Because of my new efforts toward mental exercise, a passing thought I had while trying to tame the disaster zone that is our playroom, has now become the topic for a new post. What came to mind while surrounded by plastic chaos? Entropy. I knew it had something to do with the natural tendency to move from order to disorder. I looked it up as a refresher. Go ahead, take a minute to get reacquainted with our old friends Entropy and The Second Law of Thermodynamics. When you eyes glaze over come back and we'll chat.
Since the practical application of scientific principles seems to take a pretty big base of knowledge to pull off, I pondered entropy in spiritual terms. Here are a few of my thoughts on the matter...
As order is brought to one part of a system, entropy (disorder) must increase somewhere else within the system. There are a lot of interesting comparisons to be made in thinking of our spiritual selves.
The essence of godliness is the ability to create, to organize, to bring order. Heavenly Father is our god because he created us by bringing order to spiritual matter and then bringing order to physical matter. This is a concept that is fairly easy for me understand. Here's where it gets tricky.... Where is the increased disorder that must be evident somewhere in this "system" as a result of creation? Could it be that the Fall was necessary not just as a way to introduce free agency and experience, but also because the order brought about by the Creation had to be offset by the disorder of a Fall? Death was a consequence of the Fall, but could it also be the offset to Adam and Eve's new ability to procreate? Pregnancy is literally a process of ordering elements into a new being capable of sustaining life, and death is the literal decomposition of an ordered being into something that can no longer sustain life, and eventually back into randomly dispersed elements. So creation=order and is balanced by death which equals disorder.
Taking it one step further, think of the concept that the Fall was both immediate and gradual. Adam and Eve were immediately mortal and capable of reproduction. They were immediately "as the gods, knowing good from evil". But they gradually learned and progressed Spiritually, and they gradually grew old and died. The final consequence of becoming mortal took hundreds of years. The process of giving over to disorder was slower then. People lived longer, a lot longer. Today this earth, this "system", is in a further state of disorder. It is more fallen, it is more mortal. We don't live 900 yrs. We're lucky to live a tenth of that. The generations from Adam down lived an gradually increasing state of disorder. So the more the children of Adam had created offspring, the faster and faster they died.
I could go further, but this is about as far as I can go tonight and still make any kind of sense. Beyond this is a bunch of fleeting thoughts that I can't quite wrap my head around yet. Mental exercise can become dangerous late at night. Did you guys follow any of that? Have you ever thought of the Creation and the Fall as parts of an equation of the laws of nature?
You know I never have, in part because I was never big into the sciences. It does make sense though, like in 1 Nephi somewhere where Lehi is explaining to his children about how there must be opposition in all things. So naturally there needs to be that balance between order and disorder. And we know that God always follows His own laws, a point that I use constantly in disciplining my children to help them keep focused on who they are really choosing to obey when they obey me.
ReplyDeleteThese are great thoughts Katie! This explains why I can't seem to get everything in my life on track at the same time. I feel like another Homeschooling mom who once said something to the effect of: I can do a great job at cooking, and cleaning and school and, I just can't do it at the same time. Thanks for the ponderous thoughts:)
Katie...deep thoughts indeed! And, fascinating. I had to read it over three times. I'm special like that. My prevailing though as I read: "I've NEVER thought of that!" So...I've been provoked in thought...and, I like that very much.
ReplyDeleteSo I was reading over the old blog posts today and I had another thought while reading this one. The part where I talk about the gradual progression of the fall resulting in more and more disorder as evidenced by people today dying more quickly than in the times of Adam... that the more we procreate the quicker we die... The thought occurred to me that life spans have increased over the last century. We look to science and standards of living as the general explanations, but what if it also had to do with the birth rate going down? We procreate less and live a little longer. In third world countries where the birth rate is high, the average life span is much less. Just something to ponder....
ReplyDelete