Where did all this chaos come from?

A simple perusal of the world (both near and far) reveals there’s a lot of chaos out there.

Perhaps, when looking at your own life, things seem to be somewhat chaotic as well.

Where did all this chaos come from?

An unknown person once responded to that question with this:

A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older.

“Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the oldest profession.”

“No,” said the engineer, “before life began there was complete chaos, and it took an engineer to create some semblance of order from this chaos. So engineering is older.”

“But,” chirped the triumphant politician, “who created the chaos?”

We can probably blame some troubles on politicians, even some degree of chaos, but they aren’t the root source of all the chaos that plagues humanity in general, and perhaps in homes and lives you’re well familiar with.

So, where did all this chaos come from?

When sin came into the world, chaos entered. Chaos is generally an ugly fruit of sin.

In the beginning — the very beginning — it wasn’t that way. In the beginning, a type of “chaos” was the building blocks from which God created everything that has, and does, exist:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters,” Genesis 1:1-2.

Perhaps you’ve seen a demonstration of a great artist who approaches a blank canvas, and then splat! He splatters it with an assortment of paint colors, at first splashed “chaotically” onto the canvas.

But then he begins to work the paints, separating one color here, another there, mixing some over there, and eventually, patiently, wonderfully forming the chaos of colors into a marvelous masterpiece.

And when God stepped back and looked at His work, well this:

“Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!” Genesis 1:31.

From a shapeless, formless, dark void, God created a perfectly ordered masterpiece.

One unknown commentator noted this about God’s creative work:

Since God is a God of order, apple seeds grow into apple trees, a male koala and a female koala will produce baby koalas, the moon goes through predictable phases, and planets don’t fly out of their orbits. Because God is a God of order, not chaos, we know that a2 + b2 will always equal c2 in a right triangle and that, no matter where we are in the universe, F = G × Mm/r2. Physical laws remain the same, day after day, year after year, century after century.

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. As a result, the order inherent in God’s creation was damaged, and chaos was introduced: we had confusion instead of surety, deception instead of truth, hiding instead of openness, weeds instead of crops, and pain instead of ease. We lost the garden. Our relationship with God became chaotic, as did the very nature of who we are.

Where there is sin, chaos usually follows.

That’s where all this chaos comes from.

But there’s a way out of the chaos, a way to back to God and an orderly life He offers us:

“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me,'” John 14:6.

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life,” John 10:10.

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world,” John 16:33.

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation,” 2 Corinthians 5:17-19.

Ready to ditch the chaotic life for a life of peace and order?

Come to Jesus.

Scotty