My greatest fear is totally entropy. I blame Isaac Asimov because I read his short story called The Last Question a few years ago and it haunted and fascinated me. If you read the story you will have a good idea of what I am talking about, but to be brief, entropy is the idea that the universe will degenerate into a state of chaos. Think about it this way: You buy a candy bar at the convenience store. You throw the wrapper away and eat the candy bar. What has happened to the components of what you purchased? The wrapper is in some trash can and the chocolate is being digested in your body.
THEN what happens to the components? Part of the candy is taken into your system while other parts of it are excreted as waste and the wrapper winds up in an unknown landfill.
THEN what happens to the contents? The nutrients are used as energy in your body. The waste is processed in a treatment plant and sent out into the environment again. The wrapper rots.
THEN what happens? Does part of the water evaporate and become a raincloud that ends a drought in Texas? Does it water a field? Is the wrapper picked up by the wind? Burned? And what about you? are you able to use all the energy? and for what? Is there any possible way to bring all the parts of that candy bar back together? No. It went from being so organized and simple to being spread out into millions of pieces over who-knows-how-many miles. And think about all of the millions of candy bars that have been purchased. But why is that scary?
Things degenerate. That is the nature of EVERYTHING. The universe included. Asimov took it on a major scale to remind us that everything in finite. Now look at it this way: What happens to a graduating class? Some move away to go to school. Some stay and work at the fast food joint for years. Some end up in jail. Some die. A group that was once organized and got together every day at your high school becomes- after only a few years- impossible to reassemble. And in 100 years how much of them will even be remembered?
On my mission I was able to see the way entropy destroys things. I was completely removed from my life for two years and when I came back everything had drifted apart. Everybody that I cared about wasn't accessible. Of course over time people move out of your life, but to see it so sudden like that really scared me. I don't know of a single thing that could possibly bring back all of the people I care about even though we used to get together all the time. On my mission we once had an activity that brought together most of the missionaries in my mission. As I watched them all interact I felt like crying and I had no idea why, but now I recognize that for a small instant and in a small way entropy has been reversed.
Asimov equates the reversal of entropy to the power of God. If I could put a name to God's power it would be that. And what is amazing is that we have a little bit of that divinity within us. If you take a shirt out of your closet you can put it back. If you take out all of the clothes in your closet you could put them all back in the same order. That might seem really simple and not cool, but it I the same principle that would enable you to put together a body that has begun to decompose. One of the reasons I believe in God is because I believe that there is an antidote to entropy. All of my relationships are being destroyed by entropy. So much so that I am terrified of making new emotional connections, but I know that there is one relationship that entropy can't touch, and that is the family because God has given the sealing power to man and promised that " whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" (Matt 18:18). True family units might not always be tight here on earth, but God can fix that.
Someday I think I might write a story about entropy. It will start out very linear and make perfect sense and then it will evolve and spread out and follow several different plotlines and characters and eventually it will be impossible to follow and become incomprehensive babbling. It's funny that they things we want to figure out are the things we spend our time on. At least that is my experience. I still don't have a hold on entropy, but God does, and I trust Him with it.
(To be really technical for the Physics Major that is going to come across this post I want to put a disclaimer that I recognize that I am using the term entropy incorrectly, but I don't have any other word for the phenomenon.)
