whole point of order is to provide a context in which the Gospel can be preached freely and without obstacle, all for the sake of saving souls.

With these things in mind, I realize it’s by no means coincidental that, right from the beginning, one of the first mandates God gave to Adam was to maintain order. In one of the most surprising acts of delegation ever recorded, God said, “Fill the earth and subdue it.” Next, He added, “and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). This was a call to cultivate and maintain order in God’s creation. And so, we do. Certainly, this is an issue of faith relative to obedience. But as with all of God’s commands, there are practical fruits that come from holding to His divine commands. I already told you the most important one: the Gospel’s perpetuation. But there are others.

For example, order is inherent to a stable household. The Thoma family spent most of our dinnertime together on Friday talking about the blessings of a household that’s built in the way God designed it. A household established on God’s orderly design for marriage—a husband and wife—doesn’t just produce more humans. The sacred offices of husband and wife, becoming father and mother, create an ordered framework for children to understand love, responsibility, and many other aspects that make life truly enjoyable, just as God intended. If anything, a stable household becomes a training ground for carrying the kind of order that’s true to God’s heart into the broader world. It isn’t stifling. It nurtures growth while simultaneously instilling a crucial resilience to chaos, which is the space where confusion cooks up division, leading to broad-reaching and long-lasting harm.

As I said, observing through the Gospel’s lens, Musk and his team are in sacred space when they do what they’re doing, if only because they’re trying to bring order to chaos. They’re laboring to establish order’s honest clarity amid falsehood’s confusion.

To wrap this up, I mentioned at the beginning that migraines are a seasonal reminder. Keeping this ailment within the boundaries of God’s Word and beneath the shadow of the cross, my migraines are a natural protest against disorder—my body’s internal revolt against barometric chaos. In that sense, they’re a metaphor. They are proof that sin exists; it’s at work in my body (Romans 7:23). With it comes disorder. They also help me remember that God did not intend them by His design, and therefore, I’m not where I’m meant to be. In a mortal sense, even as I’m better suited for Florida’s climate, in the more extraordinary sense, I’m genuinely meant for the restored order of the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21:1-5, Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:13) that Christ brings at the Last Day—the time when my whole self “will be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21).

Indeed, this world’s chaotic brokenness isn’t the final word. Genuine, actual, real restoration of order is coming. Christ has already seen to this by His life, death, and resurrection.

Ambiguity

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I suppose I should begin by closing the lid on last week’s events. Amen, and hooray, I successfully defended my doctoral thesis. To those who prayed for my success, I thank you. Indeed, it was robustly challenging, but knowing the material well, it ended up being quite exhilarating, enough so that I told Jennifer and the kids… well… I won’t simply tell you what I told them. I’ll describe it.

For those who appreciate the exhilarating terror of high-speed roller coasters, think of the first time you rode one. When you first stepped down from the loading platform into your seat, as the protective bar lowered and the coaster jerked forward, a strange concoction of excitement and apprehension began forming. Those beside you experienced it, too. It got thicker and more palpable as the coaster clacked its way to the top of the first hill. And then suddenly, you were dropped over its edge, only to be thrashed this way and that way and upside down and around until finally arriving at its end. You lived. The bar lifted, and as you climbed from the machine’s steely embrace, you said something to those beside you that would have astounded your pre-coaster self.

“Let’s do that again.”

That was, more or less, what I told Jennifer and the kids. Of course, it was necessary to tell Jennifer plainly that I had no intention of doing it again. Had I not, my words would’ve left her in fretful ambiguity.

There’s a book on my shelf I’ve owned for a long time. I hadn’t yet begun to read it until nearer to the roller coaster’s end. It was a gift to me from someone who knows my appreciation for poetry. The book is Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson. The book is not to be mistaken for the later novel or TV series of the same name. It came to mind several weeks ago during the ladies’ “Wine and the Word” bible study we host in our home.

Empson’s book was first published in the 1930s as a critical examination of poetry. It’s a busy volume holding multiple threads of thought. One way to consolidate them is to say Empson observes and then analyzes what he believes are common tendencies toward ambiguous words and phrases in poetry that affect meaning. Another way to think of it is that when poets are writing, they’re most often intentional in giving airy glimpses of something rather than explicitly defining it. In most circumstances, people don’t prefer being fed ambiguous information. However, in this case, ambiguity actually makes the poet’s work more accessible to others, ultimately leaving the final interpretation to the reader. To experience this firsthand, a person needs only to sit through a professor’s lesson on Shakespeare before moving down the hallway to another professor’s class on the same subject. Students will walk away from both having learned different interpretations of the same material.

Truthfully, I struggled with Empson’s book. In general, I get what he means. Still, he admits on occasion that ambiguity’s inherent fruit in communication is chaos. What’s more, at other moments in the book, he leaves the impression that chaos is beautiful.

Chaos is not beautiful. It’s ugly and destructive. But first, understand what I mean by chaos.

We’re less than a month away from the Fourth of July. People will celebrate with fireworks. Of itself, a firework’s detonation is a chaotic explosion of sound and color. Its sudden and uncontrolled expansion is stunning. Add rocket after rocket to the display, and the sky suddenly becomes a breathtaking exhibition of chaotic loveliness. But the beauty of a fireworks display is only possible by design. People created the fireworks. They tamed the chaos and then aimed it. They did this by employing chemical equations combined with specific safety measures. The chaotic nature of the object was harnessed and directed, and thereby, it was used to create something spectacular.

Take away even one of the chaos-harnessing boundaries and a fireworks display becomes deadly. Perhaps you’ve seen those videos of someone accidentally launching a Roman candle into a box of unlit rockets only to become a chaotic scene resulting in devastating injuries and destruction. Chaos—genuine disorder and confusion—is not beautiful. It leads to suffering. It leads to misery. In the Bible, chaos is not an uncommon product of sin. When God’s revealed Word is ignored or His natural law is disregarded, chaos often ensues, whether as a natural byproduct or as a direct punishment for willful disobedience.

How could it not be this way, especially since “God is not a God of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33)? The word Saint Paul uses for confusion is ἀκαταστασίας. It’s a genitive noun meaning unstableness, violent disorder, or chaos. A genitive noun usually modifies another noun. In this case, God is the modified noun. We learn what He isn’t, namely, He does not want chaos. He wants order. And He wants it for a good reason. While instructing Timothy to pray and intercede, Paul betrays God’s reasoning, which is that “we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-5).

I probably don’t need to remind most Christians just how affronting the month of June has become relative to God’s established order. Successfully hijacked by LGBTQ, Inc., June has become this world’s official month for the prideful celebration of chaotic human sexuality. It’s disheartening, especially when you know why God desires order in the first place.

Speaking of June’s established sexual licensing, have you heard of Monkeypox? The first I’d ever heard of Monkeypox (which is a sexually transmitted disease limited almost entirely to the homosexual and bisexual men’s community) was from an article in the UK at the end of last summer. It seems in 2023, there was an alarming spike in the ghastly disease’s transmission since the previous June. I read an article this morning from CNN reporting that the US Department of Health and Human Services was gearing up for another spike in the same community in June of 2024. To combat this, DHS plans to set up information stations at pride parades across the country. If that weren’t already enough, Fox News just reported a new disease—a rare, sexually transmitted ringworm fungus—affecting the same sexual demographic and requiring similar information campaigns.

Ninety-plus percent of these particular diseases are occurring and spreading in the pride-filled camps of sexual backwardness. That said, there are plenty of other diseases making the rounds among heterosexuals with countless partners. The news won’t report it, but it certainly appears that God’s plan for good order—a man and woman joined together by the bond of holy marriage—provides a relatively sturdy measure of security from a number of sin’s physical aberrations. Again, God desires order. He desires that we live peaceful and quietly lived lives. The delight a man and woman find in one another in marriage is a part of this.

Perhaps the most crucial reason behind this divine desire is discovered in the final verse of the text from Saint Paul I shared: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (v. 5). God wants good order because it maintains the setting for preaching and teaching the Gospel. In other words, when chaos is quelled, the truth that saves remains accessible to all.

When a person understands the Gospel’s perpetuation as God’s paramount intention, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the world gleefully embraces LGBTQ, Inc.’s hijacking of June, ultimately retitling it “Pride Month.” It shouldn’t surprise us that many in these camps consider Biblical teaching as hate speech. The Bible doesn’t just speak of the world as a planet we’re walking on. It often refers to it as a power in opposition to God and set upon our destruction (John 15:18-19, John 17:16, Ephesians 2:2, 1 John 2:15-17). The Bible mentions a particular being who partners with the world, someone whose pride led to his destruction, ultimately making him sin’s infectious conduit into the world. That same individual delights in confusion’s celebration and disorder’s gradual spread. I’m guessing June has become one of his favorite months.

Enough of that discussion. I feel like I need a shower now.

Looking back at Empson’s work from another direction, I wonder if some folks reading this have felt the urge to reply, “But Empson’s point concerning ambiguity seems to apply to Jesus. The Lord told parables. They were poetically creative and also quite ambiguous.” If a person believes Jesus’ parables were ambiguous, ultimately leaving their interpretation up to the reader, then that person has never read the parables very closely. When the Lord spoke a parable, it had an intended meaning. Even the Pharisees knew this, which is why I’ll say on occasion that the Lord’s parables played a massive part in getting Him killed. Sometimes, the Lord used a parable to demonstrate the Pharisees’ wretchedness, which only fed their devilish desire to destroy Him. What’s more, after using challenging imagery or telling a strangely worded account, the Lord would sometimes end by saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark 4:9). This is to say, “What I just said has a precise meaning. There’s nothing ambiguous about it. Those who are listening with the ears of faith will not be left uncertain or confused by it but will receive and understand it to their benefit.”

By the time I finished Empson’s book, while it was insightful, I was not convinced that poetry’s beauty is necessarily related to its ambiguity. Instead, I maintain the belief that poetry’s beauty is situated in its broader creativity with language. It uses unusual words and forms for communicating precise ideas, just in a different way than we might read in a novel, news story, or eNews message like this. That said, when it comes to word choice in general, I agree with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who said, “I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.” When it comes to creative language’s goal of unambiguous communication, I agree with Mark Twain, who wrote, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” As it pertains to creative language’s purpose, I’m with T.S. Eliot, who noted, “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.” In other words, get our attention, and when you have it, teach us the difference between good and evil, love and hate, justice and injustice, order and chaos.

Well into June, teach us not to celebrate as the world celebrates but to rejoice in godliness.