Entropy

My favourite character in Jurassic Park is Ian Malcolm, ably played by Jeff Goldblum. He has all the best lines, including a shell-shocked, "Do you think they'll have that on the tour?" after nearly being eaten out of a jeep by a hungry Tyrannosaur.

In the Chrichton novel, Malcolm is a more serious figure, demonstrating mathematically why attempts to reduce complex systems down to simple ones inevitably fail. I recently read an interesting argument that this is fundamentally what has gone wrong in Iraq.

Its a challenging and intelligently made argument. I do not know if it is true, as there have certainly been bigger wars in the history of the world. Certainly an ineptly waged war is not proof by itself that chaos theory applies to the waging of war.

Still I think the idea is generally supportable. There is only one true source of order, in my opinion: God. He alone can fashion purpose and purposefulness out of all the randomness that besets us daily. I think that is one of the most important reasons we as human beings are called to humility. So much can go wrong for us, that we need to admit to ourselves that many of our plans will go awry. We need to be open to changing our plans, changing our minds, and changing ourselves.

The only thing we should not change is our trust that God is All in All. (And He knows what He is doing. :-)