I: INFORMATION

When I was in graduate school, the king of all Biochemistry textbooks was Lehninger. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon of my first year studies found me diligently recopying my morning lecture notes while adding in the details from the vast pages of Dr. Lehninger—it was like a science version of “Rolling in the Deep” (minus Adelle and the regret). I have always been so grateful for those expensive repositories of knowledge that I have always done two things: (1) Refused to sell them back at the end of the semester, and (2) Read all the little feature boxes in the text that are not actually “on the test”. There was one such feature box in Lehninger that never left me. I can recite the concept from memory even now, so many years later. Right there on page 364 of the 1982 edition, was a box entitled “The Concept of Entropy,” in which three case studies elaborated on the disorder that the Third Law of Thermodynamics predicts. Case three provided my watershed moment. A passage from Act IV, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar containing 125 letters was shown as it appears in the play. Lehninger describes the passage as an “information-rich” and “non-random” arrangement, which not only contains overt meaning, but also many complex and nuanced shades of thought woven like a tapestry throughout--thoughts summoning other thoughts, drawing reflections from unique personal life and past experience as the drama of the play unfolds for the reader or viewer. Next, a diagram is presented in which the same 125 letters are randomly scattered in a box—not words but individual letters strewn every which way, as if they were refrigerator magnets (minus the magnet part) and the box had become an anti-gravity chamber (the same letters, but no more words or sentences). Lehninger says that the letters in the second form are information-poor, but rich in entropy! Then comes his powerful conclusion: “Information is a form of energy; information has been called negative entropy.” Loving words as I do, especially in succinct statements that summon whole new vistas of thought, I had just been smitten! Information IS energy—I was there immediately! Anytime anything is held together, energy is stored in those “bonds”. And energy can always do work! When I read information, neural pathways form in my brain, as my very physicality molds itself around the thought conveyed. Marvelously, information on the page can initiate chemical reactions and nerve firings in the tissues of my brain and body! Information changes me via its energy, overcoming some of my own mental randomness. And if I act on that information, it has now extended its anti-entropy effectiveness to my environment. It is not a stretch to say that the more poignant the information is—the more it weaves together the inconsistencies in life into some kind of cohesive whole—the greater the energy released. When the force of creativity is triggered through words, a right-brain initiative of orchestration floods the randomly scattered data-points and much disorder is overcome! The right kind of information—the kind that deeply inspires--leads to great victories over our entropy-rich boxes of jumbled-up signals, conflicting demands, and discouraging data! Now imagine a God that wants to put His information, and therefore His energy, in a book. He couldn’t possibly limit those words to mere sentiment. That book wouldn’t be able to handle the deep injustices or wild life challenges I encounter! Nor would he write a book that only contained traditions or heritage—though those are valuable and there is definitely power in faith’s big story. Further, this God who launched the universe could never limit his energy to ONLY a book of morality. That could never accommodate the wonder of it all! Besides, simple morality without the ENERGY to live it quickly becomes legalism—legalism that is devoid of any real energy to make men moral. No, God could only issue forth words that ordered all chaos—words that were the EXTREME form of NEGATIVE ENTROPY! If God put His spiritual information in a book, it would be a book of PURE LIFE. There is a place where WORDS are WORLDS. That place is the SPIRIT, where the words of the Book are meant to live. God is a Spirit. Therefore, His words are not just answers, but also doors opening to QUESTIONS beyond our wildest dreams! His words are so information-rich and so entropy-poor that they can create worlds of order out both yawning expansive voids and the worst of hot messes! When I look at the wonders of this universe, it becomes impossible for me to conceive of a Creator whose words are closed doors, dead ends, or mere prohibitions. His information IS energy—and all that is left for me to do is to prepare a chamber to receive it and store it up in my inner cache!