Although confusion makes us crazy,

God can pull order from disorder.

complete creativity craves a certain amount of chaos.

Ever feel as if your life is pure chaos?

In a condition of complete confusion?

Disordered and random and disjointed,

sort of like the state of the universe before Creation?

Hey, join the club.

Most of us feel like that every day,

especially first thing in the morning,

trying to get out the door to work or school or church.

According to recent research, Club Chaos is the hottest spot in town.

Surely you've seen the books.

There are currently over 1,200 on the topic, including:

• Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick,
• Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos, part of the Foundation Trilogy Series,
• Absolutely Normal Chaos, by Sharon Creech.

Yes, that's right: Absolutely Normal Chaos --

must be a first-person account of life with a toddler!

But there's more.

You can also pick up

Agent of Chaos,

Applied Chaos,

Angel of Chaos,

Beyond Chaos,

Bordering on Chaos,

and the best-selling business book

Thriving on Chaos.

For anyone who craves insight into chaos,

there's a plethora to be found in print.

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 arrhythmic heart palpitations,

and from the spread of epidemics

to the sounds of dripping faucets.

Super String theory seeks to resolve

in creative tension

the apparent conflicts

between quantum physics

and Einstein's theories.

(Also see www.students.uiuc.edu/~ag-ho/chaos/chaos.html June 22, 1999).

All of this in an effort to develop

a Theory of Everything.

Not that Club Chaos is all work and no play --

it also has a toy department.

With the swipe of a credit card,

you can have your very own award-winning kinetic sculpture toy

called "Chaos, World of Motion."

Along with a motorized ball lift,

Chaos includes several tracks, curves and stunts,

and it teaches children about the physics that governs the world in an exciting new hands-on way.

Who would crave Hot Wheels

when they could have Chaos, World of Motion?

(www.chaostoy.com, June 22, 1999).

For those with an appliance orientation,

there's a Chaos Washing Machine --

no joke!

In 1993, the Goldstar Company created a washing machine

that utilized the latest in Chaos Theory.

The washing machine supposedly produced

cleaner and less tangled clothes ...

although whether it continued to lose socks is anybody's guess.

As a member of the Chaos Club,

you can even find chaos

in the stock market ...

in long-range weather forecasting ...

and in the solar system.

Chaos Theory certainly isn't new to astronomers,

since most have long known that

the solar system does not run with the precision of a Swiss watch.

Long story short:

Chaos rules.

Leaving home to go to college.

Leaving a marriage to go...

Or does it?

When God gets to work,

she creates ex nihilo.

Chaos.

God creates and

"the earth was a formless void

and darkness covered the face of the deep"

(Genesis 1:2).

a kind of raw material that God uses for his creative activity,

a state of affairs that is not yet in harmony with the divine purposes in creation.

So this pre-creative chaos is not nothing,

nor is it bad.

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 is confident that only God can decide when to destroy things,

and it asserts that there is no reality independent of God

that can pose a threat to his creation.

Only the Creator can crunch us, implies Scripture --

not chaos

Suddenly a "wind from God" sweeps over the face of the waters (v. 2),

a divine wind or spirit

that begins to work in a creative way with the raw material of "the deep."

God does not reject or say no to this chaotic material --

he simply uses it as part of his ordering of Creation.

and then he splits the light from the darkness and names the two Day and Night.

Clearly, it can't be said that Chaos rules.

No: God rules.

 
But God is not crazed by confusion,

nor disturbed by material that seems disordered or disjointed.

making something radically good out of the raw material of the primordial deep.

order can arise from disorder,

craves a certain amount of chaos.

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 complete creativity.

I'm a student of social theory...

and two of my favorite thinkers are Durkheim and Weber.

a society too sold on order

will crush creativity...

that the society will be something of a box

that grows ever constricting around us.

On the other hand it will be crushing...

to conform...

Consider this:

In an article on building wealth,

MIT economics professor Lester C. Thurow points out a number of "new rules"

for individuals, companies and nations,

including this one:

No society that values order above all else will be creative;

but without some degree of order, creativity disappears.

He tells the story of China at the beginning of the 15th century,

a tale that is a particularly prophetic parable for the 21st-century church.

Half a millennium ago,

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:

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.

The geographic conquests and the industrial revolution

that COULD have happened did not occur.

They blew their big chance.

Why? It's simple:

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 the Chinese coastline.

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

("Building Wealth," The Atlantic Monthly, June 1999, 63).

Hey, Church --

listen up!

as we embark on ministry in a new millennium?

rather than opportunities?

in our worship services?

that prohibit mission work and spiritual exploration

beyond the church's safe and comfortable "coastline"?

and allowing only participation in groups

that have been formed, framed, and even fossilized

for generations?

Remember:

Creativity demands a certain amount of chaos,

like the "formless void" and "the deep"

out of which God created the heavens and the earth.

a healthy measure of really raw and rough material,

The Good News of the gospel is gonna fly farthest

if we launch it into cyberspace,

if we innovate in worship,

if we take it beyond our sanctuary walls.

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,

who so wisely warns us about China's collapse,

that creativity will disappear

without some degree of ORDER

because we'll spend all of our time

trying to survive.

Looking back at Russia

in the 75 years before the Russian Revolution,

an amazing amount of creativity flourished in the chaos of a dying empire:

There were great authors,

magnificent musicians and artists

and world-class scientists.

You know the names --

Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Pavlov and Mendeleev.

Their contributions created tremors that still rock our world today.

Russia managed to pull creativity out of chaos during these last years of the empire,

but this positive movement was doomed to fail.

Why?

Without some degree of ORDER,

it was impossible for the Russians to use that creativity

to develop a successful economy.

Chaos led to more chaos,

and ultimately to the Russian Revolution.

When an oppressive new order was imposed by the Communists,

creativity keeled over and died (63).

Fellow citizens of the Creator's commonwealth:

We need the right combination of chaos and order

if we are going to help build up the kingdom on earth.

With too much order,

we'll choke our spiritual growth

and end up like China.

With too much chaos,

we'll spin out of control

and self-destruct like Russia.

Together, our challenge is

to balance Club Chaos

with the ChristBody,

and to use the raw material of this world

to create great things for God.

The secret is to follow our Creator

in not being crazed by confusion,

nor disturbed by disorder.

we can move confidently from chaos to creativity,

making something radically 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.

Hang tight to Chaos Theory --

God's Chaos Theory.

disorder can be harnessed into order,

and the old world of chaos

can give birth to a new world

of creativity, excitement and unexpected growth.