…but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.
Genesis 2:17
And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.”
Genesis 1:3
I’ve become increasingly aware of how our thirst for knowledge – to understand, to deconstruct, reconstruct and categorize – can become a problem. Our brains are wonderful: expansive and alive, capable of growing, adapting, hungry for new experiences, to push beyond our current limits and explore new ideas, expand new horizons, create new worlds with our language, thoughts and imagination.
We explore science; examining species, comparing and contrasting to first understand and then categorise – mammals and reptiles, vertebrates and invertebrates, insects and arachnids, then subcategories with creatures within those groups, smaller and smaller, in finer and finer detail, not stopping until we satisfy our restless desire to know and understand.
We examine matter; different chemicals and properties, naming and defining cells and genes, their function and behaviour; examining universes and planets, predicting both the end and the beginning of everything.
We have names for everything around us, so that we can categorise not only a cup from a chair, but also a teacup from a tumbler, from a mug, from a glass, from a beaker. We decide the correct use for each, on and on.
We examine and categorise people; physical characteristics such as hair colour,, eye colour, skin colour, height and weight. We distinguish as common versus unusual, healthy versus unhealthy, average versus tall/short, majority versus minority. We continue to group introverts from extroverts, into Enneagram categories (see Oscar Ichazo), to the various learning styles. We then categorise not only between people but within people, defining positive and negative character traits; from kindness, courage and resilience to impatience, anger and laziness. We categorise physical and mental health; healthy versus unhealthy, separating out behaviours and thoughts that we decide are outside of ‘normal’; we have whole manuals to then decide which boxes and diagnoses the decreed dysfunctional thought and behaviours should go in.
These boxes are also often joined by straight connecting lines for the order to follow; obvious ones such infant to child, to teen, to adult, to elderly. But also behavioural boxes such as from school to college to employment to pension. From single to married to parenthood to grandparenthood. These are like behavioural flowcharts, organisational systems and structures for humanhood, bringing a sense of order and control; like worker ants, scurrying and busy, we work out how to organise and structure the things around us; our life plans, career plans, how people ought to behave, how families ought to work, how people should relate to each other, the rights and wrongs and shoulds of everything. Always defining and categorising. Structuring how things are or should be. Like policies and procedures for life.
These boxes can help us to understand and make sense of things, to bring a sense of safety. They can help us know where we fit, why we and others struggle or thrive in different situations. In the best circumstances they can help us to grow compassion and understanding for what we and others need. They can help us create more room, to increase welcome.
But what first began with expansion and the exploration of knowledge, a celebration of the wonder of creation, can start to constrict and shrink into categorisation for the way things should be. These boxes can be used to hem people in. Because we can struggle to allow and make room when the boxes that we have built no longer fit. We can insist on holding to the boxes we have created, using them like a straight jacket, telling people what they should do, ought to do, because to stretch our own thinking around something outside, is harder. Anyone pioneering a new path or no longer able to fit or follow the expected flow can find themselves feeling amiss, a little taboo. Swimming upstream is hard.
Like a tussle between left and right sides of the brain out loud…the left’s analysis and systemisation versus the right’s creative expansion. And maybe the complexities of modern society mean that left-sided systems are needed to bring organisation, so that people are broadly safe and with their needs met within some kind of reasonable timeframe. Like a structural safety net to stop people falling through the cracks of societal chaos; like wages and income arriving at regular intervals, like laws making society’s behaviour reasonable and safe, like logical expectations of where to queue in supermarkets and which toilet should be used by whom. These can become unspoken behavioural boxes and expectations of who should do what in a relationship; who is the main breadwinner, who is the main carer of children, who does the bins, the bills, the cleaning, the cooking.
But there are times that the right pushes back, saying this is too tight, too constricted, the boxes have become too small, the flow lines too difficult. Children can begin to struggle within the structure of a school setting, adults can find themselves without a home because of access criteria, we can somehow find ourselves in personal circumstances that start to hurt rather than help us. The one-way flow and narrow margins no longer work and start making it difficult to breathe, to move, to live. Creativity is needed to crack things open, to lift the lid once again, to expand, re-imagine, to resurrect.
The thing that’s beautiful about Jesus is that He is light, breath, Spirit. He brings life, creativity and resurrection. Every time. It’s what He does. If a box doesn’t fit, He finds another way. If the flow doesn’t work, He finds another way. He isn’t hemmed in by the boxes we’ve created. He is well known for breaking out of the dark, cold box of a grave that held Him all those years ago. He’s defiant and joyful, without regard for expectations and ceilings, nothing stopping, nothing hindering, nothing holding Him back or stemming the tide of His steady, rolling love, that always leads us back to wide open spaces. He lifts off constriction and tightness, allowing us to move, wildly free. He holds the right side’s creativity, spark and imagination perfectly, embodies it fully, making all things new.
But somehow, alongside this and at the same time, He also brings order out of chaos. Like in the Creation story; He hovered first like a bird over the formless dark. Then He spoke, ‘Let there be light’ and brought revelation. From there, He brought order, shape and form, whilst creating land, water and planets, then creatures within their given realms. And finally His loved ones, He created humans, defined by His voice from the start and approved of as ‘very good’ from the beginning.
He moulded the whole of creation, including each of us, not with tight boxes but with unique and ordained places and roles, perfectly positioned and deeply honouring what each was created for, by the One who made it all. There was both creative expansion alongside definition and structure. There was order but without segregation. Purpose without stifling. The Maker manages to balance it all perfectly, without tension or struggle, in ways that we cannot.
We are each made in love by His hands, God-breathed, with His image and fingerprints all over us, radiant reflections of all that He is. But on our own, when living on our own breath instead of breathing Him in, we become dim and mechanical, moving towards either chaos or rigidity. We can hem each other in. Hem ourselves in. Straying from the affirming, life-giving place and purpose that our Maker reserved for each of us and that He continues to gently lead us back to.
Returning to Him as the Source, our Origin Story, our Life and Breath, brings us back to peace in the struggle, ease in the tension and back home to wholeness once again.