The Sock monster and other Things

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

This is a recent post from my own blog, editorbishop.blogdrive.com

I've often wondered at why the world doesn't make any sense to me. From the sock-eating monster in my washer and drier to the strange, perverted insanity that NPR tells me about the situation in Iraq, the world is not the way its supposed to be.

Man has struggled with this issue for quite some time now. I am not the first, I will not be the last. I believe that it is the world's nature to be chaotic. It is this chaos that early humanity personified and set in oppostion to their deities. The universe was created in the titanic struggle between the divine forces and other divine forces. Zeus and his kin struggling against the Titans. Marduk slaying the chaos dragon. These are the ways humanity sees the world. It is a world of struggle, combat, conflict. The chaos hasn't ended because one side claimed victory. It seems that the battle still rages and the gods must continue to fight for order.

Enter the God of the Hebrews in Genesis 1. Here there is not conflict, there is only chaos personified by the waters churning and raging under a mighty wind. Here the chaos is transformed into order by the spoken word of God. Here there can be no doubt that the victory over the chaos of the world is final. With all due respect to my friends who speak of reason. It is unreasonable to believe this. We do not live in a world of order, but of disorder. It does require faith to believe in the midst of evidence to the contrary though.

That is what I ask for today. Faith to believe when all the evidence points to the opposite.

E-B

Posted at 09:14 am by Editor-Bishop


	Kindly Viking June 3, 2004 09:08 AM PDT Sozo, in many places the Hebrew Bible seems to assert that YHWH has the preeminence over all other gods because YHWH was the one who did calm the waters of chaos. In fact, many of the references to the subduing of the waters or the setting limits and boundaries on the waters likely refer to this very thing. It is actually an amazing assertion of faith in Gen 1. Though the primordial chaos was present, God did not create through a cosmic battle between the gods, as did Marduk vs. Tiamat. YHWH created merely by a word. Then, in Genesis 2.4b ff, you have a different image of the creation, creation by the potter-God, who fashioned and formed the creation by God's own hand. The assertion may appear dualistic, yet the fact is that the children of Israel were living in the midst of a culture in which many different stories of the gods and the world/chaos/created order were circulting. The OT narratives were influenced by and dialoguing with those narratives, just as Paul did with the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17) and we dialogue with our culture through the stories about ultimate reality that we hear in the society and in the media today. It may sound dualistic (so does the story of God and Satan), but it is a remarkable profession of faith.


	Sozo May 24, 2004 10:10 AM PDT <<Enter the God of the Hebrews in Genesis 1. Here there is not conflict, there is only chaos personified by the waters churning and raging under a mighty wind. Here the chaos is transformed into order by the spoken word of God. Here there can be no doubt that the victory over the chaos of the world is final. >> This almost sounds dualistic. I know that you're speaking poetically, but it almost sounds like you're saying that something called 'chaos' existed and then God came along and made it orderly. But that even then, the world is still struggling to plunge headlong into chaos. If the world/universe seems chaotic, then it's because God allows it to be that way. It serves His purpose, which we are not necessarily privy to.


	Helen May 21, 2004 02:30 PM PDT Just reminded me of this verse... Hebrews 11:1 (yes, I had to look up the reference... I'm always bad with knowing where it is!!) Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I really liked what you had to say... and, ya know, it may not make sense to us, but I guess it does to god?!!


	Name May 20, 2004 10:24 AM PDT Sometimes I like to think of it as organized chaos

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