Order Versus Organization

Whenever I teach about being creational I inevitably have someone confuse the concepts of order and organization. If I say that we should pursue order, one will often take that to mean that we should pursue organization. As is the case with all misunderstood ideas, there is a pinch of truth and a couple liters of distortion here.

When the Bible speaks about order, it is talking about doing the things that create and preserve covenant human life. It is not talking about conducting your life according to a strictly regimented lifestyle. There are various personalities who would love for me to back up their preferences in this area, but this type of lifestyle often is really just a preference when it comes down to it. Some people are just OCD, and they need everyone else to be as well or they can't function in the world.

That is not to say that organization cannot aid the Christian in pursuing order. It can. However, the problem comes when people confuse the two, as many times organization gets in the way of pursuing order. For instance, I told my wife a long time ago that I did not want her to concentrate on having a perfect house, but rather on the biblical content of what our children were being taught and the discipline of poor behavior (i.e., actual sin). The former is organization that I saw as distracting from the true pursuit of order. There was simply too much time being spent on cleaning the house and organizing, and it took away from our true goals with the kids. The house will perish. Our children are what will remain forever.

However, the house cannot go by the wayside completely, as it needs to be clean enough so that disease is kept at bay as much as possible. However, this may mean that clothes may pile up a little, the floor isn't free of toys and vacuumed continually (with nine children it would have to be picked up and vacuumed every hour). As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time for all things. There is a time for cleaning. It just shouldn't be at all times.

One could say that there should be rules for children to not get toys out, or ever make a mess, but this is nonsensical, and I think it is actually bad for children to confuse godliness with organization. Martha was organized. Mary was ordered. They are not the same. Jesus rebuked the former for not being the latter.

A wife focused on cleaning her house may be constantly yelling at the kids and her husband, stressed out about organization, and therefore, lacking in her focus toward pursuing biblical order. I have seen many a sparkling clean household with children in egregious sin. Spotless houses with divorced couples, adulterous lifestyles, rebellious hearts.

This confusion is at the heart of the Pharisaic rebellion against Christ. They wanted to focus on external cleanliness as the manifestation of godliness/order (i.e., organization), and Jesus wanted to focus on the internal and the moral activity that came forth from the internal order of the mind.

His disciples' hands were filthy as they ate. They clumsily ate in the fields instead of observing an organized Sabbath meal. Hygiene wasn't the greatest in first century Palestine. The fishermen probably stunk the most. Likewise, John the Baptist, who came before them was a horrible dresser and lived like an unkept hermit in the wilderness. These people were disorganized in their externals.

In contrast, the Pharisees were very organized. They bathed regularly since they saw this as their form of religious devotion. Their clothes were fine linens, even dressing like priests. They were well groomed (unless they wanted people to see them as fasting). But this all stirred Christ to call them whitewashed tombs with rotting corpses inside.

The tombs may have been sparkling clean and organized, but their minds and moral lifestyles were disordered. "Nothing that goes into a man defiles a man," Jesus said. Yet, how could that be? Cleanliness is next to godliness afterall, except that it isn't.

Organization can be good. It can work toward preserving life, but if it gets in the way of discipleship, it becomes a lifestyle God rejects because it isn't a part of godliness. If it was, Jesus would never have said that the externals don't defile. He just would have said that they sometimes defile and they sometimes don't. But that isn't what He said. Being disorganized isn't sinful. Being disordered is. Being ordered is being creational toward covenant human life: having children, raising them to put their allegiance in Jesus Christ and be justified, and it is preservational: sustaining the lives of those children while they are raised to obey Jesus Christ in sanctification.

Organization may play a part in working toward creation and preservation, but it may also, and often does, get in the way. For the Pharisees, it got in the way in that they lost sight of their own moral rebellion because they were so fixed on pleasing God and others in the externals. They also rejected Jesus and His teaching because it was not focused on the externals, and His disciples did not observe the cleanliness laws that they did.

And that is, perhaps, the saddest part of their story. The focus on external cleanliness made them blind to their own sins. They wasted their lives on cleaning everything but their thoughts and moral actions. And yet, if they had concentrated on the latter, never would they have been rebuked for not observing the former. Martha may think Jesus is going to be on her side since she's all about cleaning up, but He isn't because He's all about discipleship, as the latter is what creates and preserves covenant human life par excellence. The former is just rearranging stuff that perishes. That, My Friends, is organization.

And the world is passing away no matter how shiny we make it. It is the duty of the Christian to preserve what can be preserved and to merely upkeep those temporary things that are necessary to accomplish that ultimate goal. That's where organization may play a role.

In the end, however, our house will crumble away into the dust, the clothes will all disintegrate, but we will fill up the new earth with the covenant children that we made and sustained; and that, My Friends, is order.