The Physics of Faith: Reversing the Irreversible
03.27.05
Pastor Mark Batterson
This evotional concludes The Physics of Faith series. To check out old evotionals, visit the evotional archive @ www.theaterchurch.com. Next week we’ll begin a new series of evotional, God @ the Box Office, exploring the spiritual themes in popular movies.
The Arrow of Time
One of my earliest movie memories was the 1978 version of Superman. The storyline and special effects aren’t as impressive now as they were then, but I was all of nine years-old. I remember one scene in particular. Lois Lane was driving through the desert when her car is swallowed by an earthquake and Superman can’t get there in time to save her. Superman gets super angry and he starts flying around the earth at supersonic speed and he reverses time by reversing the rotation of the earth thus saving Lois.
Don’t you wish you could do that?
I know that isn’t based on very good science. For one thing, the earth rotates around its axis at about 1,000 mph so if Superman had done what he did he would have saved Lois but the entire planet would have died from whiplash!
But it’s a cool concept.
Wouldn’t it be great if you were having a conversation with someone and you said something you wish you hadn’t said and you could simply excuse yourself from the conversation, fly around the earth a few times, and pick up before you left off? Of course, the real danger then would be mid-air collisions because we’d all be flying around the earth all the time!
I wish I could reverse time but the arrow of time points in one direction. You can’t undo what you’ve done. In other words, some things in life are irreversible.
When I was a sophomore in college, I blew out my knee in the last game of our basketball season. I went to the doctor for a diagnosis and he said I tore my anterior cruciate ligament. I asked him how long it’d take to heal. He said, “Never.” I’ll never forget the feeling of finality—the damage was done and there was nothing I could do to change it. I learned a lesson the hard way that day: some things in life are irreversible. You can’t untear a ligament.
For what it’s worth, I’ve also learned from personal experience that you can’t undelete documents, unbake cookies, uncut hair or unrun red lights with surveillance cameras.
Some things in life are irreversible. But I am the bearer of good news: God is in the business of reversing the irreversible. If you read the gospels you’ll discover that Jesus reversed weather patterns. He reversed blindness. He reversed paralysis. And 2,000 years ago, He reversed death. I love the way Acts 2:24 says it. “But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” I love that language. We tend to think of dying and coming back to life as being impossible. Peter says the exact opposite. It was impossible for death to keep its grip on The Way, The Truth, and The Life.
Thermodynamics
Let me give you a crash course in thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics is the study of energy in all of its different forms. The first and second laws of thermodynamics describe the way the process works. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy is conserved. In other words, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be exchanged for a different kind of energy. For example, if you push a boulder off a cliff you convert gravitational energy into kinetic energy.
But there is another law at work and it’s the reason why ice cream melts on a summer day and coffee cools on a winter day. The second law of thermodynamics introduces something called entropy into the equation. It basically states that if left to its own devices, everything moves toward disorder. Cars rust. Toys break. And food rots. And for the readers who are parents, kid’s rooms get real messy real fast.
Entropy
Now let me give you one of my definitions of sin: sin is entropy. Sin is moving toward disorder. For what it’s worth, the word “holiness” means “to be made whole.” Sin is the opposite of that. It is becoming more and more fragmented. It is moving toward disorder. And the end result is a meaningless existence because there is no center of gravity.
So how do we overcome entropy in our lives? I think the answer is found in one of my favorite verses. Proverbs 29:18 says, “Without a vision the people perish.” The word “perish” comes from the Hebrew word para which could be translated entropy. It refers to the process of decay. More specifically, it is used of perishable food that is past its prime. In other words, food that is rotten.
When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago, my grandmother sent me a home baked apple pie. My popularity rating skyrocketed. For a brief window of time, I was the most popular guy in our dorm. Everybody wanted to be my friend. I was also pretty selfish. I wanted the pie to myself so I hid the last piece of pie under my bed. And I forget about it.
A couple months later my roommate and I started smelling some strange odor. If you’ve lived in a dorm you know that isn’t all together abnormal, but when the odor started seeping under our door and into the hallway we decided to do something about it. We turned our dorm room upside down and I finally looked under my bed and discovered the law of entropy. If an apple pie is left to its own devices for several months it will become a greenish glob of moldy goo! Of course, I then proceeded to go door-to-door offering that last piece of pie to everyone in my dorm.
That rotten apple pie is the best exposition of Proverbs 29:18 that I can come up with. “Without a vision the people become a greenish glob of moldy goo.” Here is what happens if you don’t have a God-given vision: entropy takes over! I have a theory. I think most problems aren’t sin problems. Most problems are vision problems. If we simply got a vision from God that consumed all of our time and energy and thoughts we wouldn’t waste our time and energy and thoughts on sin.
Too often we try to stop sinning by not sinning. But that is what psychologists call a double-bind. Let me give you an example of a double-bind: be spontaneous. You can’t win. Too often we try to double-bind sin. We try to stop sinning by not sinning. And when that doesn’t work we try even harder to stop sinning by not sinning. What we need is a vision of who God wants us to become and what God wants us to do! Vision is the cure for sin. I’m convinced that a God-given vision is the only thing that keeps us from spiritual entropy. Without a vision we rot and rust and decay and perish. Vision is a preservative.
Negentropy
Now let me frame vision in terms of physics. There is a cool concept that is the counterpart of entropy. It’s called negentropy. Negentropy is the increase of information that results in the decrease of disorder. If sin is entropy then vision is negentropy!
The only way to prevent entropy is to introduce some outside energy source that counteracts it. A refrigerator for example. You plug it into an electrical outlet and it produces cold air that keeps food from rotting. But if you disconnect that refrigerator from its energy source, entropy will take over again. That’s exactly what happened to us over Christmas vacation a few years ago. Our refrigerator broke down while we were gone and we returned home to a pretty nasty smell in our refrigerator.
That is what happens to us spiritually when we are disconnected from God. Entropy takes over. The only way to overcome entropy is to plug into God.
Reverse the Curse
Now let me zoom out and look at Scripture through a wide-angled lens. If you go all the way back to the beginning you can see the introduction of entropy at a place called Eden. Genesis 2:16 says, “And God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die.”
This is the first time the word “die” appears in Scripture. It comes from the Hebrew word muwth which means “to die prematurely.”
Here’s the deal: God intended Adam and Eve to live forever, but sin introduced the process of decay also known as entropy. Let me be even more specific. I think there are five kinds of entropy: spiritual, relational, emotional, intellectual, and physical. All of those different kinds of entropy are the byproduct of sin. You can see those different kinds of entropy in what is commonly called “the curse” in Genesis 3:14-18. God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” That’s spiritual entropy. He says to the woman, “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” That’s relational entropy. He says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground.” That’s physical entropy. And then it says, “For dust you are, and to dust you will return.” If that isn’t entropy I don’t know what is.
So sin introduced entropy—the process of decay and disorder and disharmony. Romans 8:21 says we are “in bondage to decay.” In other words, entropy is inescapable. But Jesus came to “set the captives free.” I think redemption and sanctification and glorification are all about reversing the curse. It’s about reversing the effects of spiritual and relational and emotional and intellectual and physical entropy. Jesus described his mission this way in John 10:10: “The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy.” The thief is simply another name for the ancient serpent and he’s still doing now what he was doing then: introducing entropy into our lives. But Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” That’s negentropy!
Now let me take you to the end of the book. God reverses the curse in Revelation 21.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’
It’s the end of spiritual entropy.
But keep reading. Verse 4 says, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order or things has passed away.” It’s the end of emotional entropy—no more crying or mourning. It’s the end of relational entropy. It’s the end of intellectual entropy. I Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully even as I am fully known.” And it’s the end of physical entropy. No more death. No more pain.
And Revelation 21:5 is the nail in the coffin of death: “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new’!”
That sure sounds like the end of entropy. God will release us from the second law of thermodynamics. He will bring order out of chaos (negentropy) just like He did in Genesis 1:2.
God is in the business of reversing the irreversible. That is what the empty tomb represents. But He doesn’t just want to reverse physical entropy when you die. He wants to reverse the emotional and intellectual and relational and spiritual entropy in your life now!
Claim the promise in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
What area of your like is perishing? Are there any rotten apple pies under your bed? Where have you experienced the decay of sin? Where have you given up hope? Where are you experiencing disorder or disharmony?
That is right where God wants to reverse the curse. All we have to do is yield to Him. When we give Him our entropic lives He gives us His negentropic life!
