Chaos Theory

To be a church that un-churched, non-Christian people want to come to, you have to be grace wholesalers. You love people where they’re at. You love them no matter what. Unfortunately, most churches and most Christians don’t act like grace wholesalers. Why?

One of the reasons is because of chaos. What I mean is that people are messy. People have pain from their past, sins their addicted to, bad attitudes and problems they can’t overcome. People are messy, and we want to serve them, but don’t want to deal with their messiness.

But we have to. Why? Because that’s where God’s at. He’s with those people, in the chaos. Think about the first thing we see God doing in the Bible. It’s not creating, it’s “hovering.” The bible describes what God was hovering over as “formless,” “empty,” and “darkness.” I understand that the idea here, in the original language of the bible, is of chaos. It’s like God was hovering over this dark, chaotic messiness. What happens next? God dives into it, and he brings light to the darkness, order to the chaos, and beauty to the messiness.

And I know this scene sort of has to come first, like chronologically, but I wonder if it also comes first because this is one of the specialties of God. I think God is just really good at bringing light to darkness, order to chaos, and beauty to messiness. We see this happening in Jesus’ life all the time. Jesus’ “M.O.” was to go into a town, hover around a little, and then dive into the dark, chaotic, messy places in people’s lives, and to bring light, order, and beauty.

What we find God doing at the beginning of the Old Testament we find him doing in the beginning of the New Testament. And he’s still doing the same thing today. So, what I’ve come to realize is that if I follow Jesus, he may let me hover with him for a little while, but then he will always lead me to bring light to darkness, order to chaos, and beauty to messiness.

And so, if we’re gonna follow Jesus we’ll have to follow him into dark, chaotic, messy places, and sometimes it’s in other people’s lives. And, again, we don’t want to go there – but it’s the only way we can follow Jesus.

Tomorrow I’ll share an example of this from my life.