We live in a negative world. It’s true. At almost every turn we are told “you can’t do that” or “that’s not possible.” You might think I’m just writing to say that we should have a more positive outlook and be encouraged, but it is really more than that.
It is a darkness that has been lowered upon us that concerns me. We are given information as facts that have the appearance of being immutable. We get lowered expectations, and we are told that we must dismiss miracles as coincidental eventualities, or a statistical anomaly, and that they are but just one possible alternative possibility that happened to take place.
This is causing us to drown, and we don’t even know it.
In physics we use the 2nd law of thermodynamics to explain this as the natural course of all things to change from an organized and orderly state to one that is disorganized and disorderly.
We use this thinking because we depend on many of these things for daily activities - we have to fill up our car with gas, or charge a battery, or eat certain foods. It is an economy of unidirectional process flow that we have become accustomed to, and it is destroying us without much recognition.
While we have made technological advances by using science to take advantage of the mathematics, physics and chemistry of process flows and interactions, it does nothing for our state of mind or our spiritual livelihood.
We are spiritual and physical beings, but too often we ignore the spiritual because we can touch the physical. Yet the spiritual is as much - or more - important than the physical. Things we can’t explain by the physical are often touted as just one other thing that we will eventually figure out by science, and indeed some of those may be solved by the application of science, but the things of the spirit must be understood in spiritual terms. Unfortunately people today are not versed in such language, nor, it would seem, are they encouraged to bother learning.
The very humanistic philosophy of the modern times centers on humans as the highest form of intelligence, to the exclusion of any spiritual expression to the contrary.
By itself, the 2nd law of thermodynamics will spell our eventual doom. Society must follow that law just as much as a heat engine or a chemical reaction must. If, that is, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is the only law that can be placed into consideration. That very notion of going from organized to disorganized in a single direction is at the heart of the problem: it assumes that there is no external influence that can change the behavior of the system to reverse that trend.
What if there is an external influence, though?
What if the physical world is not the pinnacle of reality? What if the spiritual world exists and is able to interact with us? What if the holy scriptures are true and there exists a spiritual being that is responsible for the creation of our physical reality? What if that being, who is called God, is able to change the direction of the physical world, whether it be socially, or physically, and is able to communicate with us?
Those are a lot of “if” questions, but without those questions we are certainly doomed to the “lukewarm death” predicted by physics. Without an external influence we cannot hope for anything better: our intelligence and influence over the decay of this world can progress no further than it is today.
Where does inspiration come from? Certainly not from the 2nd law of thermodynamics. We have been told that we are on an evolutionary process of betterment, but the 2nd law explicitly forbids this. Even evolutionists cannot explain this away.
Intelligence and progress are not the result of human ingenuity or innate goodness within ourselves, but must come from an external source. All that is good and makes life better must come from something that is not limited by our “natural” environment.
Indeed, the ability of the body to heal from injuries is not an evolutionary success story: the first time we would have received an injury would have been fatal to life. Evolution - by the purely natural description recognized by science - is purely random and does not “find” a solution - random chance is not the same as intelligence; iron pipes rust because the likelihood of anti-rusting is almost completely zero. Similarly, the system that allows our bodies to heal would have necessarily had almost completely zero chance of forming on its own.
We live in a world that consists of completely improbable circumstances, and if you take all of these things together you must conclude that all of the individually improbable things add up to a whole that cannot be explained by circumstance. An external force must be responsible for creating the reality we live in.
In the face of completely improbable - and likely impossible - odds, we must ask ourselves whether the supernatural explanation provided by God is not the one with greater probability of being true when all our experiences in lab experiments show us that decay and disorganization is the natural outcome of purely physical processes?
If that is true, then why should we presume to conclude that these “improbable” changes to our reality have ever stopped? Why should we assume that God no longer works or interacts with what he has created.
Why must darkness be the cloud that covers our spiritual life, when a brightness exists that is the clear explanation for all that we have?
The miracle that is life persists despite all odds which say it must not.
If God truly does exist, as he must, then why must we assume that he is no longer choosing to work with us, or that he is unable to, or that he will not work with us?
If the scriptures tell us anything, it is that God both exists, and that he intervenes in the affairs of man and of the world for a purpose known to him, which purpose seems to be for our benefit.
Why should we fail to see the miracles that exist in the rather modest affairs of life? Why should we cease to depend on him for making miracles that coincidentally work for the purpose that he has for us, which purpose seems to be for our benefit?
Surely if we know anything, it is that the intelligence we have originates in some measure with that external force that regularly and persistently defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics by preventing the ultimate demise of all things.
We know these things because we see them happen: Diseases that should always kill are survived, injuries that should permanently disable are healed; lives that should be by any normal circumstance extinguished are preserved or even made better. Why do we fail to recognize these things?
Do bad things happen? Do people die? Do injuries kill, or diseases destroy? Of course they do, but the important thing to recognize is that they do not always do the expected thing. Injuries do not “always” kill, diseases do not “always” destroy, and people do not “always” die from the things that should cause it. Miracles happen every day.
We have been getting told that spiritual things are not important, yet the evidences to the contrary are all before us to stand as shouting witnesses that we are being lied to.
Desperate people are those that have no hope. They act with the intention of preserving their own interests because they believe that there can be no other interests that may have equal or greater value. A person desperate for money may rob a bank because they do not believe it is possible for them to succeed otherwise. A person may be desperate to gain fame because they have no hope that they can do anything else that may have lasting value.
Desperate people can do the most horrific things because they feel no hope for anything good.
It is part of the veil of darkness that overshadows this world, and it is promoted by the father of darkness, a being that lives only for the destruction of all that is good. He is the father of lies, Satan, and the great lie he promotes is the utter hopelessness of goodness and light.
Do not fall prey to this lie.
The light and the life of this world comes to us from God, who made all things for us and for our benefit.
Mosiah 2:13-17
13 Believe in God; believe that he is and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth;
14 Believe that he has all wisdom and all power, both in heaven and in earth;
15 Believe that man doth not comprehend all things which the Lord can comprehend.
16 And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins, and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God, and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you.
17 And now, if you believe all these things, see that ye do them.
John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
1 Peter 1:3-25
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
10 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
13 Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:
15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;
16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
17 And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:
18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,
21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.
22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:
23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
For more information, please contact the editor of this site.
