LET THERE BE CHAOS

In the beginning there was order.

And order was such a horrendous thing. Not a molecule was out of whack. Never did a bad moon rise. Nothing exciting happened. 

Light was neatly separated from dark. The planets, the sun they merrily circled in circular circles. Never one misbehaved, took off on an eccentric curvy ellipse. Every day was sunny and beautiful. Terribly beautiful, day after day, never a cloud, never a change of temperature or temperament. 

God saw that it was far too good. 

Things ought to be a tad more interesting. 

“Let there be shades-in-between!” he commanded. 

So, on the First Day, He mixed up light and darkness. There wasn’t now just day and night. But also dusk and dawn. Not all days were sunny anymore. He made some cloudy, and some so wretched they didn’t seem to own tomorrows. 

“Let there be rain and thunder!” He said, “sleet and hail to slice through frigid air.” And it was so. 

All of this made the blue sky bluer when it finally returned, the nice days nicer. For when days are always nice, no-one takes notice anymore. It takes rain to get a rainbow. And the treasure at the end of each rainbow? The bright day that follows!

He then took a closer look at Earth, such a perfect sphere. In a fit of youthful divine rebelliousness, He flattened it at the poles, skewed its axis, damaged it, some would say. But thus came the seasons, such a beautiful inconvenience.

He toyed with Earth, blew onto it until it thrived with a new thing that had never been seen before. Let there be Life! Plants and animals then danced upon the earth’s surface. 

But it was still too good. Animals only ate fruit, their five-a-day. Fruits wanted to be eaten, so that the animals spat out their seeds, and thus the plant kingdom flourished. Better still, when animals accidentally swallowed the seeds, they emerged from the other end already mixed with manure. It all worked like clockwork. Still so damn boringly good.

God decided to bring an end to this sad state of beautiful affairs. He’d long wanted to try this new thing out:

“Let there be Natural Selection!”

Predator now chased prey, in so doing getting stronger and cleverer. Or else either starved to death or had to think fruit again. Ew!

The prey, too, ran faster now, got cunning, learned to hide and camouflage. Or perish. No-one would be lazy again anymore. A win-win for everyone, in a way, was this brave new chaotic world.

True, it got harder to get on with one’s day minding one’s own business, but days became more interesting than before. Some had to die, but, for those who lived, life was now more worth living.

At the end of the Sixth Day, just as God was about to rest, He had an idea. 

“What about one like me?”

He pulled down from a tree a good-looking ape, blew on him, dazzled him a little and called him Man. For the first time, a creature became aware of his own existence, far more than a stone or a tortoise is. But awareness also made Man sad and lonely. God needed to do something about this. He pulled out a rib from Man’s cage. Don’t ask me why He didn’t start off again with a female ape, but he must’ve had his reasons.

And God said, “Let there be Fun!” And there was fun.

He made a partner for Man. Woo-man, woe-to-man, woman! She wasn’t going to be easy to handle, but was going to be exciting. Sexy, naughty, scintillating. Man and Woman never really understood one another. Neither were they meant to.

No longer one for straightforward creations, God withheld their faculty to read into each other’s mind. The Woman would hate Man, then love him and then hates him again. She’d then give herself to him. Every time like the first time. Exciting, titillating. This little game never gets old. When did a creature have it so good? 

Only snag? This one fruit God said they shan’t eat. He secretly hoped they might. To see what happens next. For God is an explorer, a scientist; he wants to know more. He’d given his latest creation, the modified apes, their own legs – free will. This was a new concept too. He wished to get to know them better, curious how far they would go.

God went on creating. Why just have plain man and plain women? He made lesbian and gay, and bisexual, transgender, intergender, queer and more. Love without limits, in every form and manner. We just don’t know how many types of love he created. We keep discovering more loves with each passing year. Or perhaps He didn’t mean it that way, and things just got awry.

He made everyone different in some way or another, some of us good with their hands, others with numbers, others funny, or gifted with words, some good at everything, others at nothing. Some are grumblers, some doers. He even made some good at being bad. Just to keep things interesting. 

“Let there be Intrigue!” So that no-one gets bored.

He made some of us outright nasty, so that we’d have who to blame when things go wrong, and we won’t have to beat ourselves for our own shortcomings. It’s a great jigsaw puzzle, everyone’s a unique piece, no-one wasted. 

He made us practical too, some a dark shade of brown for the scorched South, some lighter brown for the chilling North, so that no part of this skewed planet will have been made in vain. Some would be happy, where the warmth is, others would be inventive where the cold dwells.

But Northern man grew indignant with his southerly brother’s happiness, and Southern man envious of his northerly brother’s ingenuity. They’d fall foul of one another. The wounds never healed, and never will, for that’s how this chaotic world was designed. But Man learns from his mistakes. The more mistakes he makes, the more he learns. It will never be all good, but that’s the thing, the idea is to never have a dull moment again. 

“Let there be earthquakes, so the land will take new majestic forms.”

“Let there be disease! So there’ll be the joy of healing.”

“Let there be hate, so that where love is, it shall truly shine!”

Man keeps trying to put order into God’s chaos, to organize his life, make it somehow simpler. But with each attempt, he only makes it ever more complicated. So complicated, his kids now have to go to school to learn how to live. Man devises laws, to keep his order orderly. So many laws he then gets confused and all worked up by them. Sometimes men, even whole nations, fight because each side thinks they understand the rules better than the other side. The ultimate chaos, war, ensues. Every war is a great lesson for Man. More mistakes, more learning.

“Let there be problems! So there’ll be satisfaction in finding solutions.”

“Let there be irony! So not all problems will be possible to solve.”

“Let there be humor and laughter and glee, so that life won’t be taking too seriously.”

On the seventh day, He then said, “Let there be no rest! Ever.”

God thought of just about everything. Still, sometimes, Man question this whole chaotic mess that is his existence. Some call it The Human Condition. Our predicament.

God looks at us anew and sees that all is certainly not good at all. But, hell, is it exciting?