Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He live in Iowa with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
This is the beginning of the book of Genesis, and thus the beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Bible. It introduces a theme that would have been easily recognized by any ancient reader, but one that is just as easy for us to read past. It is a theme though that pervades the Bible and can help us make sense of crazy things like a virus that leads to a global pandemic.
You’ll notice that in Genesis 1:2 the Bible describes the pre-creation nothingness as a formless and empty dark watery abyss. This may cause issues for those of us who believe that the Bible teaches creation ex nihilo (from nothing) since it would seem to our modern minds that the Bible starts by describing something. But that isn’t quite what is going on. The language of Genesis 1:2 describes chaos. And for the ancient mind, creation is a process of bringing order and functionality to pointless, purposeless chaos.
Throughout the Bible there are two parts of nature that embody chaos: the dark and the sea. From the dark watery abyss of Genesis 1:2, to the mythical sea monsters at the end of Job, to the constant calling for God’s people to be a light in the darkness. Throughout the Old Testament the Bible acknowledges the chaos in the world, and faithfully proclaims that God is still the Lord of the forces of chaos.
Jesus demonstrates his mastery over the forces of chaos when he walks on water, calms the sea, claims to be the light of the world, etc. In this way he is identifying himself with the God of the Old Testament.
What I find really interesting, is that the Bible doesn’t necessary attribute moral goodness, or badness to the chaos.
We see this from the very beginning in Genesis 1. God’s work of creation doesn’t abolish the chaos of the pre-created state. But it does put bounds on it. God creates light and then separates the light from the darkness. God separates the waters and creates a livable space between them and provides dry land as a place where humans and animals can flourish. At the end of the sixth day, God declares his creation very good, but this creation is still plagued by chaos. A world of bounded chaos is a sufficient starting point for God’s creation-project, but it is not the end.
We know this because the end looks radically different than the beginning. In the last two chapters of Revelation, and thus the end of the Christian Bible, we are told of a New Creation in which there is no more sea, and in which there is no need for light because God’s full presence has abolished all darkness. This is the proper end of the creation-project that God has always been moving it towards. The end looks different from the beginning.
Events of natural evil - things like the coronavirus, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. - fit well into the category of chaos that we find in the Bible. Instead of being the work of God as punishment, or evil works of Satan, we can view them as simply chaotic parts of this unfinished creation. We can respond to them with wonder, as God invites Job to, and we can use them to grow deeper in our ability to model the mercy, compassion, grace, and love of Christ to our neighbor. We can also recognize that they produce in us a longing for something more. Universally as human we are ill at ease with elements of this world. We can pretend, but there is no hope of us mastering the chaos. Rather we can recognize that we are created for something more and anticipate the day when God brings his work to a glorious conclusion in the New Creation.