Clearing Up A Common Fallacy.
Chaos, simply put is the absence of God. Satan is merely an angel with a severe psychosis.
Throughout the Scriptures, there are a little over 50 verses specifically mentioning Satan or where he appears. That number goes up a little if we consider all references to Baal or other false deities. Still, that’s not a lot. The Bible after all, contains over 31,000 verses. Satan is referenced in well under 2/10ths of a percent of them.
Contrast this to our flawed, human fixation with him. The human race finds Satan fascinating. Just look at the volume of literature and pop-culture devoted to him. Yet God remains comparatively unimpressed with him. As the book of Job opens, the Angels are assembled to give their reports to God. Is this a small group? Company size? Regimental? We are told that Satan is standing among them, and no one seems to be particularly put out.
God takes note, “So, where did you come from?” Satan seems rather nonchalant here. “I’ve been walking the Earth… going back and forth.” God’s reply is almost casual. “Oh, did you see my servant Job?”
Chaos. I Can’t Believe I Quit. Or Did I Get Fired?
Isaiah 14 asserts that Satan “fell from Heaven.” From Job we can infer that this was not a permanent state of affairs, if Satan was able to come back into the presence of God from time to time.
6. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
7. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Job, Chapter 1
This passage in Job reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza quits his job and burns the bridge behind him. When he come to his senses, Jerry tells him to go back on Monday “as if nothing happened.” Is that what The Devil is doing here? Trying to act like nothing happened?
The point is, Satan is mingling rather freely here with his former associates. Job does not devote a lot of ink to this, so there’s some room for conjecture. I get the impression that everyone seems pretty blasé, almost detached. It’s as though he’s just another angel turning in his report. Yet we tend to (mistakenly) equate him as some evil counter-weight to God’s Love and Mercy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The only counter to God’s presence is His absence. Chaos is the singular Opposite of God. In Colossians, we read that God holds all things together. Electrons spin around atomic nuclei, planets spin around stars. Galaxies spin around their cores, as they move away from each other to the edges of space.
Chevy Spark and Bugatti Chiron. Both need the oil changed.
We are put on this Earth to prevent Chaos. We prevent Chaos by battling its complementary variable – Entropy. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that Entropy is inevitable unless acted upon by an outside force. Everything breaks down and returns to a chaotic state unless benevolently acted upon. If acted upon malevolently, then the rate of Chaos accelerates. War, vandalism, demolition – these are actions which promote Chaos.
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.
1Corinthians 14:33 (NIV)
There is but One God, Yahweh, the Creator of The Universe. The Bible does not mention a “God of Chaos.” Occasionally, Chaos is described in metaphor as a fleeing serpent or the Middle Eastern god Rahab. But an actual entity breaking down matter at the same rate God is synthesizing it? I see no evidence of that.
Creation is a multi-billion-year cycle. Atoms are drawn to each other until the force of their compression initiates a fusion reaction, forming the stars including our own local sun. Hydrogen turns to helium until the stars exhaust themselves. The universe dies. Eventually, gravity will draw the atoms back together and the universe reforms. Rinse and repeat. Make that explode and repeat. The one constant is the Hand guiding all this. Even Entropy has a particular order to it.
Selah.
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