Sunday 7 March 2010

Chaos theory - an ontological reality?

My life is  surrounded and even typified by chaos, or at least that's what people tell me after they've entered my study! At times the path across it is (according to one friend) 'stepping stones' and it often feels that life is like that too! Well, mine does. Still, I have theological and scientific appreciation of this reality.

What? Well ontos is being and if it's an 'ology' it has to be scientific (after all science is 'logia' ). I recall the BT adverts of the late eighties where Maureen Lipman get a telephone call from her grandson to say he only passed two exams, pottery and sociology. She says as she put the 'phone down, "He gets an ology and he says he's failed . . if you get an ology you're a scientist!'

Theologically, ontological means that it's not something that you do but something you are. Many would regard the being a priest as something you have become rather than merely a role you play. Ordination makes a difference and a different person! The same is true of being laos, that is 'God's people', it's not what you do but it's what you become and this is therefore another ontological change.

Let's take a few seconds to consider 1 Peter 2 (9-12):

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.  Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."

Once, indeed, we were not a people - we had no name but now, by the power of the Cross of Christ, we have a name and the chaos in which we find ourselves is actually sanctified and dare I say it, even ordered and definitely fixable! When people come and ask for a book, I can usually lay my hands on it, because what appears chaotic to others is order to me. Ask me for a DVD and I will probably be able to get it straight away.

Well, today in the chaos that you awake to, be assured that God can put his hand on the very thing you are looking for, you just need to ask Him for it.

And, He does answer - always! The problem is that it's not always the answer we want that we get because (too?) often it requires something from us like obedience, submission, repentance, forgiveness (to us and others), honesty and other things that require something from us. God cannot do it to us, but will do it with us and always is for us.

Go on, ask Him for the thing you need - He can put His hand on it immediately, chaos is only in the eye of the beholder and even the most tangled ball of life can be unravelled and if one word make everything, how hard can even the toughest thing we face be for Him?

Pax

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