Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 300 Manny Arango - Crushing the Chaos of Our Lives
Chaos isn't just a word, it's the underlying current of our human experience. Today, we're diving deep with Manny Arango into the biblical roots of disorder, exploring how chaos existed before sin and how God's design always intended for humans to bring order to the wild. We'll unpack the six-step cycle of chaos in scripture, examine why peace isn't something we pray for but something we create through intentional living, and challenge our American notion of freedom as mere independence. From generational patterns to personal anxiety, from the dragons in Genesis to the transformative power of Jesus, this conversation cuts through surface-level spirituality. We're asking hard questions: How do we break cycles of chaos? What does true freedom actually look like? And how can we move from self-centered living to a life of radical service? So join us as we crush chaos.
Dr. Manny Arango is a Bible nerd and founder of ARMA Courses — an online educational platform that helps Christians to become biblically literate. The platform has grown to thousands of monthly subscribers since launching in 2020.
Dr. Manny Arango was born in Boston, MA but based in Houston, TX, where he and his wife Tia are preparing to plant The Garden, a brand new church in the heart of the city.
Manny graduated from North Baptist Theological Seminary in June 2024 with a Doctorate in New Testament studies.
He’s been married to his beautiful wife Tia for over a decade and they have a son named Theophilus.
Manny's Book:
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As Christ followers, we now have the power to break the cycle of chaos. I don't have to live in my great grandparents chaos, or my grandparents chaos, or my parents chaos, or the chaos of my life five years ago, I can make the decision as a follower of Jesus to break any kind of generational cycle or any kind of cyclical habitual pattern, and to follow Christ into freedom, you
Joshua Johnson:Joshua, hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast. And once we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we could make, we long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know, chaos isn't just a word, it's the underlying current of our human experience. Today, we're diving deep, with many Arango into the biblical roots of disorder, exploring how chaos existed before sin, and how God's design always intended for humans to bring order to the wild. We'll unpack the six step cycle of chaos in Scripture. Examine why peace isn't something we pray for, but something we create through intentional living. And challenge our American notion of freedom as mere independence, from generational patterns to personal anxiety, from the dragons in Genesis to the transformative power of Jesus, this conversation cuts through surface level spirituality. We're asking hard questions, how do we break cycles of chaos? What does true freedom actually look like, and how can we move from a self centered living to a life of radical service? So join us as we crush chaos. Here is my conversation with Manny Arango. Manny, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on. This is gonna be a fun one. So thanks for coming.
Unknown:Oh, thank you for inviting me super, super excited to be with
Joshua Johnson:you. Yeah, it's going to be good. We're going to crush some chaos today. So as we crush chaos, we want to know why this like as you, you worked on this for a long time. You were, you were studying this, you were going in there. Why is chaos something that you started to say, oh, I want to, I want to dig into chaos. Okay.
Unknown:Well, first of all, I was a youth pastor for 10 years. Well, there you go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I so from 2009 to 2019 I served multiple churches as young adult pastor, youth pastor, and then I would say, in the last six years, have focused, you know, on adults, adult ministry, I begin to realize that sometimes in church, if all we have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail. And so what typically starts to happen is the only question we ask is like, Oh, does someone have sin in their life. So then, if the answer is yes or no, sin is just the only it's like the only equation we know how to solve for. The reality is that anxiety is not a sin issue, but it is a chaos issue. Dysfunctional relationships may not be sin issues, but they are chaos issues. You know, I know that different denominations may disagree on whether or not drinking alcohol, for instance, right is a sin issue. I would not say it's a sin issue. I know there are other brothers and sisters in Christ who would say it is a sin issue. What I think we can definitely all agree on is, man, it's got the potential to create chaos, and it could be a chaos issue, and so after just man it, I feel old saying this, but almost 20 years of like just being in the trenches doing ministry with people, you begin to realize your job as a pastor is not just addressing the sin that's in people's lives, but addressing The chaos that's in people's lives. You are trying to bring order to people's chaos, and that may not always present itself like sin. Sometimes that is so for me, my dad was addicted to drugs for for for decades, and my mother was a teenage mom, and I got diagnosed by a therapist with surrogate spouse syndrome, like my mom essentially had spousal or spouse level expectations of me, even though I was not her spouse, right? I was her son, but that's because my dad dropped the ball in so many areas that my mom then was depending on me to pay bills when I was 15 years old and be the man of the house. And those things aren't sinful, but man, were they damaging? Were they dysfunctional? Were they chaotic? That was chaotic, and living in the home of an addict was chaotic, and sometimes, if all we address is sin is. You know, it's funny. You know, after doing ministry for a long time, you begin to realize that sin and there's nothing word with the wrong there's nothing wrong with the word sin. I want to preface that. It's a good word. It's it's in the Bible. Anywhere that's in the Bible, I say, let's use it. Let's keep it. However, the goal isn't just to talk, it's to communicate, and communication requires that I know how words affect other people. I've just realized, after doing ministry for a long time, the moment you say the word sin, people's defense mechanisms go up. And it's almost like their guilt and shame triggers. It's like their guilt and shame alarms just start going off. But you know what's funny? Like, I've talked to non Christians who will just admit there's chaos in my life. Like you don't even have to tell them their sin in their life. They will just admit to you that my life's chaotic, my life's all over the place, my life's dysfunctional, my life's this or that. And so I just began to ask the question meant, is there chaos in the Bible? And and I was shocked to find out that the answer is absolutely yes. It's just that the Bible talks about chaos in ways that are deeply symbolic, and that the themes of chaos are very much so prevalent in the scriptures. But the we don't see the word in the same way that we don't see the word trinity. That doesn't mean that the Trinity is not there, just means that word isn't present. So that, that is what got me on this whole journey, is honestly a pastoral heart and a nerdy brain. So once I began to realize that the theme for chaos throughout the scriptures, or the main symbol for chaos out the scriptures was a dragon. Man. It was on. It was on and popping for me. I was like, yeah, if you're telling me there's anything Game of Thrones ask in the Bible, help me in I'm interested.
Joshua Johnson:All right, we're going to talk about dragons, and we're going to talk about chaos. But I want to say one of the things that what you're doing, I think, is trying to get behind whatever the sin issue is, there's something behind it, right? There's something that is actually aggravating it. There's something that is going on beneath the surface that we don't usually address. We usually address, what is surface level? Oh, you're going deeper than surface level. How does that work? And how have you seen that in ministry when you actually go deeper underneath the surface? What happens there for us
Unknown:two things, a people, a hate it, or people embrace it and they're forever grateful. So either, either one, people hate it and would rather just sell for behavior modification, or people really embrace the idea. So I'll, I'll tell you something that really like helped me a lot. And as an author, there's these, there are these moments, you know, you have this thought, especially doing a lot of interviews, I have these thoughts, and I go, dang it. I wish I'd written that in the book. You know, all these moments of like, I wish I had said it that way. I practice confession. I think it's a good biblical practice. And so I said to a mentor of mine, to a pastor this couple years ago, I said, I have a pornography problem, like, I mean, I was just kind of at the end of my ropes and just really overwhelmed. And and I remember saying, like, just confessing, like a moment of vulnerability, like, I have a pornography problem. And he looked at me, and he said, No, you don't you have a pornography solution. Said Your problem is not porn. He said, The way you're solving your problem is pornography. He said, and our job is to figure out what your actual problem really is, because your actual problem may be insecurity, your actual problem may be a lack of intimacy, your actual problem could be whatever. And I think there's a lot of people who they settle for sobriety when God really wants to offer them real freedom and lasting freedom. And I think there's a lot of people who think, if my behaviors changed, we're good. And the reality is that you could change behaviors. Muslims can change behaviors. Buddhists can change behaviors that that's not like distinctly Christian to just be able to like change behaviors, but to change mindsets, to change the driving factor that's that's causing sin in your life. Anytime I've preached about this character in the Bible named Samson, I always like to let people know that sin is how we as humans try or attempt to pacify our own pain. And so the real question is, okay, what am I pacifying? And underneath the surface of the sin what? What the sin problem, or the sin issue, is typically chaos. And theologically, I'm making the argument, or crush on chaos that there was. Chaos in the cosmos before there was ever sin, and that that's not a design flaw, that that's a design feature, and we have to learn how to navigate chaos if we're gonna learn what it means to be truly human. But yes, sin, whether whether it's a habit or a behavior or a mindset or whatever, whatever the behavior is that's that's causing guilt or shame or whatever. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that iceberg are all kinds of identity, foundational beliefs that have to actually get worked out, and what begins to happen, or what I begin to, I hope, unpack in the book, is that when I begin to put my life in order, there are certain things like anxiety that just fix itself, not magic, not like it just magically goes away. But when I focus on fixing anxiety, it's funny, I only become more anxious. But when I focus on ordering my life, it's like anxiety begins to get solved at
Joshua Johnson:the root level. There's so much in there. Let's go back into where chaos began. If you said it was in the cosmos, where was chaos? What is chaos and why is it present before sin showed up in the world?
Unknown:That's great. Fantastic question. Okay, there's four main forms of chaos that we find actually in either in Genesis, chapter one, verse one, two or three, or Genesis, chapter one, verse 21 but before we get out of the first chapter of the Bible, all four forms of chaos are there? Ironically enough, they all start with D, which is helpful for
Joshua Johnson:me as a community. It is helpful for a pastor loves, oh
Unknown:yeah, if we don't have alliteration, it's not anointed, you know, which, ironically enough, is an alliterated statement. So, okay, the first form of chaos is the deep. So the Bible says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep. The Spirit of God hovered above the waters. Okay, so the first form of chaos that we have is the deep. That word in Hebrew is to home. That would get translated as primeval abyss. So the deep would be like the ocean depths that, like will crush you if you try to get down there, like the furthest reaches of the of the of the oceans that you can imagine. And I know that a lot of time as Westerners, we think about creation, especially Genesis, one as the account of God turning nothing into something. However, Genesis, chapter one, verse two, actually suggests that God isn't turning nothing into something, but that he's turning chaos into order, because we have the deep is there. The Deep is in verse two, and then the waters would be like the seas. Okay, so the deep is that underlying that belly of the beast. It's the thing that every ancient person was the most scared of the second form of chaos is darkness. So, so darkness is present in verse two, the third, which is actually interesting, that word formless and void in verse two, the Hebrew, there is Tohu vavo Who the NIV translates that as formless and void, which makes us think of nothingness. However, in Isaiah, that that same verse, that same word, is used Tohu vavohu, and it means chaos and desolation, or chaos and confusion. And so the image that we're actually supposed to have is of a desert, of a desert wilderness. So the deep darkness, desert. And then Genesis, chapter one, verse 21 God made the great sea creatures in Hebrew. That word is tiny, and that gets translated as Dragon. There are dragons in Genesis, chapter one. Now I would say that the scriptures and not this. I don't think this is like a evil thing or a malicious thing, but the scriptures have been intentionally demythologized by modern translations. And by demythologize, I just mean we in our modern world are trying to solve a problem that ancient authors and ancient audiences are not trying to solve. So for the modern translator or for the modern Western individual, we're really trying to prove that evolution is wrong and that everything that God made was created by him. So we have a creationist agenda which causes us to read the Bible a certain way. I'm all about God created everything. So I have no issues with that. The only problem with that is that the ancient audience wasn't trying to prove that you. They didn't live in a world where there were atheists. There were no atheists, there were no evolutionists running around Ancient Egypt or ancient Mesopotamia. That's not even remotely a thing. However, there were polytheists, and what Moses is doing in the book of Genesis is not trying to prove that evolution's wrong. He's actually trying to prove that God is unlike ra that God is unlike Marduk, that God is unlike Baal, that that is what Moses is up to. And at some point we have to realize the Bible is written for us, but not to us, and get back to okay, but so what was in the original mind of the original audience, and what would have been in their mind, for the forefront of their mind, is that any god, any good God, is able to take chaos and create order out of it, which is why, during the plagues, what does Yahweh do? He proves that the gods that the Egyptians worship are not able to sustain the order of creation, which is why you get a return to darkness, which is why the Nile that was worshiped turns to blood. He's proving, Yahweh is actually proving your gods don't have the power to sustain the order of the cosmos that without me, everything goes back to chaos, because I didn't start from nothing and make something. I started from chaos and I made order. And if you're not going to worship me as the God that brings things from chaos to order, then you won't be able to enjoy the order that I've blessed you with. So, okay, all four forms of chaos. So what does God do? God now does not completely eradicate those four forms of chaos. However, he creates boundaries for all of them, so he doesn't eliminate darkness. He says that darkness can happen at night, and that, that's its boundary. It has a time boundary, okay? And it has stars and a moon to govern the chaos which is in the ancient world. This would have been thought of as angelic beings, as as the host of heaven, okay. Number two, the the to home, the deep gets boundaries. God creates land and he creates the oceans, and he doesn't. There is no word for create that, that Hebrew word bara is not used of the seas, because Genesis one, verse two, tells us that it's already there, the deep and the waters are there. But God separated water from water, and he caused dry ground to appear. So the thing that gets made is dry ground. And there's a boundary for the desert and for the wilderness. The boundary is the Garden of Eden. So now Eden is a place of order and the wilderness is a place of chaos, a nerdy nugget. Adam doesn't get made from the soil of Eden. He gets made from the soil of the wilderness, which is why humans will never find order or discipline or commandments of God to feel natural. So this idolization of authenticity is is really hard, because for the Christian, we're saying, no, no, no, no, no, you weren't even taken from ordered soil. You were taken from chaotic soil. And order has to be imposed on us. And so none of the order that I've had to learn as a human, comes naturally. None of it. You want to know what comes naturally. Lying comes naturally. Chaos comes naturally, sin comes naturally. Man, I don't have to try like that. Stuff comes really easily, hiding, shame, guilt, like these things come very, very naturally. Okay? And then the only thing that's not given a boundary is the dragon, and God allows the dragon to be in the garden. Which gets us to our last question, why I would propose there are multiple answers to that question. I'll tell you. The answer that I put forward in the book crush on chaos is that most of us assume, and I would say that we incorrectly assume that when God creates the world, he made it perfect. I think that we hear that in church a lot, the Garden of Eden was perfect. God made a perfect world, and then Adam and Eve jacked it up with sin. And the reality is that there isn't one time in Genesis, chapter one, two or three, where the creation is described as perfect. Never God never called it perfect. He called it good. And a good garden has an adversary, because good, unlike perfect. Means that it is doing what it is designed to do, and in the same way that Yahweh creates boundaries for chaos, Adam and Eve are commissioned to subdue and rule. Subdue and rule. What if they're in a perfect world, there's nothing to subdue or rule. They're called to subdue and rule, because there is chaos in the garden, and they have to learn how to subdue and rule so they can grow the garden to overtake the wilderness. So a dragon wants the humans to be an agent of chaos. God wants the humans to be an agent of order, or agents of order. Obviously, they made their decision to be agents of chaos, which is why they then get banished into the realm of chaos. Okay, so, and think about the assumptions where you bring in a marriage. Most people are hoping that God would give them a perfect spouse, and God doesn't give a perfect spouse. He gives a good one, a good one at best. And you know, you know, I have a couple of employees, a handful of employees, and God, doesn't give perfect employees. He gives good ones. He doesn't give us a perfect church. He gives us a good church. He doesn't give us a perfect business or a perfect podcast, or a perfect anything. He gives us good good. And we turn good into great, and then we turn great into fruitful and and that's our job. So a perfect garden would have made Adam and Eve lazy, but God put them in a garden and allowed a dragon of chaos to be in there with them, so that they could learn how to give boundaries to chaos, just like the God that they follow? Has given boundaries to chaos. They were supposed to do what they saw their father do, which is, provide boundaries for the darkness, provide boundaries for the deep, provide boundaries for the desert. They were supposed to put the dragon in his place. Last nerdy detail is that in every creation myth outside of the Bible, it is the god figure, or the creator figure, or the deity that conquers the chaos. So Marduk conquers this dragon named Tiamat Ra, the sun god Ra, in Egyptian folklore, conquers the chaos dragon named Apep. Or, you know, in the in the Canaanite story, Baal, or Baal from the Old Testament, actually conquers a chaos dragon named lOTAN. But God is not like these other gods. He's not like Baal or Marduk or RA he will not dishonor himself by confronting anything face to face, even in Revelation, when the dragon gets kicked out of heaven, Michael goes to do it because God has no rival. He has no equal, and he won't fight anything like it's an equal of his. He literally just sends Michael. So the devil is such a non issue for God that Michael, hey, you got some errands today. Man, go fight. Go fight the dragon and cast them out of heaven. So the dragon is in the garden because he is Adam and Eve's adversary, not God's adversary. Obviously, they fail. Jesus comes as a human to do what Adam and Eve were unable to do. In Jesus, fully divine and fully human, actually conquers the dragon. And so, okay, my very long winded answer to your fantastic question is that I think a lot of times we assume perfection, when God just doesn't. There's no place that says it's perfect, but he says it's good. And I think that we have to begin to see work as good. Oh, wow. Adam and Eve had work to do. Yeah, it's good, man, that work is good. An enemy is good, an adversary is good, a struggle is good. That stuff's good, and it's and is designed to be in there, in the garden for a good reason. All
Joshua Johnson:right. Well, we'll get back to some nerdy Bible stuff in just a second. But guys, let's go into something like your anxiety, where there's, there's chaos. You're feeling chaos. There's, there's a lot of chaos. Oftentimes, I would think that if I'm anxious, I want peace, but what God does is He creates order out of chaos. Yes. So what is, then the difference between order and peace in our in our lives. And what does order bring that we think peace may
Unknown:Fantastic question, thanks for throwing me a softball that this is, this is amazing. You're welcome just lobbing softballs for me, I would say that peace is a fruit. So if you even think of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self control. So peace, then, is not a seed or root. It's fruit. It is the natural byproduct when there's order in my life. So I used to tell the kids in my youth group all the time for. The first five years of youth ministry. Man, I would pray for them to have peace, you know, they would leave Wednesday night service full of peace, and then I'd see them on Wednesday, on, you know, Wednesday, we'd have youth service. Then I'd see them on the weekends, and their peace tank was at 50% and they'd be back the next Wednesday, their peace tanks at 0% anxiety is back, and I just felt like I'm a hamster on a wheel. Every week they run out of peace. I felt like Chick fil A just free refills of peace every week, just given more peace and and, you know, they would find peace in all kinds of things, in the worship, in the sermon, in the ministry, time at the altar, they'd find peace in all kinds of things. But then I remember five years in going, you know what? Instead of teaching on peace, I really need to teach on order, because if I teach them order, they'll they'll be able to sustain the peace that that we preach about. So let's take order in in I kind of unpack tons of or different forms of order through the book, but one of them is sequence. Right. Just sequence. I could have all the right ingredients for a cake, but if I do it in the wrong order, I'm not going to get a cake. I'm going to get a miss. So sequence matters. Simple stuff. I wasn't teaching them anything profound, just simple stuff, like sex goes after marriage. That's the sequence marriage then sets. If you put it before, it's not that God's God hates you or you're gross or disgusting, or any of that, like we don't, we don't have to be offensive to people, but man, sex creates this possessive nature that's healthy in marriage, but that's really unhealthy outside of it. And I could pray for you to have peace all you want, but if you're in a dysfunctional relationship with your boyfriend and you've let sex enter into the relationship, then there's going to be a certain amount of anxiety that you're going to have about that relationship. Because the reality is that that it's built, it's not built on anything stable, like you're just playing a really risky game. Another easy one is fathers, like when you just start looking at fatherhood stats, like when there's an active present dad in the home, anxiety rates go down when there's an active present dad in the home, like the suicide, teen suicide goes down. Depression goes down, poverty and incarceration and all this stuff goes down. Well, duh. I mean, dads are a part of God's order. This is order. And so I remember being honest with the kids in my youth group and saying, like, hey, my dad, my father, took me to a crack house for the first time when I was five. So I hated male authority, and it wasn't until I forgave my father and and started to allow some spiritual dads to exert authority in my life that certain forms of anxiety went away. And it's not that I needed to pray more, it's that I couldn't rebel against order, and think I was still eligible for God's peace. It just doesn't work that way. Actually, by accepting God's order and surrendering to the order that he has for my life, I begin to realize that peace fixed itself, that peace is this natural byproduct of order, and that whenever there's order in my life, peace thrives. Same with like, let's say rhythm. So like, I'd say sequence is one form of order. I would say hierarchy is another form of order, and dads fall into a hierarchy that God intends for the family and for society. I'd say rhythm is another form of order. So if I'm working seven days and resting zero, I'm out of rhythm. I'm out of sleep with the rhythm that God created me for. And so of course, I'm going to be anxious because I'm tired, I'm burnt out, whereas when I work six and rest one, work six, rest one, I'm now back in rhythm, which means I'm in sync with God's order, and when I embrace his order, even when I take a Sabbath, when I know there's work that needs to be done, it's almost like that anxiety around work begins to go away, and my identity isn't just what I produce, but I begin to enjoy God's rest. And so I may think, no, if I could just get everything on my to do list done, then I can rest. And God says, No, you embrace rest, even when there are things on the to do list. I was at a church in St Louis, and one of the deacons at. Church walked me out to greet people in the lobby. And on the way, one of the congregants, I didn't know that the guy was a deacon. X, I just thought he was part of the security or safety team. And he said, Hey, Deacon, Mike, can you pray for me? Deacon Mike said, Yeah, I can pray for you. Like, gotta make it quick, so I gotta get pastor Manny out to the lobby. And he said, he said, What do you need prayer for? And the guy said, all my finances. Like, I need prayer for my finances. Deacon Mike was just about to pray for the guy, and then he said, before I pray for you, do you tithe? Like? Are you do you give like? Are you generous? Do you tithe? And he said, No, no, I don't tithe. And you know, at this point, I'm like the Michael Jackson. I'm like eating popcorn. I'm like, my dad's eating popcorn. Man, I'm just like, This is not my church. I'm leaving in the morning. I don't live here. I'm going back to Texas. You know, these Deacons in St Louis are cold blooded. Man, this is, this is fascinating. And so Deacon Mike, you know, heard the man say, No, I don't tithe. And he said that, I can't pray for you, he said, because there's no amount of prayer that I could provide that can undo the chaos that you've brought on your own life by rejecting God's order for your finances. God has and I know Christians land differently on on tithing. They said at our church, like we teach that the first 10% belongs to the Lord, and that is God's order for your finances. So no, I won't pray for you. And he did not pray for the guy. And I was like, wow. Like, Man, I don't know if I would have taken that approach, but like, essentially, what he was saying was, like, you can't leave by promise when you deny by principle. Like, I can't have faith that God is gonna, you know, Bippity, boppity boo me out of some scenario when I really don't agree with the order that God has and and so I begin to realize, if I can get people to fall in love with order which they naturally don't, people don't naturally love authority. They don't naturally love budgeting. They don't naturally love abstinence while they're single. People don't love that stuff. People don't like sabbathing. They don't like not overworking. They you know, people don't like that stuff, but they will still find themselves at the altar crying out to God for peace. And I don't know, man, I feel like a spiritual chiropractor, just like, hey, if we could crack you into order, I promise like that knee pain would go away, but I've got to crack your neck, like I like, you gotta let me crack your neck, because it's gonna have this ripple effect. So, yeah, that's the correlation that I see in the Scriptures between order and peace. If
Joshua Johnson:order happens and there's different there's rhythms and sequence and these different types of of order, and we often don't want that, right? As humans, we don't want it. Americans don't want it. But what we do, we're trying to get happy, right? Happiness is our top order. Oh yeah, because that's what we say in our Constitution, we have the right to happiness. Oh yeah, and we want everything to do about ourselves. What we're hyper individual like it is just about me, and so I'm gonna find everything I need inside of myself. That's where my happiness will come from. Yeah, that's where my good work is gonna come from. It's all about me. How does this help us actually finding what true happiness is, what true community is, what true life is. How does this help us become human again? Yeah, yeah.
Unknown:Okay, I'll say two things. First, this whole idea of of order and peace, we could see it in Genesis, because as long as there's chaos, God doesn't rest in the chaos, but he does hover over it and command it into order. And once it's ordered, one of the best verses in scripture is that he rests in the Garden of Eden. So God goes from hovering to resting once things have been put into order. So number one, if order is difficult for anyone watching or listening, I just want to remind you of a promise of scripture that God does go from hovering above your life trying to speak order into it, to resting with you if you give him a temple that's ordered and your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, but he won't Rest in chaos. He will speak to the chaos and get it to line up, but you have to yield. You got to surrender and obey so that you could be an order temple for His Holy Spirit, so that just a promise like and a challenge. Second, one of the things that. What I think I do a decent job of in the book is talking about the chaos that ensues with hyper individual a hyper individualistic society. So the reality is that as independence and individuality go up, anxiety also goes up. So you know, to anyone listening who's just so focused on themselves and their goals and their life, like I would say, Yo, you are fueling your your problems with your selfishness. Like, at some point you have to realize that the best thing you can do with your life is not hoard it or keep it, but give it away. I got this really dope speaking opportunity couple years ago, I think, like 2019 I was so nervous, like the speaking engagement came via email, and my admin told me, and she was so excited to tell me, and I immediately was nervous. Well, I was excited initially, and then as I began to think about I just got nervous, and the nerves turned into anxiety, and the anxiety turned into overthinking. And, you know, all my thoughts were, what am I gonna preach? This could open doors, you know, if the right people hear me, and it's such a big platform, and what if I trip when I'm walking up to the stage? What if I stutter? What if I what am I gonna wear? What am I gonna say? Blah, blah. So it's like weeks before this event, and by this point, I'm not as nervous, I'm not as overthinking. I mean, every time I think about this speaking engagement, my stomach's just in knots, like I don't even want to think about the fact that I have this speaking engagement coming up. I'm dreading it. I'm dreading it. This is a this is good news, like, I finally got asked to be on this major platform, and I'm dreading it. So I'm praying one day, and the Holy Spirit says, Do you want to know why you're anxious? And I'm like, Duh, yeah, I'd love to know why I'm anxious, you know, like, if you could shed some light here on why I'm anxious, like, that'd be good. And the Holy Spirit said, you're anxious because you're selfish. He goes, let's just think about what you've thought about so far, your sermon, your skills, your outfit, your ministry, your reputation. You've only thought about you have you thought about the couple on the brink of divorce who's going to be in the room? Have you thought about the single mom who's bringing her 13 year old son to that service? Have you thought about, you know, the person who just got a cancer diagnosis who's going to be in church that day. Have you thought, have you for one moment thought about the pastor who invited you and how stressed out they may be and how you are lifting a burden for them on this particular Sunday? Have you stopped to consider any of the people that I've actually called you to go preach to that day and war. Know what's crazy as soon as I stop thinking about my sermon, my words, my outfit, my tripping or not tripping, my stuttering or not stuttering, and just thought about the people that God had called me to minister to that day, all my anxiety actually went away, and it turned into righteous anger, and I began to pray for all the people and all of the scenarios and all of the weight or burdens that people will be carrying with them in the church. And my anxiety went away. All my anxiety around that speaking engagement went away because they were all rooted in selfishness. And I think we have to ask ourselves a question, am I even anxious about anything that has to do with God or others or community, like, am I anxious about anybody else's kids or just my kids? Am I anxious about anybody else's, you know, health, or just my health, and life is fullest when you live it in service to other people. That's not just like a cliche feel good thing that no like it's the antidote for anxiety and God didn't create you to just live for yourself. He created you to care, to mourn with those who mourn, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to really take other people's burdens on. And it's funny how when we do that, our anxiety really does get turned on its head. So okay, that's my counter cultural take on selfishness and individualism and anxiety. I think that it's hard to embrace the community in the group. I think we're all scared we're gonna lose ourselves. But the reality is that, what if losing yourself is the best thing that ever happened? I remember someone told. Me couple years ago, they were scared to get married because they were scared to lose themselves. And I said, Well, let me tell you the good news and the bad news. I said, the good news is, I did lose myself when I got married. I did. I'm not who I was. I said, that is the bad news. Let me tell you bad news first, I did lose myself when I got married. I'm not who I was. I said, now let me tell you the good news. I'm better now than I was then. I lost that version of Manny, only to finally become the version of Manny that God always wanted to to be in existence. You will lose yourself. I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you like, No, you're gonna get married or you're not gonna lose yourself. No, how about this, get over yourself. Who told you you were that awesome to begin with? Maybe losing yourself would be a great thing. And you're so in love with you, you're, you're, you're, you're your own idol. And maybe losing yourself is the best thing that could ever happen. Not thinking about my sermon was the best thing that could happen for that speaking, that's
Joshua Johnson:really helpful for us to think about, okay, let's give our lives and service to others that's gonna help eliminate some of the anxiety. But you do talk about, in your book, you talk about, there are cycles of chaos, and these cycles of chaos just continue on through the story. Yeah, continue on through the story. What? What are these cycles of chaos that we see?
Unknown:Okay, so there's a six step cycle throughout the Bible. I would actually say that the whole Old Testament is kind of based on the cycle. First, there's always you get chaos somewhere in the Scriptures. And then after chaos, you get a flood. And then after the flood, you get wind, so like Ruach, or like the Spirit of God, and then after that, you get the voice of God. And then after that you get order, because God's voice always brings order. And then after that, you're always going to see a test, and then humans are going to fail that test. And then the cycle repeats itself. So throughout the book, I just make the point like, hey, humanity has moved six steps forward, and, you know, or five step forward and six steps back, over and over and over and over and over again. The first of these cycles is creation, and that failed test is obviously Adam and Eve in the garden. The second of these is actually the flood narrative. There's moral chaos, and then there's a flood. And then you get the the wind of God, or the Spirit of God in the form of a dove. And then you get the voice of God who cries out to Noah to come out of the ark. And then you get God bringing order where there was chaos. And then you get a test in a vineyard, this time, not in a garden. And then humanity fails that test. And then the cycle repeats. And then you get the same thing. In Egypt, there's moral chaos, there's slavery. So God leads them to the Red Sea, which is a body of water, and then a strong east wind pushes back on the Red Sea so that the people can go through it. Once the people have gone through it, God speaks, and the sea, you know, swallows up all the Egyptians, and then God gives order. Okay, God speaks, and now he gives order. In the entire time in the wilderness, God is giving them instructions for tabernacle commandments. He's ordering their their lives. But the the wilderness season is a season of testing, and we know that they fail. Joshua's generation isn't even able to go in to the promised land. We get this again with the Jordan River. Okay, Canaan has now descended into moral chaos. They get to the Jordan River. The Bible says that the Ark of the Covenant is brought out on the river, and that the river opens up, and then the voice of God speaks. There's order. They march around Jericho in a very ordered format. But then Achan, there's a test, one person by the name of Aiken, takes some of the plunder as his own when he's not supposed to fail the test. And then the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats. Well, the only person who breaks that cycle is a man by the name of Jesus, who enters into humanity when it's most chaotic. Jesus is then baptized in the Jordan a Spirit, the Spirit descends on him, a voice from heaven says, This is my son and who I'm well pleased. You can imagine how for an Old Testament audience who knows this cycle, they watched Jesus go out into the wilderness to get what tested, and they're waiting with bated breath to figure out, is he gonna pass this test. And it's the first time in the entire biblical narrative that we don't owe six step, six steps forward and then back. We actually move six steps forward, and Jesus breaks the cycle. And as Christ followers, we now have the power to break the cycle of chaos. I don't have to live in My great grandpa. Chaos, or my grandparents chaos, or my parents chaos, or the chaos of my life five years ago, I can make the decision as a follower of Jesus to break any kind of generational cycle or any kind of cyclical habitual pattern and to follow Christ into freedom. But if we don't know that that cycle is even there, then we don't realize the significance of Jesus getting out of the water and immediately going to get tested out in the wilderness. And then, of course, the scriptures say that he's successful out in the wilderness. And of course, he The Greek word is ekbalo. He's driven out into the wilderness. And that same Greek word is the same Greek word that's used for Adam and Eve. They're echoloed Out of Eden. They're cast out. It's the great reversal. Adam and Eve were cast out of the wilderness, sorry, into the wilderness and Jesus cast out so that we can get brought back in. Is God treating him who was perfect like a sinner, so that he could treat sinners like we're perfect? Um, this the scandalous reversal of of the gospel. So, yeah, that's, that's the cycle of chaos.
Joshua Johnson:Because Jesus broke that cycle, we're able to live in true freedom. We're trying to again, like Americans, everybody. We're trying to figure out what freedom actually looks like, but Jesus brings and helps us bring true freedom. For you, just briefly, we don't have a ton of time left. So what is true freedom? That's
Unknown:great. I think in America we define freedom as independence, because, you know, we have a whole day of independence, July 4, and we celebrate independence, and unfortunately, we then use independence and freedom as like synonyms. We use them interchangeably, but they're not the same. Adam and Eve wanted to live independent of God's order in his commands, independence is actually not a great thing. It's good for a nation to be independent of another colonizing power, awesome. However, with every people group, you have to realize that there are rights and responsibilities, and anytime any group of people focuses more on their rights than on their responsibilities, that group of people is on the verge of turmoil, and our democracy is really not just built on our rights, but it's built on our responsibility to our neighbor and our fellow man, and we've got to kind of get back to a place of freedom. Is not what I'm free to do, but what I've been freed from because of the power of Jesus. And I'm not free to smoke. I'm free from smoking. I'm not free to party and have sex with whoever I want. I'm free from the need to do those things. I'm not free to I'm free from and I've been freed, and I always love to use Harriet Tubman as a great example of what it means to be a believer. You have this enslaved woman who got free and didn't just see her freedom as something to be enjoyed, but kept going back to the south, freeing other people. And my whole job is to not just enjoy my freedom, but to say, Man, I want as many people to get free as possible, and I'll use my freedom in service to the people that are around me so they can get free as well, not just so that we can enjoy and hoard, but so that we can so that we can spread freedom, true freedom, biblical freedom. Yeah. God's command to Adam is, you are free. I love that you are free to eat of any tree in the garden except the tree in the middle of the garden. So God starts the command with freedom, that this rule will keep you free. A lot of times we think that rules inhibit our freedom, but really they they don't. They don't prohibit our freedom. They they actually create freedom because a train is most free when it's on the tracks, not off,
Joshua Johnson:that's so good. This has been a fantastic conversation so far. I have a couple of quick questions at the end I like to ask one, yeah, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you get? Oh,
Unknown:21 Mary, Tia man, we got married when I was 26 and it would have been really good to marry her when I was 21 we knew each other. Yeah, marry Tia. That if I could go back to my 21 year old self, I'd just be like, Hey, man, marry Tia. Yeah, yeah, if I go back in time right now. I'd married. I'd marry my wife. For anyone who doesn't know my current wife, her name is Tia. Is my current wife, my only wife, the only woman I'll ever marry forever. You know, anyway, yeah, that that'd be what I do that. And I'd buy you, I'd buy some crypto. I'd buy bitcoin. Yes,
Joshua Johnson:that too, yeah, too. That would be worth a lot of money right now, be but it would be worth Bitcoin
Unknown:was out when I was 20, I know, but I'd find some. I'd buy all of it. I could,
Joshua Johnson:that's right, that's right. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend,
Unknown:oh my gosh, Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime. I love it. It's, it's fantasy. It's kind of like, I don't know, it's like, Lord of the Rings, plus Game of Thrones, plus, I like fantasy. So I like world building, so Wheel of Time. Well, how could people
Joshua Johnson:go out then Manny and get crushing chaos, which is a fantastic book. Everybody should go and read it and just dig into it. You could just see lots of dragons in the middle of it. So if you love fantasy, you're gonna get dragons. You're gonna get all sorts of incredible things. Oh yeah, we got so where can people get it? And then where else would you like to point people to? You can go
Unknown:to crushing chaos.com, or you can go anywhere where you like to buy books, if you're in audiobooks. I did read the audiobook myself, and I know that it is available on Audible, but it's on Amazon. Barnes and Noble all kinds of book retailers have crushed and chaos. So you can go to crushing chaos.com or you can go wherever it's convenient. But, yeah, grab a copy of the book. I honestly think that, uh, that the book is helpful, that it's eye opening, that it's life changing. I think it is practical enough and nerdy enough that'll scratch multiple itches at the same time. Yes,
Joshua Johnson:it is nerdy. It is practical. I love the book. I really, I really enjoyed digging into it, reading it, it's, it's a lot of fun, and it's really helpful. It's man eye opening for a lot of things. And so I really recommend crushing chaos. And so Manny, thank you for this conversation. Oh, thank you for bringing some order into our lives. Hey, we could crush chaos. Seriously, you
Unknown:have no idea. Thank you. Thanks. You.
