Today we have a guest post from Simon C.:
One of the (many) things that keeps my friend awake at night in despair is thinking about the surface of Venus. We have watched many shows over the years about the solar system and the universe which have made us both awe-inspired and deeply unsettled in equal measure. But for him, nothing beats the surface of Venus for its sheer hellishness—the heat, the pressure, the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds of sulphuric acid raining down, the intense volcanic activity. Just the very thought of that existing somewhere out there is horrific. It's a nightmare to him.
I was reminded of this hellscape recently when I read Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler's excellent The Bible With and Without Jesus. We are all familiar with the chaos that God found before the ordering of creation. Perhaps we are too familiar with it, being the second verse of Genesis, that we easily skip over without pausing for thought. Here are some renderings:
And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters (KJV)
The earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters (The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter)
The earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water (Tanakh translation, Jewish Publication Society)
Void, waste, darkness, deep, wind—this is not a pleasant scene. What struck me was their discussion of the possible translations of the Hebrew ru'ach: most commonly translated as spirit, equally possible are breath and wind, as we saw above. In Hebrew, they point out, using the phrase '…of God' can also be a type of superlative to mean 'mighty' or even 'God-awful'; and so originally Genesis was probably describing a "great wind" or "awesome wind". Putting this with the Hebrew participle merachefet, which is elsewhere translated as the fluttering of a bird or the quaking of bones, they write:
'If we imagine the initial chaos as crashing waves and gale-force winds, then "quake" is appropriate; if we think about unresolved chords, as in the beginning of Haydn's "The Creation," or ocean waves lapping upon the shore, "swept over" fits better.'
(The Bible With and Without Jesus, p.79)
For some reason I was struck by this description, and deeply disturbed as I contemplated the chaos. I thought of my friend and his terror of Venus.
Not to worry, though, you may think, because God brought order to this chaos, which culminated in the paradise of Eden. The God of the Hebrew Bible is depicted in various parts as a warrior who did battle with the primeval waters of chaos (including such characters as the monster Leviathan) to subdue them underfoot. The God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of cosmic physical proportions who sits enthroned, victorious, in the heavens with his foot firmly planted on the earth as his footstool. As Francesca Stavrakopoulou puts it 'the only proper place for chaos was beneath the feet of the deity enthroned in his temple in Jerusalem.'[1] He is in a very real sense keeping a lid on it. But in the Hebrew Bible, the chaos is never far away. What God organises in Genesis 1 when he uses a 'firmament' or 'vault' to separate and control the waters above from the waters beneath, he undoes in Genesis 7 when water is unleashed from the sky and from under the earth. It is an un-creation. Likewise in the New Testament, where Revelation shows the unravelling of cosmic order when the seventh seal is opened: the dragon appears, producing a flood to sweep away the woman 'clothed with the sun', followed by the beast from the sea (Leviathan) and the beast from the land (Behemoth). And that's just a small slice of the chaos. The seal is broken and all hell breaks loose.
I write this having come out of a few days of existential dread, when I seem to carry around with me the whole weight of my existence—my past regrets and disappointments, my present regrets and disappointments, and the 40 odd years of (possible and perceived) future regrets and disappointments which I still have to look forward to! It is perhaps a clumsy way of describing it, but it is the best that I can do. Over the years, I have become better equipped to deal with these moments when they come by trying to keep things in context, to reflect, to try and roll with it. Hanging on in quiet desperation is, after all, the English way. Many of us may be living lives where order and chaos are constantly doing battle, whether that is a mental or physical struggle, or aspects that may be social or material, such as our relationships with others or precarious finances and work situations. The Bible shows that there can be order—indeed God brought order—but that chaos is forever lurking, bubbling away under the surface, hiding around the corner. It often doesn't take much for it to all unravel. One of my favourite passages of the New Testament is 'the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not' (John 1.5). Why do I like it? For one, the imagery is simply beautiful. But beyond that, although I do believe that light can overcome darkness, order overcome chaos, in this passage at least—just for a moment—the light and the dark seem to coexist. And that rings true for so much of life.
Can darkness and chaos be conquered completely?
Should it?
Is there value and meaning in the coexistence with order and light, in the struggle between the two?
Does the light always have the upper hand because the darkness is baffled by its existence?
Is chaos forever lurking in your life? How do you deal with it?
One final thought. Those of you who are Nick Cave fans may be familiar with the Red Hand Files, a website in which Nick responds, thoughtfully, to questions that are sent to him. He is sent thousands and although he can only respond to a fraction, he has stated that he does read them all. Here is one answer that he reads out in the 2022 film This Much I Know To Be True:[2]
"Dear Billy,
The majority of letters that come into the Red Hand Files in all their various forms are essentially asking the same question: your question - 'How do I handle seemingly having no control over my life?' This question is often accompanied by feelings of betrayal and rage and resentfulness, of hopelessness. The truth is, we all live our lives dangerously, in a state of jeopardy, at the edge of calamity. You have discovered that the veil that separates your ordered life from disarray is wafer thin. This is the ordinary truth of existence, from which none of us are exempt. In time we all find out, we are not in control. We never were. We never will be. But, we are not without power. We always have the freedom to choose how to respond to whatever it is that life offers us. You can collapse and be dragged under. You can harden around your misfortune and become embittered. Or, you can move toward the opportunity that is offered to you, that of change and renewal. The next best action is always presented to you Billy, look for it, and move toward it. This is the great act of insubordination to the vagaries of life, afforded to us all."
Discuss.
Notes:
[1] God: An Anatomy, p.45. Stavrakopoulou provides an illuminating discussion of all these concepts in chapters 2 and 3, with all the pertinent Bible references.
[2] This isn't my transcription but one someone had done and posted on Reddit. So if there are mistakes, blame them!
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