As the shooter expelled his bullet, man’s nature continued its natural flow of order to chaos and the fight therein. Energy must go somewhere. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that in a closed state, more and more energy is wasted. It falls to disorder. It is irreversible by itself.

So, I’m sure the boy, like many frustrated youths, expended energy to decrease the entropy of his mind, his world, and our world. Everything is falling apart. It’s a terrible, empty feeling. It leads us to act, to do something drastic, sudden, desperate. Yet, ironically, we become the useless energy we are fighting against and only add to the decay of our humanity and community. We reside within the closed system, not outside. We are the bullet and the gun.

You may have never entertained violence, but you have used your violent words. Slamming down your enemies with vitriol, shouting at your spouse and kids from pent-up anger. If you don’t say it, you play it repeatedly in your mind, driving back from work. It never works, well, maybe for a moment. Throughout time, Individuals and communities have decreased the chaos with powerful acts and words, but over time, it all keeps falling apart, sinful energy slipping into every peaceful crevice of our lives.

While the second law of thermodynamics describes what we observe, it is not certain. There was a time when it was not a law at all. There was a time when there were no laws of nature, no sin, and no death.

In the beginning God made everything out of nothing, no matter, no energy, zilch.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:1-5

Our hope as entropy increases and violent men use violence to bring order lies in the one through whom all things were made. He did not remain outside but became a man, a creature within the system. And acted among us to not only cease our slide to disharmony but bring us into a new system, the system that always was, where things actually get better, resurrected, faultless, and pure. Where hope and grace increase, chaos is ordered, peace flows, and find the farthest outcast, the most hopeless sinner, even the dead.

Unlike Newton, Jesus didn’t just describe our condition. He acted. He calmed the sea with a word. He raised the centurion’s daughter. He fed the hungry. He forgave the tax collectors’ sins.

But ultimately, this hero didn’t act to slow down our decay. He was acted upon. He received our desperate wasting energy of anger, rebellion, stubborn pride, and hatred of God and man. Silently, He received our flailing problem-solving fists. He did not return them with equal fury but turned them into grace (1st law of thermodynamics?).

Our entropy is reversed not by our actions but entirely by God’s. We are passive in the process, even running against it.

It is happening, though it doesn’t always look like it. Chaos will end. God is acting. Peace