BibleProject - Was the World Ever Perfect? – Chaos Dragon E11

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

The theme of the chaos dragon raises some challenging questions. For instance, if God created a perfect world and humans messed it up, why did the dragon and the chaos waters exist at the beginning of the universe? Why would God allow the potential for chaos at all? In this episode, Tim and Jon discuss God’s goodness and the existence of evil, through the lens of the chaos dragon theme.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-13:33)Part two (13:33-30:44)Part three (30:44-47:06)Part four (47:06-1:01:03)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAll music breaks by Patrick MurphyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Transcript edited by Grace Vang. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and edit the podcast. We're currently exploring the theme called the Chaos Dragon, which is a huge theme. And so, we decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. Right now, we're taking questions for the second Q&R and would love to hear from you. Just record your question by November 1st, 2023, and send it into us at infoabiboproject.com.

Let us know your name and where you're from. Try to keep the question to about 20 seconds, and Let us know your name and where you're from. Try to keep the question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a really big help to our team. We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the episode. This is a theme in the Bible that we've been calling the Chaos Dragon. The Chaos Dragon is not a rival to God, but it is a rival to the inhabitants of creation

because it's the opposite of creation, which is order. We've looked through the entire Hebrew Bible, how the dragon appears on day one of creation, how violent human kings are compared to the Chaos Dragon, how spiritual evil can become entwined with the powers of Chaos and Death. And all of this actually can kind of get confusing. And I want to make sure I really understand what the Biblical authors are trying to say when they employ the image of the Chaos Dragon. Evil is the opposite of creation.

If creation is the bringing about of Garden Order, then to do evil is really just to undo creation, to undo good. In today's episode we'll talk about why the biblical authors employ this ancient symbol of the Chaos Dragon in the first place. And what does it mean that humans can become Chaos Dragons ourselves? And we'll consider a big concern of mine which is why is there the potential of chaos swimming in the dark abyss? And I thought God made a perfectly good world and then we screwed it up.

God has not set up creation to exist instantly in its ideal form. He has set up reality so that it journeys from chaos into the perfect. And that journey constantly forces God's rulers to make conscious decisions about whether we will align ourselves with the will and wisdom and goodness of God or peel off to do our own version of good, which is usually how we end up undoing good. Today Tim McEni are talking about the problem of evil and the theme of the chaos dragon bringing it all together before we move on to the New Testament. I'm John Collins and you're listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Here we go. Hi, John. Hey. How are you today? I'm doing good. Yeah. I just mentioned to you, I feel like I've been doing a poor job on these conversations. I worry about people listening through and

just, you swallowed up by the dragon. Yes. Experiencing the belly of the dragon as we weighed through all this. I feel like I keep asking similar questions over and over and not sure if we're making new ground, But I do feel like we are progressing through the Bible. Just not necessarily with greater understanding. It's really what I'm saying. I think we're gonna get there. I just, you know, I worry that people might be peeling off. Like, well, this is just.

Yeah, too much. Okay, let me start with an opening meditation. So this morning I was on a run and listening to a lecture by this biologist, British biologist named Rupert Sheldrake. I forget exactly how this turned on to his work, really interesting character. But it was about the study of form and order in the biological sciences.

He said this is kind of an age-old question that goes back to Greek philosophy, but it's just really intuitive to the human experience, which is like, when we look around, why do things take the shape that they do? And it's actually a question made intensified in the modern sciences, which has, for many people, the vast majority, a naturalist, materialist, kind of set of assumptions for studying material, reality. And so the question is, if all this is, is like atoms and molecules bouncing off each other,

what makes them take the certain shapes that they do to form things? Like why isn't it just perpetual static fuzz? Like what is it that makes molecules stick together in certain patterns and form? Take the form, the form of things. The most basic level we're talking hydrogen atoms. Yep, that's right. That then get fused together to become oxygen atoms and helium atoms.

I don't remember the order. Yeah, that's right. And then they become societies of atoms. But in certain combinations. And then they get combinated into molecules. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so he was talking about how at every level, from that level, up to the formation of cells, to the

formations of different types of organisms, to the proteins and then cells and then organisms. Yes. Yeah. On up to the organization of the material that makes up our brain, up to the formation of planets and galaxies. And at every level, there's this whole set of like intractable, unavoidable problems, which is why do these things take the shape that they do so regularly? Isn't every set of possibilities constantly being realized, but like reality somehow works in these channels and patterns

that take certain forms, but not always, sometimes things deviate from their form. And so in Greek philosophy, you know, the two kind of main rivals were Platonism. There's an eternal, ideal reality where the ideal forms of triangles and galaxies and humans and plants exist. And reality is just a shadow version of that. Then there's Aristotle, who was a modification of Platonism that said, no, there actually is an ideal form, but it's not in some ethereal reality. The ideal form is itself what he called the soul, the tsukai in Greek, which is there's an inner principle of mind or intelligence at different levels. And that's really fascinating to learn

about this, that like he believed in the vegetative soul. Like the plant or stall did. Yeah, in other words, it's an energy or a force, a mind, so to speak, but a plant type of mind that's driving plant material to take all these different forms. I think some maybe modern thinkers talk about that in terms of consciousness. I think there's different levels of consciousness. Yeah, it depends on what think you're talking about. I suppose, yeah, yeah. And then there's animal consciousness, which has plant level consciousness, but then

a few more layers of sensory input. And then humans have both plant and animal, and then a level up with rationality and reasons on. But that there's this order and that it's a surrounding or top, down set of forces that's driving the organism forward. So, Rupert Sheldrake's contrast was, he said, a naturalist, materialist worldview can't really account for form, because if you're saying that there's no driving purpose or principle towards which all of this

matter is aiming at, then you have to account for all of the forms of reality from the ground up. And at each stage at which a protein combines and becomes the next level of thing and the next level of thing, there's an infinite number of possibilities that open up of what it could become, but it, reality keeps becoming certain types of things. And so the question is, can you count for it from the bottom up that just out of chaos comes order randomly? Or is there some larger enveloping principle

or form or pattern to which things are stretching towards or becoming? So anyway, he says essentially what we've come to call what Aristotle called the soul. We call it fields. Gravitational fields. Gravitational fields, yeah. Or the strong or weak nuclear force. These things called forces. Force fields. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fields. And he said they play in our minds the same role that the concept of soul did in like the whole idea behind that is that the reason why matter has any sort of weight I suppose I think it is or is that because or actual weight weight

I'm above my favorite but there's a field called the Higgs field and actually gives matter the attribute of weight. Oh, there you go. Something like that. So the meta concept is this. We humans have been able to perceive for millennia the reality is composed of parts. Right now we just have the ability to look smaller and smaller and bigger and bigger to see the parts that reality is combined of. And we know that reality can take certain forms and orders that are conducive for human life and flourishing and for our minds to be able to engage with reality and understand it and like cooperate with it.

But there's also this principle that all of those parts sometimes do and could at any moment just all the order could just fling apart. And the question is, what prevents it from just shattering apart any given moment? Fields. And then what is it that keeps channeling everything to keep producing itself or reproducing itself in these certain types of forms and not others? And it just struck me as I was listening to his talk. I just thought, this is Genesis 1. This is the concept of reality of chaos of chaos versus separating things into orders and realms and kinds, and then coordinating their cooperation towards the production of life and flourishing and community and beauty

and goodness and so on. And we're having these conversations about the chaos dragon. And I think that is essentially what this set of symbols in the biblical story is about. Chaos versus order is like one of the most fundamental categories of biblical thought. And that order is this exertion of a force or in the for biblical authors of mind that can address the disorder of chaos,

which is what we would call nothingness, and impose upon it in order so that that material that has no form, all of a sudden is channeled, along certain lines, to produce and reproduce. And that's the gift of God the blessing in Genesis 1 is that he both orders and by separating and organizing things into categories, but then infuses them with the life of their own, that's borrowed life, right? But infused to begin to reproduce and make more. And whatever chaos is, it's the opposite of that. And so what the drama is about the dragon is that there are creatures, inhabitants in all the different

realms of God's world, and they can either participate in the progression of order and beauty towards the garden, or they can become like a drag, like a momentum drag that prevents creation from going where God intends it to go. And it's like they pull it backwards, back into the chaos. And the first creature that we're introduced to that's doing that, is that snake that crawls out of the wilderness into the garden, and through its deception gets the humans to choose as good their own ruin, their own death and dissolution back into the ground

and the dust of the wilderness. Then the humans can become agents of that chaos and death and disorder. And I think whether or not the stuff about biology for the first five minutes of what I was saying was helpful at all, I think that's what fundamentally what the set of concepts and this video is about. Well, I think the meditation on biology is just another way into thinking about life versus death, chaos versus order. You could think about scientifically, thermodynamics versus whatever is creating order. Energy conservation.

And fields and all that stuff. But then we're completely out of our... Yeah, exactly. But the idea of life and death, chaos and order, like we get, and then you can apply it, well, the story of the Bible then discusses these ideas. God comes to a chaotic state, which we talked about, described in different ways. Yeah, where the opposite of anything existing other than God

is depicted as the chaos ocean. Here's what I'm struggling with. Can we do this theme of the dragon? Can we do it by just focusing in on this one image of a dragon in the sea and being consumed by the dragon. Or do we have to talk about what the dragon is and the dragon connected to a bigger set of themes? The themes of chaos and chaos creatures. So now you're talking about some sort of spiritual evil. And the Bible can use fallen stars. It can use just the idea of death itself. So,

do we need to explain all of that? I mean, I think the answer is yes. I think you can't do the theme of the dragon and get to the revelation where the great dragon is in the sky now and, you know, it's obviously more than just the C.K. Oscar creature. And it feels to me like a much bigger video than we typically do. You mentioned the God video. When we started making that video, I thought, oh, this one's going to be like 20 minutes long.

The end of the day, we got it down to about... Eight, seven or eight? Seven or eight. Yeah, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. And I think it's not, it wasn't very satisfying for some people, I heard, because it felt like we had to really smooth over

a lot of things and not talk about a lot of things. Yeah, fly really high. Fly really high. Yeah. Like for example, I'm getting really hung up still. I want to spend more time talking about these realms and then how these creatures relate to these realms. I really want to understand that because I feel like to understand this theme at its largest,

I need to get that more. Yeah. So by that, you're talking about the theme in our conversations of Ingenisus 1. I noted that there are two realms of disorder that are contained, and then framed within the order that God makes. So the darkness is contained by the light, but it's still there in its cycle, and then the sea is not done away with entirely, but it's now given a boundary of where it cannot be, and it can't be up on the dry land. And then you flip to the Eden narrative and you have the wilderness, which is the opposite

then of the garden. So you get these three images, darkness, sea, and desert, in opposition to light, dry land, and garden. Yeah. And so on a literal level, I kind of want to start using the word literal and figurative, but maybe that's a bad set of terms. Can I suggest experiential? On the experiential level, I can experience the wilderness. Oh, yeah. Okay. I can experience the ocean. But then there's a level of meaning, a deeper level of significance. Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean? Like you told the story a few I don't know whenever it was about being out in Mount hood wilderness and hearing coyotes. Mm-hmm. So on a experiential level You were in the wilderness hearing the haunting cries yeah of coyotes. Yeah of a chaos creature. Yeah

It's certainly by the look in my son's eyes. That's how of a cast creature. Yeah. Certainly by the look in my son's eyes. That's how it felt to him. On the level of meaning, suddenly, the cry to you felt like the cries of little girls screaming. And the horror of it was starting to connect you to this deeper sense of horror and dread of like life is fragile and people need to be protected and there's suffering and pain out there and death is at

the doorstep. I'm on the knife's edge of like disaster. Like that's the level of like meaning. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So when we get to, that was get to the look in your eyes When you said that string of sentences. That was so intense. I'm sorry

Good morning You've had a cup of coffee already clearly. Oh my gosh Go ahead keep going keep going the feeling the knife's edge You know you mentioned earthquakes and there's that earthquake. There's happened in yep, Syrian Turkey. Yeah. And they pulled out that girl. Seven days. Oh, man, a little girl alive after seven in.

While rubble for. Yeah. Seven days and nights just like what is that? Even like. Yeah. Yeah. So she was on a literal level, like in rebel, or sorry, spiritual level in rebel, but like,

the meaning, she was in she all. Yeah. She was in death. That's right. Yeah. Hold out of death. Yeah. So you get these images of the wilderness,

of the sea, of the night sky, and on experiential level, like, I can go out and watch the sea and it can be it can look chaotic. Yeah. Yeah. And if I sailed out there, I've been sailing on a rough day and it's like it's scary intimidating. Yeah, I scare. Yeah. You could be wandering around at night when it's super dark and what that feels like. You could be on the wilderness in here in coyotes. dark and what that feels like, you could be out in the wilderness in here in Coyotes. But then, like, the level of meaning is, I think where Genesis starts, right? Like, it employs those three images of those settings that we can experience, but it's saying, hey, I'm not talking about these, like, literally.

Like there's this level of meaning underneath of these. There's the place of chaos of no life. And so what I'm wondering is, when then God creates the order, right? So then he separates the light from the darkness. He separates the land from the ocean. He creates the garden separates from the wilderness. Now I can go and see that ocean,

and now does the ocean represent the same feelings and meaning of the chaos, but it's also just the ocean. In one, yeah, sure. And like the wilderness, like Israel can wander out in the wilderness and in a meaningful way, they're out in chaos. Yeah, that's right. But they're also just in the wilderness, and they meaningful way they're out in chaos. Yeah, that's right.

But they're also just in the wilderness and they can still survive out there and creatures can survive out there. And then humans are told to rule over the creatures in the sea and the creatures in the sky. And they're told to work the garden and there's this kind of the sense of like, and you put it this way before, the God is creating these outposts and there's this kind of the sense of like, and you put it this way before, the God has created these outposts and it's supposed to expand. So I'm wondering, because I'm saying all this, to say, when we talk about creatures in these realms, we've been talking about the chaos, the serpent playing in the ocean, just

one of God's creatures, and an unexperiential level, like we get it, there's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a the C dragon, it becomes something much larger and it's trying to connect us to something deeper, which is what you were talking about, which is like what's dragging the cosmos back into destruction? Like what is this energy or force that's like unraveling order? And I feel like what's confusing to me is we can talk about the dragon as just one of God's creatures, but then suddenly it becomes

cosmic. Cosmic. A cosmic tyrant or a cosmic threat. We could talk about being out in the wilderness, like there's we read in one of the profits about Babylon being cast out into the wilderness, and it's this idea of being cast out into death. But there's like animals out there and they even become an animal out there and like then there's like a feast out there. It's like you can survive out in the wilderness.

We can. I mean we can imagine it. I think it's much more difficult for an ancient person. For yeah. The biblical authors do imagine that. Because yeah, we can fill up four leather bottles of water. I mean how much water can you carry with you really that kind of thing and that is still true There's water out there. I mean the animals live out there. They're drinking something sure some of them They're highly adapted though And we're not and that's the point okay, so these are realms where we can't live Can't live out in the wilderness. Yeah, I mean we do now. We found oil and we build like massive cities up there We can't live out in the ocean. We can't live out in the ocean.

We can't live out in the sky. So there realms where humanity can't like exist. So what does it mean for God to put creatures there that aren't humans? And then what does it mean for those creatures to then become anti-creation creatures? And I feel like, I almost feel like I need to understand that before I can really start to appreciate the theme of the dragon. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, what did it mean for the biblical authors that God put the tannin in the ocean on

day five? Yeah., so I guess maybe, hmm, so one, we are coming to the story of the Bible, which begins in the beginning. So it has the feeling that it's creating all your categories of reality as you enter into the story world and go into it. However, that story itself took shape in a cultural context, where certain ideas and images already existed. And the dragon was one of them. In fact, the dragon in the chaotic sea was one of the most well-told ancient Near Eastern symbolic stories, which is why we're still telling it today, just in different forms. So in that story, the dragon and the chaotic sea

was like a main fixture of the ancient imagination. And so the biblical authors start and the way that the sea is described and Leviathan is described in Genesis 1, is itself in response to or a conscious tweak away from a dominant way of thinking about reality, which is that reality is the result of a mortal combat between ordering chaos. I don't really go ahead, Marduk won another year, because we're all still here living in

the shelter of Babylon's peace or something. So the biblical authors want to come out of the gate and say, the most primary reality is the beautiful mind and the generous host of all creation. That one is reality and there is no force that is rival, everything is subordinate to the will and the purpose and generosity of that one. Therefore, the chaotic C is not a rival of God. It is a rival of creation because it's the opposite of creation, which is order.

Then, for the creatures within creation, the Chaos Dragon is not a rival to God, but it is a rival to the inhabitants of creation. Do you think it did start out that way? The Sea Dragon? Was it always when the Sea Dragon is placed in the Chaotic Sea? Is that an idea of saying God separated the chaos from the land? It's still chaos out there. And one way for us to imagine that chaos is in this creature out there

that if you encountered it, it would take you out. Yep, and that seems to be part of what the role of Leviathan plays in the speeches, God's speeches of Job, which we'll look at in a future conversation. Cause God's saying, listen, he's a part of your world. In fact, you just took a few swings at your job. Okay, and it's not saying it's evil, it's just that's its role.

It's the chaos creature. It's the chaos creature. Yeah. It's also not good because there's no life that comes out of it. And so it separated away from the land, Yeah. But it still exists. That's right. And so what's that about in the biblical imagination? That God allows this realm to still exist.

Because at the end of the Bible, the idea on a symbolic meaning from level is that the sea goes away. Mm-hmm. And the dragon is done away with. Yeah, so why? Yeah. Put them there.

Why keep the sea? And why, I mean, I know why the ocean exists, like because like we're on a water planet. Oh sure, but that's not how the... That's not the biblical object. No, yeah, exactly. So they look at the ocean and they're thinking like this thing doesn't need to be here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we must play some role then. Yeah, so in the biblical imagination, what role does it play? Yeah, why does God allow it to exist? Yeah, and this is where I start to think we get into the problem of evil Conversation. That's right. Yeah, but for the biblical authors when we think of the word evil We have a problem because we think of we have this category well evil is the result of an intelligent intention

Normally, that's what we mean by evil. Something a person intends. Yeah. That's why when our rabbit scratches my son, we don't like punish it. Yeah. It didn't intend to do evil. Right.

But we do feel like we need to account for other types of disasters, we call it natural evil, which has always been a strange phrase. Do I know that phrase? Oh, yeah, moral, evil, and natural evil. That is philosophical, for me. Yeah, in theology, it's probably evil.

What type of evil is natural evil, which is quakes, and rabbit scratching your son's leg? But what we mean then is just something that's unpleasant. So for the biblical authors, there's no separation. There's just what is conducive for garden life and points you in that direction. And all the good stuff that comes along with that. And then there's the polar opposite, which is the desert or the chaos, waters or the darkness. And that's like a spectrum.

For whatever reason, the biblical story is governed by a beautiful mind, and when that one wants to create something other than itself, creation, it creates it to exist in a way that it has to journey towards the divine perfect that God has in store for it. It has to go on a journey from nothingness towards the garden. It's very different than God created the world perfect. We screwed it up. He's going to make it perfect again. Yeah, there's nothing perfect about the world of Genesis 1. It's good. What God orders and separates out, He calls good. He calls good, but then clearly it's called to become something much more. What's how, how so?

Ah, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. subdue it. And reign over it. I see. As images. So this is about God partnering with a creature that is not God, but is a participant

in image of God's own life. And then is to partner with God in the journey from chaos to the garden. And that journey is fraught with the possibility that it could endure many cycles of chaotic nothingness, depending on how the partnership goes. But the fundamental premise is that God chooses not to create the cosmic garden. He chooses to create a tiny garden, Oasis, and then install partners. And those partners are surrounded by creatures, and those creatures, and the garden itself, poses opportunities for God to creatures,

to choose life, or to choose to sink back into chaos of their own will. And there the dragon is just introduced of, hey listen, this is not the cosmic threat to God, but it will play a cosmic threat role to the creatures, to creation itself, to creation itself, unless the humans learn how to trust God's wisdom and power to rule over that beast. That's the meta-reflection. What the biblical story doesn't say is why? God does that, it just says that that's how God has set it up, so the darkness is there, the wilderness is there, And And going back to the very beginning of this conversation, when God creates creatures in these realms. So in the waters, it's the Sea Dragon.

In the night sky, it's the host of heaven. Yeah, the stars. Yeah. Which bring God's light to the darkness. Yeah. In a very ordered pattern. Right. But what we do have with the stars is a backstory of sorts of going, well, why is there a force of decreation that's like a creature? Well, you get a story of, well, I guess maybe this isn't clear in the Bible, but maybe in Second Temple literature, where you get the story of the fallen angel.

Or the... Oh, I see. Well, you get it within the Hebrew Bible itself. Okay. Yeah, but specifically from the prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel. But what they're doing is they're looking back on those inhabitants on the stars and on the dragon and on the dragon and on the snake, and they see there a mirror of what has been happening in the human, the story of the human rulers. So the human rulers wanted more, they wanted more power, more wisdom sooner and by their own schemes, whereas God wanted to give it to them, but by his own timing and his own wisdom. And so they see that story being played out in the human realm, resulting in lots of death and chaos.

And they share with us the mirror narrative of the snake, snakes downfall, and of the, which is also the downfall of a star. And so that's what's so interesting in Isaiah is that the big cosmic bad guy is used as an analogy story for the king of Babylon. So the king of Babylon can be likened to a star falling from heaven because it tried to go up higher. And then it also can be likened to the snake in the waters that will get his head chopped off. And the point is to say there's something deeper, there's a deeper force animating

Nebuchadnezzar. Humans, when humans unleash death and chaos on the land, we are actually participating in a much more substantial or a cosmic power of de-creation that's opposed to where God is trying to take the world. So I think this is getting at the heart of maybe what I want to understand and I'm wondering if needs to be part of this video. Is that that force? is that force. And some philosophies, there's like you said, there's the yin and the yang, and there's just two opposing forces, and it actually creates the cosmos as we know it, and there actually needs to be like this balance. But it seems like what we're talking about is saying, no, there's this ultimate creative force.

Everything relies on them. Yeah, namely God. And God. Yeah. And then when God comes to create, he appoints creatures that we understand, creatures of the land, humans, who bear his image. But then there's these creatures that God creates that also reflect his ruling power in the sky.

And when we decide to fight against creation, we can create what we would call evil, corruption, violence. And in the same way, sorry, we'll quick. Evil is the opposite of creation. If creation is the bringing about of garden order, then evil is something that we do, but evil is just detracting from the goodness.

It's actually not even doing anything. To do evil is really just to undo creation. To undo good. To undo good, yeah, yeah, undo good. Yeah, you don't do evil is really just to undo creation. To undo good. To undo good. Yeah, yeah, undo good. Yeah, you don't do evil, even though that is literally how it's phrased in the Bible, what doing evil means is undoing good.

Well, it's also how it feels like when something happens to you, because like something is happening. The absence of good. What is poverty except the absence of abundance. What is poverty except the absence of abundance? What is pain except the absence of wholeness or pleasure? Interesting. So on the human level, that's what's going on, mirrored on a cosmic level.

Mirrored on a cosmic level, which we don't have a very clear view of. It's like kind of just talked about and yeah It's a cosmic background narrative in the biblical story. Yeah, yeah, which doesn't get a lot of page time Yep explicitly. Yeah, but it's there. I mean, it's there from the beginning It's there from the beginning and then it hovers in the background in Significant ways throughout that story the Bible So at the foundation of this theme I I feel like, is understanding that there is a creature like us,

but unlike us. Like us in that this creature can reflect God's rule. Unlike us in that it lives in a realm that we can't exist in. And it has a type of being that's just fundamentally different than ours. And if we encountered one, we would think this thing is crazy, like in powerful and like, you know, yeah, glorious. This is God, Sister Job, try to touch it. Once.

I was thinking of angels, but now you're talking about applying the category of Leviathan to these things. And so how do we describe these creatures? And we have to use something experiential. Yeah, what else can we do? We're humans. And so we talk about the stars. We talk about the sea dragon.

Yeah, a star, and particularly a planet. We know the planet. Yeah. But a light in the sky that seems like it ought to behave with all the others in the normal patterns, but it's deviant. Yeah. It deviates from its pattern. So on the experiential level, that's what we're seeing and experiencing. But then on the level of meaning we're going, I know there's this force. There's this being. There's this creature like me, but unlike me. And it is in rebellion. And so I'll talk about the phone star. I'll talk about the sea creature. Sea creature? Yeah. It's one of the creatures in the sea, which means it ought to be good. But instead, at least in these stories that I hear it's just this chaos

force that wants to swallow everything up and death. So then in my imagination then I'm thinking when I think let's go back to the dragon now then the Sea Dragon. So I employ the Sea Dragon to think about the meaning of this chaotic force of being that's in rebellion is God and wants to drag things into undue good. When the Bible talks about the dragon, like you said in Job, we haven't talked about it yet. Sometimes it's talked about on what I'm calling the experience a level. Right? Yeah, sure.

We're not saying, hey, this thing is the rebellious creature. We're just saying this thing exists like that ocean exists deal with it and We might think man this thing's a problem and God's like no sure It's just part of my creation. Yep, but then when we talk about the dragon as the rebellious creature But then when we talk about the dragon as the rebellious creature, when we take it and that's what we mean, like we mean like the forces of the like rebellious destruction. Yeah, what what it means of being an inhabitant that is now purpose to undo good in God's

world. Now this thing, this thing is the like seven headed dragon that needs to get flayed open and destroyed. That's right. And when the biblical authors want to talk about that, that's when they pull out the full on dragon slaying myth of their neighbors, that it's an enemy of gods by being an enemy of his creation and he's going to kill it, it's going smash it, and not let it prevent creation from going where God wants to take it. When it's the other thing,

when it's just the creature in the sea, representing the chaos of the sea, is it a spiritual being the way we would think of as the angels, as the hosts of heaven, or is it just... It's a symbol. Is it just a creature like a cow, but of the ocean?

Yeah, it refers to the big thing out there. Yes, for sure. And it occupies the same place as mountain lion to do in my imagination. Yeah, because when the Bible talks about lions and scorpions and those kind of things, you don't see them haunted with spiritual evil as much, or do you? Jesus certainly did. Oh, Jesus. Oh, yeah, totally.

Well, get there. And Luke calls demons, confrontations with demons, about treading on serpents and scorpions. Yeah. Okay. So that reflects the mind fully shaped by this. So that's the same thing as saying there's a creature. Yep. Let's take this creature from an experiential level and let that thing become a symbol. A symbol of

this menacing destructive evil. It's good. Okay. So that works with the dragon but it also works with like wilderness creatures. Is that how they think about the stars? Is it the same thing? Like the stars are... How many understand that category of creature? Yeah, well, I mean, the stars are meant to be glorious images of God's light that represent him in the darkness. And they are called the rule. The creatures are not called the rule. Right? I'm just trying to play it out in the logic of Genesis 1. Like C-Dragon's not called the rule. No. And if it tries to rule, it's like a rebellion.

So for a star to deviate from the time-keeping courses and patterns and the lead people astray by going on a rebellious course to try to ascend higher and higher or try to hang on as long as possible while the sun is rising to say like, I'm going to resist the rule of the sun. That's what's going on in Isaiah 14, right? The Morning Star. The Morning Star. So that represents a creature misusing its rule

and responsibility. So what's so fascinating then about the merging of star and dragon imagery is Wow, thank you John. It's like a merging of the two. Yeah. Where it's this thing is an intelligent representative of God, like unto the humans, but really different. Right. And it's called the rule within its certain realm. But then when you merge that idea with the chaos monster, then you have a creature called the rule that's chosen to essentially work in opposition to God's purpose for

creation and what a sad, monstrous reality. And this is certainly why I was kind of waiting for the right point to insert this. Remember most of the dragon images we talk, if you tally him up, most of them are symbols for human behavior. So there, the dragon is also a fitting image for the land ruler that goes astray and becomes opposed to God's purpose for creation. So the dragon symbol can be applied to the star, rebel or to the land rebel. Wow, this is helpful. Okay.

Yeah, can I say it back this way? Because ultimately we're talking about what we would call spiritual evil or angels and demons and I don't know the best words to use Yeah, those that have those that have it and so what you're saying is look the humans are called to rule those heavens are called to rule and The seed dragon is put there in the Chaotic Sea, but it's just another creature But it's a dangerous one. It's a dangerous creature. When we get to Job, there's a dangerous land creature to the behemoth. That's right.

And there's lions. And there's, you know, it's just like, there's creatures can be dangerous. But they're not called to rule. In fact, we're called to rule over them. And they're not necessarily, they're not bad. Or evil, they're just like. Yeah, but they're not images of God. They're not bad or evil. They're just like, yeah, but they are not images of God. They're not

images of God. And when we encounter them, we could be encountering de-creation like a lion could kill us. At least our own de-creation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's something primal. Yeah, and maybe this is why historically that concept of rationality, intelligence, moral intuition, these are the things connected to the image of God, because these are precisely the things that experientially set us apart from animals. So in the neighboring stories, the C-dragon is like trying to create chaos. Yeah, the symbol of anti-order. Yeah, there is kind of this consciousness

of like I want to take down creation. Yeah, I don't know if it's conscious though. It just does what it does. It does what it does. That's how God describes these creatures in the speeches of Joseph. Yeah, but I'm talking about in the neighboring myths. Oh, I understand, got it.

They mean myths, I don't know, I haven't read them. Yeah, yeah, but it's a rival to the storm god. It's a rival. And it wants to swallow up everything in death. It's a threat. Cosmic threat. I feel like you were getting to something and I want to get back to it. It's that when we want to talk about the sky rulers in rebellion, all of a sudden we go, we go, you know what? There's this chaotic creature of the sea. And if that thing was in rebellion and became kind of this cosmic hybrid of like the sky rulers with that, that thing is the way to describe the horror of what it's like for this spiritual evil to be in rebellion.

That's right. That makes a lot of sense because you've got all these stories around you that that's what they're doing. They're employing that image. You can just adopt that image and say, yeah, that thing that you've seen on the clay pot of the dragon and the story you heard, but in the world, the way that the Bible wants you to think about it is that these are God's creatures that are meant to rule like humans, but are in rebellion. In rebellion. And this makes a perfect image because snakes can fly and have wings

in the ancient imagination. And they also go in the underworld and they can go on the surface of the land and so on. Yep. All to say, the dragon is like a vessel. Yeah. Oh, in a way. Like the dragon. Hmm. It's a set of clothes.

It's a costume. It feels like a costume. Hmm. Yeah. And a rebel host of heaven can be described with that costume when it plays the role of anti-creation. And the humans who listen to the snake whispering in their ear and become an instrument of anti-creation, humans can be described as dragons. In fact, that's primarily what dragon symbolism refers to in the Bible, if you just count up the number of times.

Human, human, usually structural evil, institutional or imperial evil. But then you dig a layer deeper than that, and why is there... Yeah. There's a alliance between... Yeah. ...or a mirror relationship. A mirror relationship, and I don't fully appreciate that. Yeah.

But... Or at all, we'll say that humans are captive... To do the will of the evil one. Hmm. Capped slaves... And slaved. Hmm. The costume. The dragon is a costume.

It's a symbol that refers to anti-creation. It was so well known to the biblical authors that when it appears in Genesis 1, it's a dig. It's a twist on the well-known ancient Near Eastern dragon slang story where the dragon is the rival to the storm god and anti-creation. The biblical authors introduce the dragon is the rival to the storm god and anti creation. The biblical authors introduced the dragon as a part of God's world, but it's a part that's not described as evil, but it's also not going to create the garden. Right. It's something that needs to be subdued.

It needs to be subdued. God's partners are the host of heaven, but that partnership isn't really spelled out in detail. But the main partnership is with the land rulers. And the dragon symbol can be used to describe deviant star rulers and deviant land rulers. And a way to use your category of natural disaster or natural evil versus what was the other term?

Oh, morally. Morally. Yeah. What humans and the like God's creatures are doing, we would describe like moral evil. Correct. Yes. Yeah. But what the c-dragon does, what the ocean does, that's just natural.

That's just like the fact that what you said, we're on a progression. God didn't create a perfect state. He separated out. He allowed a place for goodness to thrive, but then go and expand it. What are you expanding into? What are you expanding into? Something that's going to fight back. That's right.

Yeah. And not because it hates you. Not because it hates you. It's just, it's the opposite of what God and you want to make together. That's the dragon. That's the dragon as it at a beginning state. The dragon is just the dragon is a symbol. A symbol of the cosmos fighting back against you that you have to subdue. And so this at conversation number nine. at conversation number nine. I think if I could go back and tweak now all the ways

I've been talking about the dragon I would now. Would you? Yeah, just a little bit. And maybe if I go back and listen to it, it wouldn't be that different. In other words, the dragon is a symbol. And total, this makes so much sense. This is why there can be dragon slaying scenes

in a lot of the passages we're looking at, but the opponent is the waters. In other words, very often in these dragon slaying texts in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes the dragon is there in the waters, sometimes the dragon's gone, and it's just God versus the waters. Yeah. And that's because they are two ways

of talking about the same thing. Anti-creation. That thing is anti-creation, but not through the vehicle of a creature metaruul, but through the vehicle of... Something that needs to be ruled. Something that needs to be ruled. That needs order imposed upon it. Okay.

Like what I was trying to represent the views of Rupert Schalbert-Drek at the beginning. It needs a mind, a purpose imposed upon it to give it form and order. Otherwise, it's just infinite, unorganized potential. And we talked about this in terms of, you know, a new creation, a toddler can play with a snake. So the snake has been ruled. And now it's not that it's not there anymore.

It's function has been changed. And so that now you have a relationship with it, it's different. And so you can then think about, what does that mean for the ocean and for the sea dragon? Well, in the ancient imagination, you're just like, we don't need the ocean. That's what's like.

Yeah, like in the new creation. New creation, the ocean has gone. In Revelation 21, 22, no more sea, no more dragon, no more night. Right. But when we think about new creation, we don't think about, wow, we don't need the ocean, right? Like the ocean's part of creation.

Yeah, at least all Christian surfers hopes that. Yeah, and dolphin enthusiasts. Yep. Which is every girl in the fifth grade for me. I need to be a marine biologist. That's amazing. Oh, that's good. But what does it mean to rule over and subdue the chaotic elements out there and expand

the garden. And when you encounter something that's not a, not a moral creature. Not a creature called a rule. Called a rule, but when you're encountering a force that's fighting against you, you're encountering the dragon. The dragon in the form of the ocean, in the form of a lion, or scorpion, or snake, or in the form of your

own mortality and death. It's just dragging you back down into the grave. That's the dragon. It's the dragon. And when the dragon scratches you, like the bunny, it's not doing evil. It's just like that's what it does. Yep. That's right.

And it's a way of saying, God has not set up creation to exist instantly in its ideal form. Right. He has set up reality so that it journeys from chaos into the perfect, into the ideal. And that journey constantly forces God's rulers to make conscious decisions about whether we will align ourselves with the will and wisdom and goodness of God or peel off to do our own version of good, which the biblical story is trying to say, just usually how we end up undoing good. And so when we start here, when we employ the dragon, we're using it in a way very different than the contemporary mythologies saying the dragon isn't a rival to God, it's just a rival to us.

Incretion. Incretion. Okay. Now, that's a great place to start because then the next step is what you said earlier, which was really helpful, which is go well then how can we best understand and describe what does it look like when the

rulers above Rebell against their place What's a way to think about that then we take the dragon yeah, and we like Hybridize it. Yeah, it becomes even more terrifying comes more terrifying the dragon with intelligence But now it's like the dragon, the crafty serpent, who comes down from the sky, and actually now is what we might call a moral evil. It's like actually trying to corrupt us. So now the dragon becomes more, and that's the snake we meet in Genesis 2. That's right.

And then what you said is when we get to the dragon slaying motif in the Bible, that's what God is slaying. He's not slaying the like Leviathan. That's what we were meant to rule over. He's slaying the more like cosmic, like hybridized evil. And you can apply that to the spiritual beings. You can apply that then also to us. Yeah. Humans that partner with the sky dragon and become land dragons, as it were. Which then brings us to the story of Kane. What you're experiencing, that anger inside of you, Kane is sin.

It's a monster that wants to rule you. Yeah. But you need to rule it. You need to rule it. Mm-hmm. And now we're not talking about ruling... The big thing out there in the waters. Yes. We're talking about ruling the rebellious evil force. Mm-hmm.

That's mirroring in some way your rebellious evil impulse. Yeah. It's humans partnering with a more intelligent, more cosmic force of anti-creation and we just are dimly aware of it, which I think is mirrored in why, how in the biblical story those forces are so rarely explicit on the stage,

but do they appear just often enough to let you know that they're there? At least the biblical authors want you to see that they're there. So this is the dragon as a costume? The dragon is a costume. It's really helpful. Because I've been merging, I think I intuitively just because in all of these passages, there's this linking of the dragon with the star ruler as the rebel. But this is very helpful, because Genesis 1 is saying that dragon in the waters is just like the lion on the land. And this is what God says in Job 40, whatever.

This is just another one of my creatures. That's right. And it's a way of talking about just the reality of God creating something other than God's self to go on a journey towards divine perfection. And so the nothingness out of which it journeys toward perfection can be described with these images of anti-creation. And I think even there there's some complexity because, again, talking about experiential versus meaning, I can go and experience a lion. And it's just another one of God's creatures. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you can, because you can see it behind bars.

Yeah, but I can see it behind bars. That's true. I could have pursued a lion. And you know, in the ancient world, the only people with the leisure resources and desire to do that were kings. Which is why there's statues of a king that you could go visit in the palace, but when you see a statue, he's like nine feet tall and he's holding a lion. Oh yeah, I saw that, the Gilgamesh one.

Yeah, he's holding a lion by the neck as if it's like a kitten. So that's in the imagination of like, oh, that guy, hold the cow. I'll let that guy be my king. He must be like a god. Yeah. So when David talks about slaying a lion, yeah, I mean, he's like, yeah, he's talking about being pretty impressive.

Yeah, God could use that guy to bring order and creation to Israel, because he's confronted just the chaos out there and overcome it. But he does not overcome the chaos that whispers in his ear. I want that woman. He didn't conquer that dragon. So back to the question, can we talk about the dragon without talking about spiritual evil? Because in a way, really most of the texts we're talking about as the dragon is a costume. And what is the costume doing? It's animating us and, or it's humans.

And also, what's the right word? The costume is something to get put on. The human rulers or the sky rulers when you are describing how their choices are not forwarding God's creation project, rather they are dragging it back into the chaotic nothingness. So the theme we're talking about really is deviant rulers. Yes. Yes.

Correct. All right. This has been immensely helpful. Yes. Yes. Yep. Alright. This has been immensely helpful. Yeah. For me. Yeah, thank you. I think that's good to stop. This is Dan Gummel.

I'm here doing another employee introduction. And I'm here with a friend of mine. Do I say hello? Hey, my name's Penny. I've been a Bible project on staff here for pretty close to five years. So what do you do here at Fibo project? My title is Caron Event Manager. So what I do is a little bit everything. Oversea, the Portland building and the facility, all the vendors that kind of come and go. I have a big part in connecting with staff in the culture and their onboarding process.

So I just make sure that all of our teammates are equipped with whatever they need to do their job. What's really important to me, like on the hospitality side, what are all the things that need to be done to make sure that someone feels welcomed when they walk in the door. So I've been wanting to address the elephant in the room for a while. And it's a real elephant. We use slack. And you've had the same profile picture forever. I want to look at your photo, I'm pulling it up. So you're in the left hand side of the frame.

And your eyes are closed because there's an elephant standing next to you and you're holding his trunk. And he has reached his end of his trunk up. And he has it like on your left cheek. Your smile is taking up your whole face. So start the story. So I was traveling. I was in Thailand. It was probably 2016 or so. We went to an elephant farm.

And then they had an area where they were feeding the elephants and opportunity to go up and feed them. And there was this one baby elephant that they said, you know what, if you go up to this one elephant, it'll give you a kiss. And totally intimidated by this large animal, even the baby, you know, it's like this huge suction cup. It's like putting the end of a vacuum cleaner up to your face.

And so your cheek like sucks into it? Yes, I'm interested. And it was one of the craziest sensations. Tell me a little bit about your life outside work. Outside work, the sun's out, I love being outdoors. Are you still kickboxing? Yeah, I think that's so cool. How does you develop an interesting fitness?

I think when my daughters were young, it was just a really important time just to like, it was a break. Like that was something I did for myself. It's like I took an hour in the morning to just like go do something else. It was good for me. And it just became part of my routine and part of my lifestyle. Yeah. We read our credits. Today's show came from our podcast team, including producer Cooper Peltz, and associate producer Lindsay Ponder. Our lead editor is Dan Gummel, our additional editors are Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza.

Tyler Bailey also mixed this episode and Hanawoo did our annotations for the Bible Project app. Bible Project is a crowd-funded non-profit. Everything we make is free because of your generous support. Thank you so much for being part of this with us. you