Which is the better motivator? Darkness or light?

I met a person on the internet a few years ago - an accident had put this physically healthy individual in a wheelchair. As far as I could tell, it would be his condition for life. To say he was angry would be an understatement. He was somewhere south of bitter. He blamed god, and vented his anger about his condition to anyone and everyone. As a random stranger to him, I got an earful from him as well. It had been, if I remember correctly, a couple of years since the accident.

credit: favim.com

I remember reading a book where the author was a scientist, again this was a number of years ago. He described his philosophy that life for human kind was intended to be barely tolerable. Not good by any means, but tolerable enough to just barely stay above the suicide line. He believed that his philosophy was science, and that his viewpoint on life was similar to that of all humanity.

The anger and despair these people feel, and so many others like them, is normal to them. It is justifiable to them, based on "facts" that these individuals choose to see, but life doesn't have to be that way. We can choose the life that we live, at least in terms of what matters most.

So I'm following along in my study of light. This time in 3 Nephi 10. Previously, you had the Nephites that were evil in nature at the time. They were waiting for the day/night/day miracle. Other signs that had been prophesied of happened, but they pinned their hopes on one: the day/night/day thing. "If that doesn't happen" they said "then it's all false and we'll kill the believers". All in on one thing - or so they said. Then the day/night/day thing happened. Did they turn into believers on the spot? Of course not - that would mess with their chosen belief set and lifestyle. So they decided it was trickery or whatever, and kept being who they had always been.

The miracles didn't inspire them. The miracle they said they were looking for happened - no change. What would it take? What does the Lord have to do to turn them (or us) around?

So then He tried darkness. The opposite of the day/night/day thing happened. Darkness for 3 days. No lights. No candles, no torches. Darkness. My claustrophobia would have turned me into a melted mess on the ground. It alone might have killed me.

The scene included mists of darkness, earthquakes, heavy weather, landslides, etc. Numerous large cities were burned, sunk or buried. It seems that the Lord got creative in different ways to destroy so much of this evil civilization. All of this sounds thoroughly unpleasant to me, but honestly, I'd perhaps rather be buried or sunk rather than endure 3 days surrounded by dark nothingness. Frightening.

Did this result in positive changes? Yep. It did help, I'm sure, that much of the evil population was exterminated. Funny what having your evil neighbor turned into toast can do to your own motivations.

Christ ended the 3 day event when his voice became clear to all. For whatever crazy reason, the people listened this time. And then they became one of the happiest, most righteous people ever to populate the earth.

So the day/night/day event, which was a miracle, and which was an undeniable testimony of Christ's light did nothing. But darkness, tempest, death and destruction turned out to be quite a motivator. Good thing that doesn't happen to us in these days - we always turn toward the light when we are invited toward it - right?

The Lord would rather guide us into and through his light than send us the darkness. But I believe that the bottom line is that sometimes love and light don't do the trick - and the Lord must send darkness to teach us what we need to know. Of course, darkness doesn't mean that we're doing things wrong, but it might mean that perhaps is we study the darkness, and learn from it what we can, that we can re-enter the light.

I believe that the first rule in being our parent is that the Lord loves us. Because this is the case, he will do whatever is necessary to teach us, to move us forward, to help us improve. Our negative choices move us toward darkness - that's not the Lord's fault, it's ours. Our lack of choosing light also may tie the Lord's hands. May we choose Light.