Six Degrees of...Everybody
So we were talking about chaos theory and the butterfly effect yesterday in my youth class (heh, probably not your standard youth fare...but it applied) and I remembered a quote from An Unstoppable Force (the book I'm teaching in our adult Sunday School class right now) by Erwin McManus that ties into this new line of thinking that God is leading me on - our deep interconnectedness.
Okay, this is kinda long, so bear with me:
"When God creates, he creates with relational integrity. Everything is connected and fits together. This is true not only in the physical realm, but even more so in the spiritual. The Bible tells us that when man sinned, all creation groaned.
"Those who study science have told us that a butterfly fluttering its wings in South America could, in some sense, be the primary cause of an avalanche in Antarctica. This level of complexity strikes us as new and innovative, and yet the Scriptures have advocated this kind of interconnection for thousands of years. The idea that the sin of one man and one woman could send a disruption throughout the entire cosmos is an extraordinary description of the organic connection between all of nature.
"The pulling of one piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the primary influence of famines that spread across deserts, tsunamis that swallow up villages, earthquakes that shake the earth, and the unpredictable force and violence of nature. According to Scripture, everything is connected, and every action has at least some effect on the whole."
I had never looked at "original sin" as the butterfly effect, but...that really nails it. I have had so many people complain about the doctrine of original sin - and more than a handful have left the church because they simply cannot accept the idea that (here we go again...) "a loving God would condemn anyone for something they didn't even do."
So, is it just that nature allows a forest fire to destroy a million acres because a beaver belched in Guatamala? (Okay, I don't know how you could trace the cause and effect of a beaver belching...but you know what I mean...)
It's like the The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (heh, I couldn't get a higher number than a 3 - of course if I really PLAYED the game with someone...I don't think I could win it...) where you try to trace things back through a bunch of wierd, and seemingly unrelated, permutations. And, since we seem to need to get to the beginning or origins of things, sin has an origin. And we are ALL RELATED TO ONE ANOTHER BY IT.
But redemption has a single origin, too. If sin came through one person's action, redemption comes through one man, as well.
Okay, this is kinda long, so bear with me:
"When God creates, he creates with relational integrity. Everything is connected and fits together. This is true not only in the physical realm, but even more so in the spiritual. The Bible tells us that when man sinned, all creation groaned.
"Those who study science have told us that a butterfly fluttering its wings in South America could, in some sense, be the primary cause of an avalanche in Antarctica. This level of complexity strikes us as new and innovative, and yet the Scriptures have advocated this kind of interconnection for thousands of years. The idea that the sin of one man and one woman could send a disruption throughout the entire cosmos is an extraordinary description of the organic connection between all of nature.
"The pulling of one piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the primary influence of famines that spread across deserts, tsunamis that swallow up villages, earthquakes that shake the earth, and the unpredictable force and violence of nature. According to Scripture, everything is connected, and every action has at least some effect on the whole."
I had never looked at "original sin" as the butterfly effect, but...that really nails it. I have had so many people complain about the doctrine of original sin - and more than a handful have left the church because they simply cannot accept the idea that (here we go again...) "a loving God would condemn anyone for something they didn't even do."
So, is it just that nature allows a forest fire to destroy a million acres because a beaver belched in Guatamala? (Okay, I don't know how you could trace the cause and effect of a beaver belching...but you know what I mean...)
It's like the The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (heh, I couldn't get a higher number than a 3 - of course if I really PLAYED the game with someone...I don't think I could win it...) where you try to trace things back through a bunch of wierd, and seemingly unrelated, permutations. And, since we seem to need to get to the beginning or origins of things, sin has an origin. And we are ALL RELATED TO ONE ANOTHER BY IT.
But redemption has a single origin, too. If sin came through one person's action, redemption comes through one man, as well.
And so we're connected. Not only by our sin, but by our redemption as well...
Yeah, I'm still working on this.
Comments
Greg left a comment on Brett's blog.
This has a bloglink number of 2 :)