My favorite take on life an entropy is that life is the most efficient way to burn energy, to increase entropy. Life is inevitable in the universe simply as a method of increasing overall entropy efficiently. A bunch of chemicals may eventually decompose into photons and electrons, but it's a lot faster if something eats them.
Entropy increase need not be chaotic. Stars generate entropy at a very reliable rate. We also do not know what a maximum rate, and I didn't state life was anything like a maximum rate, just faster than non-life in some circumstances.
But we don't know, or even think, that the rules of nature prefer a rate of entropy increase. We just know that it does increase, on average, in closed systems. If life as we know it creates entropy at a high rate compared to other natural processes, that is not a reason for life to be compulsory, or even preferred, by nature.
