Out of Chaos, Effective Butterflies by Dr. Alice Davis Scripture Text: I Kings 17:8-16

                

Have you ever noticed there are not many straight lines in nature?  I thought about this many years ago as I was contemplating nature - I think when I was at the beach.  Most of God’s creation is made without the benefit of straight lines and 90° angles.  It was a really interesting thought that has stayed with me over the years. 

I made the mistake of mentioning this to a group of students I was working with at McCormick Seminary, trying to make a point about how our meditations on nature can lead us to reflect theologically about how God works in the world.  Sharing my musings on straight lines with them, I discovered that one of the students was a physicist, who pointed out to me that there is no such thing as a straight line, and what we call a straight line is just a series of points on a continuum!  You need to be careful when you raise theories like this and don’t know the background of the people with whom you’re speaking.  But the point is still made: the idea of a straight line is a human invention, and a very necessary one for how we build and create.  I can’t imagine what our world would be like without straight lines and 90° angles. 

Yet, when I look at how we build things compared to how God creates, I think our great buildings and structures all built with straight lines and 90° angles must look to God like stick men drawings look to us compared to real human figures. How magnificent and complex is the world of God’s creation, not made with many, or any, straight lines. And, as the student pointed out, how wonderful and creative is the human mind to invent the concept of straight lines so we can put together magnificent, human-made structures.

All of this came back to me when I began to explore, at a very amateur level, some of the writings about the relatively new scientific field of chaos theory.  Chaos theory moves beyond the human search for the laws of nature, beyond the Newtonian approach that searches for definable rules that govern the mechanics of nature, to look at those forces and actions in nature that are to us unpredictable, in order to see what we can learn from that unpredictability.  As one scientist put it, chaos theory explores the interpenetration of determinacy and randomness—or, in English, chaos theory studies the connection between order and chaos.

Chaos in scientific terms is seen in those systems that operate through dynamic forces in such a way that we are unable to predict the outcome. Dynamic systems are those that are impacted by a lot of different forces, like the weather, which involves the sun, wind, movement of the planet, and a host of other forces. The whole idea of chaos theory emerged from the studies of a meteorologist, Edward Lorenz, who in 1961 was running computer simulations in order to try to better predict the weather.  I won’t try to explain much of all that has developed, because I really can’t, but there are some interesting outcomes of this initial work and the studies that came out of it that tell us some new and fascinating ideas about the connections between what seems like chaos to us and the order that we need to survive.

So here are some very amateur, thumb-nail sketches of a few of those theories:

1)  One of the first theories to arise from chaos studies is that very minute differences in conditions at the beginning of a dynamic set of factors can result, over the long run, in major differences in the outcome.  A very small change in the initial condition of a system involving a number of different factors will result in wide variances in the outcome.  This is called the “butterfly effect,” because the example that is often given to explain this theory is that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world might set into motion a chain of events that creates a hurricane in another part of the world.

2)  Another theory discovered by looking at unpredictable systems is that the unpredictability is limited to certain bounds.  When the different possibilities of a particular dynamic system are calculated out to high levels and repeated, what happens is that patterns develop, showing that there are limitations to the options that can result from a given set of conditions.  This constraint of any unpredictable system is called the “strange attractor," because it acts as a limitation to the possible outcomes.  I use the example that the butterfly’s flap will only cause certain types of changes in a given system—for example, it wouldn’t cause the moon to fall out of the sky, because that is out of bounds for the given set of events that the butterfly’s flaps would cause.

3) A third theory for us to consider is when dynamic systems are computed out to high scales, while they start with a pattern, they eventually end with what seems like unpredictability, or chaos.  But the further you push the equation, windows of order appear in the midst of the chaos.  This is explained as windows of “self-organization,” or patterns of order, that arise in the midst of the system of chaos.

4) Finally, there is a global pattern to chaos.  I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but what it means is that in all dynamic systems, there is some regularity.  There is a mathematical constant that can be found in all chaotic systems.  The variable, called Feigenbaum’s Number, is 4.692016090.  I really don’t get exactly what this means, but what’s interesting for me is that this number is a constant throughout all dynamic systems—in everything from the dripping of a faucet to how the clouds pile up, from how your coffee swirls around in your cup to how measles will spread in a population.  There is one unifying constant behind it all.  There is an order behind all of what we define as chaos. Well, if that doesn’t get you thinking about a God who doesn’t need to use straight lines to create, I don’t know what will!

We don’t often think about chaos as the scientists do, as something to measure or examine.  But we do feel chaos in our lives. Chaos, those times when we cannot predict what will happen, those times when everything around us seems out of order.  Chaos, those times when we can’t control the outcome of the events that seem to play havoc with our existence. We feel chaos when people around us can’t agree on anything, when all of the things that you’ve been working on just seem to fall apart, when sickness or death disrupt the orderliness we try to attain in life, when all of our life’s plans are changed by one small event we hadn’t counted on.  It feels like chaos to us when we are struck by events we didn’t ask for and couldn’t predict, things that change the outcome we had planned, when we can’t see what the outcome will be because there are all of these other things that keep coming in, seeming to take our lives out of our own hands. When all of our best laid plans…..

I believe the widow of Zarephath must have felt that kind of chaos in her life.  She was a widow, with a child, trying to make a living until her son became old enough to care for her, when this drought hits the land.  Drought is one of those things we can’t predict, putting our lives into chaos.  This woman, as a widow, was more vulnerable than most, because she didn’t have anyone else to help her through the troubling situation she was in.  She was down to her last bit of flour and oil, and she knew she and her son were going to die.  I can’t imagine what that must have felt like, but I believe it must have felt like chaos to her.

While she was musing on her impending death, along comes a stranger, Elijah, who asks her for a drink of water.  Now she of course didn’t know Elijah had been sent to her by Elijah’s God.  She lived in the land where Baal was worshipped.  Jezebel’s father, Ethbaal, ruled in that land.  And just like the rest of us are inclined to do, she would have been expected to worship the god that was the god of her upbringing.  But the true God, the one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, sent the prophet Elijah to this poor widow in a foreign land where they worshiped a foreign god, so that Elijah could be nourished.  This God who doesn’t create with straight lines and who is not bound by our cultural or religious differences saw something in this poor widow that made God know that she would do what was necessary to protect Elijah from the drought.

For Elijah to ask this poor widow from the land where Baal ruled for a drink of water was pretty outrageous in itself, in the middle of a drought.  But without responding or raising a question, she went to get the stranger the drink of water that he asked for.  That was the response Elijah needed in order to know she was the one chosen by God to help him.  That was the small act of kindness that set into motion a series of blessings that she would receive.  God knew something about this woman before God sent Elijah to her.  God looked beyond her faulty understanding of who God was to the goodness that was in her heart.  You see, God didn’t send Elijah to her because of her correct theology, but because of the goodness of her heart.

This offering of the drink of water to a stranger in the middle of the drought was what let Elijah know she would also be willing to share with him her last flour and oil, in her mind bringing her death and her son’s death that much closer. But she did it out of the goodness of her heart and with the hope that maybe, just maybe, Elijah’s God could do something that no one else could do. 

And she was blessed.  Just like Elijah said, the flour and oil did not run out before they again had rain, and she and her son were able to survive off of the land.  She was blessed, beyond just living, because when her son got sick and died, Elijah was there to bring him back to life. She was blessed beyond the raising of her son again so he could care for her in her old age, but also because her faith in Elijah’s God put her name in Scripture, and even more than that, put her name in the book of everlasting life. 

But she was not the only one who was blessed by her one small act of kindness.  Elijah got to live, too. But not only that, Elijah was able to perform the first raising from the dead miracle found in the Bible, letting him, all of Israel, and everyone else know what a great prophet he was. And not only that, but Jesus was also blessed by her one small act of kindness, too.  Jesus was able to use her as an example to the religious leaders—who were straight line thinkers—to show that this act of kindness and her faith that followed from it was more important to God than the theological correctness they sought after. Not only that, but each and every one of us is also is blessed by her act of kindness because we have her example to help us learn the lesson that Jesus taught.

Her one little butterfly flap toward kindness, toward goodness, coming even in the midst of the chaos of her life, set into motion the series of events that made a magnificent difference in the outcome for her, her son, for Elijah’s life and ministry, for Jesus’ testimony to the Jewish leaders and for us even now.  One little butterfly flap of kindness, an offer of water to a thirsty stranger in the middle of a drought, had a drastic and unpredictable outcome. One little flap towards goodness, driven by a good heart in a woman with little understanding of the God we serve.

I guess you see where I’m going with this.  Jesus never told us it was our job to try to understand all there is to understand about God.  Jesus never told us it was our job to try to predict what God will do next.  Jesus never told us it was our job to keep everything in order or to control how everyone thinks about God.  That’s straight line thinking. Jesus never told us life would be neat and orderly, that we would always agree, or that the chaotic storms would not come into our lives.  If you think that’s the way life is supposed to be, that’s straight line thinking.

What Jesus told us to do was to feed the hungry, provide drinks for the thirsty, invite the stranger in, clothe the naked, and tend to those who are sick and imprisoned. What Jesus told us to do is to go out into the world and share the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. What Jesus told us to do is to share the Gospel with the whole world, teaching the world all the things Jesus commanded, and highest among those commandments is to love God and love each other. 

God is not looking for correct theology from us.  What God is looking for is good hearts, like the widow of Zarephath - good hearts trying to do God’s will of loving all God’s children.  Trying to find correct theology is straight-line thinking. Exploring theology is a good thing, but you see, we will never get it completely right.  If God were looking for people with correct theology, there are a lot of great people who would never make it into the kingdom.

If we look back throughout the history of Christianity, we find so many great church leaders who misunderstood the breadth and depth of the love, mercy and grace of this God we serve who doesn’t need straight lines in order to create.  The great early church father, Tertullian, believed “every woman opened the door to the devil,” in accordance with the religious thinking of that time.  We can recall the great inquisitions and witch hunts of the 15th – 17th centuries, when church leaders thought the most important thing for them to do was to rout out witches and burn them at the stake; and because women were the weaker sex, 90% of those burned at the stake were women. David Chidester, in his book, Christianity: A Global History (San Francisco, CA, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), pointed out that not only witches were burned at the stake, but Christians who denied the existence of witches were considered heretics and burned, as well. The German Christian church, with a few outstanding exceptions like Karl Barth and Deitrich Bonhoeffer, backed the German Reich.  Chidester quotes one church leader who said that “faith in the Reich is the German form of Christianity in the 20th Century.”

In our own country, Thomas Jefferson believed Africans were “inferior to whites in body and mind.”  The Christian church leaders used the Bible and biblical authority to try to teach slaves they should be happy slaves—thank God they didn’t buy it.  The Christian leaders banned slaves from gathering together to worship God.  The Christian leaders after slavery refused to let black people into their houses of worship.  And those liberals who did still made us sit in the balcony or in the back.  Chidester said the Christian system “represented an invisible system of behavioral control” to keep slaves in slavery and blacks where they belonged.  Thank God they didn’t buy it.

We can look back now and see their biblical and theological perspectives were just wrong.  In my weaker moments, I like to believe none of them would get to heaven.  Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think all of them will, because some of the leaders were driven by evil, intentionally misleading others away from God.  But most of them were good-hearted people with misguided understandings.  I think they’ll get their reward, too, because my Bible tells me we serve a God who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the Throne of Glory, with exceeding joy!  This is the only wise God and our Savior, Jesus, to whom we give all dominion and power, glory and honor.

This God doesn’t need straight lines to create and doesn’t expect us to understand that.  This God can use people with good hearts and incorrect theology.  Our job is not to try to make everybody understand the Bible like we understand it, to understand God the way we understand God, because all of us only see through a glass darkly. That’s the wonderful thing about being Baptist, we don’t demand we all think alike—we don’t engage in the kind of straight-line thinking that tries to put everyone’s understanding of God into the same theological—straight-line—box.  Our job is to do the things Jesus told us to do.  Our job is to be the curve in the straight-line thinking world.  Now let me apologize to any scientists in this group for the liberties I’m about to take with chaos theory, which come from my theological reflections on what we’re learning about our God, who doesn’t need straight lines to create.

You see, when we start flapping in the right direction, the direction towards God, doing the things Jesus commanded us to do, our actions are the dynamic forces that can result in making a tremendous difference in this world.  When our actions proceed from love, the “strange attractor” theory tells us they will not go out of the bounds of love.  When we do acts of kindness, mercy and love, even if we can not see the results of what we do, these acts will always produce the fruits consistent with their intention—a  good encouraging word, a helping hand, an offer of forgiveness, a move to stop injustice.  On the other hand, acts away from God, mean and unkind words, unforgiving hearts, arrogant self-righteousness, hate, oppression, all things that God hates, will lead the world away from God.  Our job is to keep on trying to curve the world back to the goodness of God.  Our job is to keep on flapping in the direction of goodness, love, mercy, grace, unity.

Chaos theory also tells us the storms we face in life will not last forever, and that what seems like chaos now will sooner or later settle down to a time of peace and rest.  There will always be “windows of self-organization,” or times of peace and a break from the chaos. But chaos is still all around and will come again in our lives. Our job is to keep on flapping in the right direction, even in the middle of our chaos.  And chaos theory tells us what we already know: that what seems like chaos is not really chaos, just unpredictability, and that there is a constant behind all that happens, even when we don’t understand it fully.  That “constant” from a theological perspective is not a number, but is God, who I am convinced knows there is no such thing as chaos, because God knows all, sees all and is in control of all of it.  God’s job is to know all there is to know.  Our job is to keep on flapping in the right direction, even in the middle of what seems like chaos, doing our best in the middle of the troubles, woes, storms, and problems to keep on doing the good God calls us out to do - Keep on helping others who are in trouble.  Keep on working towards the kingdom of heaven on earth, as it is in heaven.  Keep on preaching truth to power.  Keep on holding up the blood-stained banner.  Keep on keeping on, and don’t feel no ways tired.  Because God will give us the strength when we need it to keep on through the storm and rest from the chaos when we need that, too.

Just imagine with me, that if one little butterfly flap in the direction of goodness could have such a powerful effect as the flap of kindness made by the widow of Zarephath, what would be the outcome of our ministries if we, working together in ministry, as American Baptists called out as a people of passion, prayer and power, all start coordinating our flaps of goodness in the same direction?  If we started flapping together towards more justice in the world, towards more peace in the world, towards more healing, more hope, more joy?  If working together in ministry, we started flapping for justice for the homeless and for better funding for our schools, producing hurricanes of righteousness to change our country?  If churches started flapping wings in solidarity, behind more funding for research for mental illness and AIDS, creating tornadoes of healing and hope?  If we coordinated the flaps of the churches in our regions to address local issues of children in poverty, creating tsunamis of love, care, health and wholeness?  If we synchronized all of our flaps towards justice, we could create floods and tidal waves of peace around the world!

Oh, the storms will keep on raging.  Chaos will not be removed from our lives.  Our job is to keep on flapping our butterfly wings in the direction of goodness.  Now there may be some of you men, or women, too, who are a little uncomfortable seeing yourselves flapping like a butterfly.  So if it makes you feel better, imagine yourself flapping with the wings of an eagle, because you see it doesn’t matter what you flap or how you flap, what matters is you just keep on flapping towards the goodness of God.

There’s a song sung in the African American tradition that helps us to understand what it means to keep on flapping when the going gets rough.  It goes like this:  “I don’t feel no-ways tired.  I’ve come too far from where I started from.  Nobody told me the road would be easy, but I don’t believe God brought me this far to leave me.”  God has brought us through storms before, American Baptists, and I don’t believe God is going to leave us now.  Our job is to keep on flapping….

---

Alice Davis has served as Pastor of Irving Park Baptist Church in Chicago for a little over one year, and before that as an Associate Minister of Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, DC since 1994. She is an At-Large Senator to the Executive Committee of the Ministers Council. She is a proud new grandmother of Kayin Burnette Davis, born to her son and daughter-in-law Bakori and Adrienne Davis on 2/21/2005.