Next to Godliness

Have you ever heard the saying that “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”? I would like to challenge that notion and ideal. I do not believe that how clean a person is has any relationship with their being God like.

First of all, any person of religion would be opposed to being God like, as that would be blasphemy, so operating on the ideal that being clean makes one God like would be morally wrong for that reason enough. Beside that point, I do not believe in any way that God is a neat freak. In fact I rather believe that God has a slight preference to mess and chaos.

Look around.

On the assumption that God created the Earth and everything in, and on, it, we would discover that there is very little that is clean, neat, or orderly. Mountains jut up on the surface of the earth, rivers take random paths across the land. Deserts mess up whole areas. Trees litter the ground with their dead and fallen leaves, and grow in random placements, not in evenly spaced rows. Death is messy, and bugs are annoying.

So why would any God who supposedly loves things spic and span, create such messy things? Why do people think that order is so good, that trees must be planted in a row, or flowers must be coordinated by color? Why do we feel it necessary to keep each blade of grass cut to the exact same length, on an entirely weed free, perfectly green, lawn, and with the edges trimmed as well? Why must every house look the same, why must every hair be in place? Why do our shirts need to be ironed and be free of lint, or free of cat hair. Is a perfect world, where things are perfectly ordered a better, or more interesting world? I do not believe it is, nor do I believe it is anywhere near to being Godly.

Not that long ago I was in an art group and one lady was telling a story of a time she taught art. At that time she asked everyone to draw the most interesting fence they could imagine. To her surprise every one drew a perfect fence, straight and correct, every section exactly like the other. She pointed out to them that their fences were not interesting, but were actually rather monotonous and boring. While they may be functional in reality, the sterility of their appearance made them uninteresting to the eye. She drew an older corrupt fence, with some planks missing and others slanted, her fence, which would be considered an eye-sore in real life, was far more interesting from an artistic perspective.

As such when we create generic landscapes and cityscapes, where everything is neat and in a row we are making things less appealing and more generic. We may be getting farther and farther away from Eden when we try to get closer and closer to God. So I suggest that we respect Gods wishes for a bit more disorder and a bit more chaos in the world, and allow our gardens, homes, and clothing to be a bit more haphazard and less strict if we really want to make God, and our artistic minded friends, happy.