FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS TO CHAOS TO COSMOS.
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. Genesis 1: 2.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth … ” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Revelation 21: 1
A few days ago, at breakfast time, I asked a table companion: “Describe the world today”. His one-word answer: Chaos.
“Chaos” was what God saw, when, ‘in the beginning’, peeking through the darkness, He detected total disorder, suggesting unpredictability, intimating structure-less matter, masking mass without meaning.
Chaos is the opposite of ‘cosmos’, whose foremost feature is being ‘rule-based and having a law-full order’. God/Cosmos embodies empathy, personifies proficiency and predictability. That long Psalm, 119, is an ode to God’s greatness: “Righteous are you, O Lord, and your laws are right”.
Today Chaos dominates and causes crises galore, and that in a world coping with dangers so immense that the globe is on fire, because we, all 8+ billion of us, have become estranged from God, estranged from creation, estranged from reason and common sense.
How to re-constitute Cosmos.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself a victim of lawlessness, unceremoniously hanged by Trump’s predecessor, Adolf Hitler, ventured an audacious definition of God, equating God and the world as one. I fervently endorse his strategy, as it makes ‘theology’ a daily, intimate part of LIFE, totally in line with Jesus’ message, “Choose Life, and that to the FULL.”
Karen Armstrong, in her powerful book, “Sacred Nature”, writes that God is present everywhere in the natural world. Again: take note Theology: Wake Up! The Bible will no longer count in the renewed Creation to come, when the Chaos we created will become the Christ-centered Cosmos.
History simply is Chaos become Cosmos through God, become Chaos, through us, and become Cosmos again, through Christ.
The laws of Ecology.
God, in his wisdom, has built into the laws of creation that
nothing ever disappears,
that nature/creatin knows best,
that everything is connected to everything else, and
that nothing comes free.
A world on Fire.
Today God’s judgements are at work. Unavoidable. One Hundred Percent Guaranteed.
Genesis describes how ‘in the beginning’, untold billions of years ago, God saw chaos. Psalm 33: 9 simply says: “God spoke and it came to be”. And Creation was conceived.
Unbelievable. Unexplainable. Beyond conception. Far above human reason. God spoke and Chaos became Cosmos: a chaotic mass, became a rule-based, law-governed entity, livable perfection, which God called ‘good’ seven times.
And then, miracle of miracles, he deeded this perfection to us, the human race. Genesis 9 confirms this in a solemn covenant.
Then what? Sin. Sin? What is S.I.N?
Sin is taking God’s name in vain. That has nothing to do with God’s name. I am known by my name: Egbert Drewes Hielema. I try to live up to that name. God, however, is beyond. Beyond a name, beyond a portrait, beyond conception. God, in his goodness to be known, left his name on every created item: the earth and the fulness thereof, the air, the seas and what they contain. We know him first by his creation, that wonderful book, that entity, the Cosmos.
However.
Due to our lack of environmental discipline, Ocean heat threatens to destabilize sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, causing massive eruptions of methane contained there, highly flammable, in the form of methane hydrates and free gas held underneath these hydrates.
Now we are in the era of AI, the zenith of human ingenuity: “We are racing into the unknown. We are creating technologies we cannot control,” is just one of the warnings.
In building ever more advanced AI, we may be creating a new type of being – and this could be the most consequential thing our species has ever done. Yet we have essentially no plan for how to navigate this process ethically. That, by any reckoning, is insane. Are we creating a kind of being that matters morally? Are AI systems conscious, in some way? And, if they aren’t now, might they become soon?
Questions.
If these systems matter morally, the implications are staggering. Would we need to pay Chat GPT for its services? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought.
No wonder we prefer not to ask. And when forced to consider it, those industries will likely move the goalposts, always setting the bar for moral patient-hood just above wherever AI systems happen to be.
“If you respect nature, nature will respect you.” This is the ancient wisdom of many Indigenous people.
Robin Wall, in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, quotes Joanne Macy: “until we can grieve for our planet, we cannot love it – grieving is a sign of spiritual health.”
Prayer is needed, prayer for Parousia, prayer for Christ’s return.
Pray without ceasing. Pray for the Cosmos to come. Today.