Evangelical Christians in the West love to loosely paraphrase 1 Corinthians 14:33, especially those who are of a Calvinistic slant, and remind folks that “God is a God of order, not confusion.” We usually say this in heated conversations when someone has dared to not accept blindly our neatly structured, logical arguments that make perfect sense to us. Or, we might say this before or after making what we consider to be a profound point, as if this punctuation mark gives automatic acceptance and veracity to what we are saying.

“I just don’t think things are as neat and tidy as you make them appear,” someone says to us.

“Well” we respond, stretching to add an extra half inch or so to our frame as we stand erect in pious propriety, “you need to understand that God is a God of order, and when you know how to rightly divide the word of truth, even a child can see the logic, order and structure of God’s truth just as I am explaining to you.”

I find it interesting that we play this “God is a God of order” card so quickly as though everyone knows this and agrees, when there is not a single verse in the Bible that directly says that God is a God of order. Those of us who cling to the purity, inspiration and preservation of every word of Scripture quickly become masters of paraphrase, dynamic equivalence and implication when discussing the sacred doctrine of the God of order. And, to top things off, we do so by pulling and twisting scripture out of proper context. I know this because I’ve done it myself!

Now, those of you who may still be stuck in the pious propriety mode, calm down! I am certainly not suggesting that God is not a God of order and all that. Many who have ventured into the sphere of natural theology have established the intentionality of design in the universe, though we are far from understanding the totality of the design. I’m just trying to make us think before we toss around clichés, and hold us accountable to honesty and integrity as we deal with the sacred scriptures entrusted to us.

The basic foundational truths we all hold dear are clear enough for a child to understand. These truths are evident and applicable in any culture and language on the planet. Yet God is so much bigger than we are that there is still much that we cannot mentally grasp much less control. There are divine concepts far beyond our comprehension.

So what does the Bible really say?

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints. 1 Corinthians 14:33

Clearly, God is not the author of confusion. But, it does not say he is the God of order, rather of peace. And, the context is not cosmology but the the confusion of the Corinthian church where the immature understanding of spiritual gifts had made their worship times together a chaos. Considering the context and what the scripture does not say, we should perhaps be a bit more circumspect as we borrow this verse from it proper context to make a point.

Now, check out this photo from the Hubble telescope. This is what got me thinking along these lines.

This is a picture of two galaxies colliding. You can see a higher definition picture here, and you can also learn more about this spectacular cosmic collision. So, there you have it. Pure order and structure. Right where we can get up on our little soap boxes and expound all about it. I’m thinking this looks somewhat like what’s left of one of my very orderly, logical and structured sermon outlines after the Holy Spirit gets hold of it!

Make no mistake. God obviously has an ordered and structured purpose in this collision that appears anything but neat and orderly to us. This is my point. God has it all under control, yet we are kidding ourselves if we think we understand it all. I wonder if this is a good illustration of cultures in collision — messy, painful, confusing to us — yet God always is at work accomplishing his purposes.

Think of possible galaxy collisions of culture in our world — Islam and Christianity, mixed marriages from totally different cultures, missionaries struggling to navigate what is to them a strange and resistant culture, clash of old sin nature and new nature in Christ, or the generational collision of what type of music we are going to sing when the church comes together in one place. These are all real and serious issues that often leave us confounded. Hopefully, seeing the bigger macro view of the universe will encourage us to trust in God even when life at times seems like a train wreck or galaxies in collision. God is always God.