Manny Arango, a Dallas-based preacher, Bible teacher, and producer of online theology courses, posted on his personal website, “The Bible is crazier than what you watch on Netflix and Hulu.” So it’s not surprising he’d have a unique approach to writing a Bible study. Arango turns his spotlight on monsters; he sees sea serpents, dragons, and more embedded in scripture, in himself, and in everyone. To Arango, these creatures are agents of chaos, a metaphor for deceit, disruption, and all other demonic forces that destroy God’s intended peace. PW spoke with Arango about Crushing Chaos: Calm Your Storms, Order Your Life, Find Your Peace (WaterBrook, May 2025).
Why did you choose chaos and monsters for your theme?
As a pastor, I’m talking to people all the time, particularly with millennials and Gen-Zers who don’t have a history of learning the Bible in church. I noticed when I tell people, “Hey, there’s sin in your life,” that word sin doesn’t resonate. People will argue, debate, get defensive, see moral implications, feel shame and guilt. But if you say to someone, “There’s chaos in your life”—then people immediately agree and they really want to know how to escape it.
How do you define "chaos"?
It’s a massive umbrella term. For some people, chaos is anxiety, messed up relationships, fatherless children, struggles with money, and things out of order.
In the book, you write about how the original state of creation is a “deep, wild racing ocean of chaos” complete with sea monsters, and that God’s cure for chaos was to create a well-ordered world. Then Adam and Eve blew it, right?
When Adam and Eve sin, they don’t just bring sin into the world. They bring chaos into the world. They partner with an agent of chaos—the snake, who I think the ancient world would have envisioned as a dragon—when they rely on their own desires instead of trusting the word of God. That’s the decision that you and I and all of us make every day: Am I going to be an agent of God’s order, to reflect the image of God and the cultural values of heaven, or am I going to be an agent of chaos? The truth is we are chaos monsters ourselves.
How do people respond when you say that?
I’m trying to do what the Bible does, which is not telling people what to think, but teaching people how to think and giving people the freedom to wrestle with God’s word.
Why is there a bearded white man like a Charlton Heston knockoff on the cover of your book pointing a sword at a dragon?
No Charlton Heston—it’s based on a 19th-century woodcut by Gustave Dore, God and the Leviathan. I really wanted a dragon on the cover, so we took that and added color to it.
But seriously, why doesn’t God slay the monsters and eliminate chaos?
Because it would have made Adam and Eve lazy. It was their job, now it’s our job, to do it, to trust God’s word and know that someday a second Adam, an offspring of Eve, will crush the very head of chaos and leave a blueprint for us to follow. Half my book is about Jesus, how he crushes chaos, and how we can follow in his footsteps.
