Several weeks ago I logged into a zoom conference hosted by the Barna Group with Australian Pastor, Mark Sayers. If you’re unfamiliar with Sayers, I’d encourage you to change that. He is one of the best interpreters of culture in the church today, and both his podcast and his books have offered me a whole lot of insight into our current climate. Throughout his presentation, he drew attention to the fact that we’re living in an age of unprecedented information. The world has never seen anything like the internet, let alone the smartphone.
Even in my own life, I can feel the force of this. There have been countless times in casual conversation that I’ve talked about a tv show with friends in-depth, only to confess, “I haven’t watched this show, I just read about it on Wikipedia.” In some ways, it feels like anyone can know anything with a click, though their knowledge is only as thorough as what they read on the top google hit. All of this is compounded by the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Now more than ever we are aware of just how broken our world is: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. On my iPhone, all I have to do is swipe over to see an endless stream of human suffering: pandemics, racial injustice, economic collapse, the chaos of the world we live in borders on being unbearable, and that chaos requires an organizing principle.
Longing For Order
The human mind loves patterns, it’s always looking for a connection between ideas and objects. You’ve felt this if you’ve ever watched static on a tv for too long, or spent an afternoon cloud watching. Eventually, you start to notice shapes in the sky, there seems to be a discernible rhythm behind the white noise. We know intuitively that chaos can’t last forever, it has to be subdued, there has to be order. In ancient Israel, water was seen as a force of chaos. The sea was unpredictable and profoundly destructive. This was long before the advent of the seven-day forecast, and one false move meant death.
The association between water and the forces of chaos shows up all over your Bible. Yet it’s important to note that God shows his sovereignty over these forces. That is why the Spirit hovers over the waters in Genesis 1, because God is subduing this powerful and seemingly random force of destruction: he is the one who brings order, he is the one who subdues all that seems out of control. It is also why there is a sea of glass before the throne of God in Revelation; God has once and for all silenced the forces of chaos and destruction which threaten his world.
Perhaps my favorite part of scripture around this theme comes in Psalm 29 which reads, “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.” This is not the sea of glass in Revelation, the waters have not yet been brought to perfect stillness. But the Psalmist tells us that even here, the Lord is sovereign, and God speaks over the chaos.
During his presentation, Sayers pointed out that the rise of conspiracy theories and our near-religious devotion to politics has come exactly at a time when the world feels more chaotic and religious belief has begun to decline in the west. I wonder if this might be because our souls are restless to hear a voice speak over the waters of chaos that seem to be rising all around us. Intuitively we know that we need what the Psalmist describes. We need an organizing principle, and many of us are desperately grasping for anything to keep us from sinking: be that the latest promise of our favorite republican or democratic politician, or whatever conspiracy theory has surfaced on Reddit as of late. Rest assured, they are temporary flotation devices at best, they have no power to bring stillness to the chaos of our modern age, at least not for very long.
A Unique Opportunity
Our minds seek order and patterns amid chaos because they were meant to, eternity is in our hearts. But that pattern is not going to be found political platforms or conspiracy theories, it is found in providence. To believe the gospel is to know that we are united to Jesus, who walks upon the waves of the sea. To be a Christian is to know that there is one who speaks, “Peace” and the waves are still.
There are countless voices that we will be tempted to reach for in the chaos of modern life, but they are sinking along with us. Where we’ve trusted them, we ought to repent, and look towards the one who’s throne sits above a sea of glass. We also ought to extend this hope to our neighbors. Christians aren’t the only ones who are struggling amidst the chaos of a world gone wrong. Our non-believing friends and relatives are also looking for order, stability, and structure. In this troubled moment, we have the unique opportunity to call their attention to a voice over the waters who brings calm to every storm and orders even the most chaotic moments for our good and his glory.