Now that I’ve finished my Wikiklesia chapter on decentrailzed non-hierarchical structures, and have finished reading The Starfish and the Spider, I’ve been dipping into Robert Farrar Capon’s The Third Peacock: The Problem of God and Evil (o/p, available as part of a trilogy, The Romance of the Word: One Man’s Love Affair With Theology : Three Books : An Offering of Uncles/the Third Peacock/Hunting the Divine Fox). It’s fantastic good stuff, I tell you. He’s trying to begin an explanation of the problem of evil’s presence in the world, and as he begins chapter two I fall prey to the matter of connecting dots between the reading and writing I’ve just finished and that which I’m doing now. Capon has no purpose for discussing hierarchical structures, just the fact that creation is inherently messy and bloody… a point he makes while describing the food chain. Then he begins chapter two.
Take stock of what we have come up with so far: Evil is assignable to freedom; freedom has to be blamed on God. Now if we are facing facts, that means that God has dangerously odd tastes: He is inordinately fond of risk and roughhouse. Any omnipotent being who makes as much room as he does for back talk and misbehavior strikes us as slightly addled. Why, when you’re orchestrating the music of the spheres, run the awful risk of letting some fool with a foghorn into the violin section? Why set up the delicate balance of nature and then let a butcher with heavy thumbs mind the store? It just seems—well, irresponsible. If we were God, we would be more serious and respectable: no freedom, no risks; just a smooth obedient show presided over by an omnipotent bank president with a big gold watch.
So here’s me, thinking ,”Yes, of course,” and connecting those pesky dots which looked at first glance to be entirely unrelated. And maybe they are, but I’ve got them provisionally joined, at least for now.
If God is willing to take huge risks with creation and with whom he leaves the keys to the kingdom — or the butcher shop, why aren’t we? It seems to me that we’ve built hierarchical structures around ensuring that the wrong people don’t get allowed to do too much, that the heavy lifting is left up to the professionals, and that somebody in charge keeps tabs on everything, rendering permission and the loan of keys on an as-needed basis to make sure nothing gets too far out of line, and to snap it back if it does. Somebody like a bank president with a big gold watch. God seems to be far more content with chaotic expressions than we are. He empowers all of us far more than we seem willing to have each other empowered.
It seems to me that our construction of large hierarchical manifestations of “church” somehow expresses one of our fundamental problems with God… which means we’re spending a lot of effort to build something that is not patterned after the things that God likes, the things which give him greatest joy. Paul Cain used to ask, “What if you spent your whole life baking apple pies for God, and when you died and met him you found out he didn’t like apple pie?”
What do you think? Are the structures we build to express God and the gospel far more rigid and hierarchical than the chaotic creation which he himself made to express himself?
There is a great cinematic scene where God is the guy with the gold watch in a business suit making sure he is completely in control.. eliminating all chance and “balancing the equation”… Matrix Reloaded :)
Interesting, though, to note that when it comes to hierarchical structures, Capon is on the side of structure, though with his acerbic sense of humor intact. In the old quandry about whether or not bishops are for the ‘good’ of the church or part of the ‘essence’ of the church is answered by Capon saying that they are part of the essence of the church because they’ve never been any damn good.
I am reminded by Schaeffer that it is all too easy, yet incorrect, to look at the world around us and at human beings and assume that the way things are now is the way they have always been. That is, when we ignore the fall of man and its effects on the world around us we can easily draw incorrect conclusions as to what God is like. We are not as we were originally created/intended to be.
I submit that although God allows for freedom of choice for Man(kind) it does not necessarily follow that our choices or their effects were/are part of His will, nor that He embraces or prefers them. Just because a little mess is necessary in order to reach an end doesn’t mean that the mess itself is desired or comfortable.
Also, may I submit that God has a perspective that we don’t have? Sure, he risked chaos by allowing us freedom, but He also saw all the possible outcomes and was prepared to handle each of them. Anyone else have that kind of an edge when it comes to risk-taking?
Finally, I believe that the majority of the book of Proverbs tells us to pursue wisdom with all that we are/have. Balance anyone?
I wish the word ‘chaos’ was better defined…often it is assumed that chaos and order (cosmos) are binary opposites, which I guess is historically correct…but under modern assumptions it is perhaps better to see chaos as existing somewhere on the spectrum between, in the milieu of, order and disorder. That there is in fact deep order in chaos…that said, I don’t see the need to react against ‘order’…it is not either/or
I really like what Cindy-lu has said (assuming I understand)…that the question is always who is at the center, who is driving this, what is the authority behind this chaos – this crazy universe? Most often it is in fact man, despite explicit claims of divine authority and pious rhetoric…we believe we see the problems and that we can figure out an objective way to solve/resolve them…we soon become the authority…our structures merely pragmatic…
I’d offer that the church was once like a fine-dinning establishment – a labor of love – and people paid a high price to get in and to eat…but at some point the patrons turned inward, a decadence and a hubris in what WE had in our fine foods arose…so the shunned shouted for revolution! and the curators of the restaurant were stirred to change – they took down the protocol and reduced the prices – they proclaimed that everyone could enter…’come as you are’…but the consumers quickly started to drive the focus…next thing we knew we were sitting on plastic chairs and eating BigMacs and over-processed transfats. Our eyes glistened at each new prize and color of shake…we thought we were loving everyone but we only ended up tainting the food and the appetite…
I’d offer that we have been running under 2 false premises – that the eating was more important than the food itself and that in order to eat one had to get people into the restaurant…
But it was us who neglected to buy extra food, once we saw its goodness, and to then take it out to friends and neighbors, so that it touched all of life…and it was us who neglected to dress the man who could not enter and to invite them in to dine with us…
What happened to that great establishment?…oh the food…for which I’d journey miles…now it’s just me, my BigMac, a fat belly and a confused conscience.
Good stuff, lots for further thinking. Yes Capon would be much more structural in his thinking by virtue of his ordination, but even there he had more egalitarian tendencies.
Chaos as used here is perhaps better understood as entropy, or chaordic. It looks like chaos to us largely because we don’t understand it, yet somehow it’s in a measured state of disorder within bounds that we don’t see.
Ryan, I think I like the banquet metaphor. I like most metaphors with food in them, but yours poses some good questions for thought.