Note: I have been thinking about this piece for a while and it seemed appropriate for Easter Sunday. Also, these concepts are at the heart of Raiders of Light.
Humanity defies entropy. We organize. We build. We live. All the while knowing defeat is imminent.
Systems degrade. Monoliths crumble. Life succumbs. We watch helplessly as friends and family pass on. We lament as civilizations implode and cultures vanish. We scour the stars for answers when we realize that Mother Nature will, like us, eventually die. All possible futures are endless variations of one inevitable end: Life must expire.
Faced with futility and unfairness, our human nature wills us to either grasp for hope or drown in despair. To fight, flee, or surrender.
Based on science, history, and all things observable, nihilism in its various manifestations (hedonism, paganism, humanitarianism, utilitarianism, feudalism, socialism, and corruption) appears perfectly rational—perhaps even natural. But for Christians, Easter Sunday is a wonderful and observable reminder that none of these things is natural. Neither the isms, nor the despair, decay, and death.
Creation’s greatest battle is not waged between light and dark, nature and man, or nature’s laws (e.g., entropy and syntropy). Without interplay between these fundamental components, there is no forward motion and no life. Instead, Creation’s greatest battle is waged in people’s minds, hearts, and souls.
In Christ’s death and resurrection, God has allowed us to peer beyond the illusory deception we inhabit. To see that Lucifer has subverted Creation’s operation—to clearly witness that there is nothing natural about disaster, rot, suffering, and death.
He encourages us to live confidently that his intent for us remains the same now as it ever was. We should never despair. Hope never left us—we merely forgot.
In this twisted usurpation of reality with its overclocked entropy, where even the renewing powers of light and life will be overcome given enough time, Christ reminds us to live according to our created nature, corrupted though it may be, and have confidence that nothing is in vain.
On Easter, God tells us our entire paradigm is incorrect. All things are possible for he is all things. He remains at the heart of Creation—untouched by the Deceiver’s conjuring—infinite and unchanging, a paradox our minds cannot solve.
In defeating death, he unmasked infinite impossibility as a lie. A lie that humanity simply made the choice to believe and, ironically, to place faith in.
And should we believe our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts, we will discover the true nature of everything: Infinite possibility and ordered balance are Creation’s true nature. Mankind’s only choice is whether to stay in the illusion or be freed from it.
Happy Easter!
Finch Fries