While attending Montana State University (go Bobcats!), I took a course in Thermodynamics in which I learned two basic laws: “The Law of the Conservation of Mass and Energy” and “The Law of Increasing Entropy.”  I came to realize that both were observations of what the Bible declares. First, God finished His creation in six literal days and is no longer creating in the physical realm (Gen. 1:31–2:2; cf Neh. 9:6).  Second, because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, death and decay entered God’s creation and things began to wear out and decay and people and animals grow old and die.  While we have made amazing advances in technology and medicine, we have not been able to counteract the effects of entropy which resulted from the curse God put on the earth because of man’s sin (Gen. 2:17; 3:16-19).  

     The word “entropy” literally means “to turn within.”  When mankind ignores God and His standards or absolutes, he “turns within,” thinking he is the master of his own life and fate and can determine his own truth and values. Man “tends to think of and treat the world as a place that we construct, rather than a place designed and given to us by the hand of a loving Creator.  Along the way, sinful human nature rejects that there are givens in the world–absolutes and fixed realities to which we must adjust” (John Stonestreet in Decision magazine, December 2022, p. 34). We have turned out back on what the Psalmist wrote: “Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture” (Psa. 100:3).  We continue to succumb to Satan’s lie in the Garden to Eve concerning eating from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying: “You surely shall not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4,5).  

     Satan’s lie caused Eve to question the goodness of God and what He had commanded. She bought into the idea that she could “be like God,” and didn’t need Him any longer.   Well, how did that work out?  That is the cause of the cultural chaos we are witnessing in our world today where, by ignoring God’s commands and standards, we have redefined gender, marriage, parenting and the family. They are now creations of our own will rather than of givens to which we must adjust our lives. We are experiencing exactly what the Apostle Paul said would happen when people no longer honor or give thanks to God for who He is, They become “futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart is darkened. Professing to be wise, they become fools” (Ro. 1:21,22).  That’s why our world has gone crazy and we are experiencing chaos in our culture. If you are familiar with “The Andy Griffith Show,” it is as though Andy is out of town and Barney is running the show!

     If we buy into the idea that there are no absolutes, no fixed reference points, we will be like those in the dark period of Israel’s history when they had no king, only judges to help bring them back to God, and “everyone did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).  But, as someone astutely declared: “Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.” A culture that has become untethered from God’s truths is a culture full of bad, foolish ideas. For then, all that is left is to “turn within,” and the Bible says: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick, who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9); “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh…” (Ro. 7:18 cf 3:9-12);  “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God” (II “Cor. 3:5).   When we make ourselves and our ideas rather than God and His Word the center of reality, it will always result in disorder and chaos.  God is a “God of order,” and the further we move away from following Him, the more disorderly and chaotic we become.  

     We need a return to right thinking which must begin by thinking right about God.  He is God and we are not. His Word–not man’s foolish ideas–is absolute truth and our final authority for faith and practice. Only as we get back to letting God and His Word be the basis of our lives will we see a change for the good in our culture of chaos. This change must start with Christians allowing Christ to rule in their hearts (Col. 3:15) and seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Mt. 6:33).  When Israel, under King Solomon, was struggling spiritually, “The LORD appeared to Solomon at night and said to him…’If my people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sins, and will heal their land’ ” (II Chro. 7:14). That principle applies to us today as “His people.” Christians (not politicians) are responsible for the condition of their nation. We are to humble ourselves, pray, and seek His face (not His “hands” for help, but His “face” in worship), and turn from sin (Psa. 66:18; Isa. 59:2; I Jn. 1:9). Then, God will hear, forgive and heal. Our lives need to be “Christ-centered,” not “self-centered.”  We are living in a culture that has turned from 
God and “turned within,” and what a mess that has made.   The “clean up” must start with each one of us letting God and His Word rule our lives. “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father” (Col. 3:16,17). 

Forever His,

Pastor Dave