Precept and experience

Some hope that God will magically trick or force them into being better. This will never happen.

The only channel God has to stimulate change in you is information:

41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue - of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
42 By kindness, and pure knowledge... (D&C 121)

God will send information into your life, through your experiences, through your surroundings, and through people. He will first attempt to send you information by precept. Unfortunately, hardly anyone will make use of this information:

Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light. (D&C 93:31)

While it is possible for God to send information in more obvious ways, unless a person already loves truth and correction, it will hurt more than help. Most people react to more obvious information with anger, not gratitude:

And it came to pass that they were angry with him, even because he had greater power than they, for it were not possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that angels did minister unto him daily. (3 Nephi 7:18)

The Lord told the story of a man who died and found himself in hell. He could see Abraham in heaven, and he implored him to send messengers to his family so that they could change their behavior before it was too late:

27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. (Luke 16)

As Abraham said, the only thing we can expect to receive here is the information showing that something is right. Not only will God not send more than that—more than that doesn’t exist. Our situation is determined here, and will be determined hereafter, solely on our recognition of and reaction to truth.

Our perception can only change in two ways: through mental precept or through bodily experience.

Because so few people have developed sufficient faith to learn all that is available through precept alone, God graciously provides experiences.

Often, suffering is the only thing that will help a person shake from the apathy, ingratitude, and insensibility so prevalent in human nature.

Learning through experience is not as fruitful as learning through precept. The justice of God dictates that the more obvious a path is, the less rewarding it will be. No person who is compelled to value something will ever extract as much joy from it as the person who values it through precept.¹

The problem with learning value through experience is that it is almost always too late to experience the full measure of what it is you have come to see the value of, and it is usually too late to experience any of that value at all. For example, if a person decides to fill their lives with shallow relationships during their youth, preferring good looks and good times over a stable, successful partner, they will likely only discover their mistake when they are too old and in possession of too many emotional flaws to qualify for the stable partner they now value. The same sort of thing happens in nearly every good thing God offers to us in this life. The same idea applies for eternal blessings as well, as death brings with it the termination of opportunities to obtain a great many things that cannot be obtained outside of this world.

There is no reason to wait until motivation toward righteousness comes from experience. Through faith, it is possible to acquire and exercise that degree of motivation now , and receive tremendous blessings for doing so before being compelled to do so.

Reason is a mental exercise. Tremendous changes can come merely through honestly thinking about past, present, and future circumstances and modifying one’s behavior as if they were in the same situation.

Alma the younger described how reflection upon his own situation yielded an understanding of his true standing before God—along with the pain it brought—far beyond what his current experience yielded:

6 For I went about with the sons of Mosiah, seeking to destroy the church of God; but behold, God sent his holy angel to stop us by the way.
7 And behold, he spake unto us, as it were the voice of thunder, and the whole earth did tremble beneath our feet; and we all fell to the earth, for the fear of the Lord came upon us.
8 But behold, the voice said unto me: Arise. And I arose and stood up, and beheld the angel.
9 And he said unto me: If thou wilt of thyself be destroyed, seek no more to destroy the church of God.
10 And it came to pass that I fell to the earth; and it was for the space of three days and three nights that I could not open my mouth, neither had I the use of my limbs.
11 And the angel spake more things unto me, which were heard by my brethren, but I did not hear them; for when I heard the words—If thou wilt be destroyed of thyself, seek no more to destroy the church of God—I was struck with such great fear and amazement lest perhaps I should be destroyed, that I fell to the earth and I did hear no more.
12 But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.
13 Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.
14 Yea, and I had murdered many of his children, or rather led them away unto destruction; yea, and in fine so great had been my iniquities, that the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did rack my soul with inexpressible horror.
15 Oh, thought I, that I could be banished and become extinct both soul and body, that I might not be brought to stand in the presence of my God, to be judged of my deeds.
16 And now, for three days and for three nights was I racked, even with the pains of a damned soul.
17 And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world. 
18 Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.
19 And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.
20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!
21 Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy. (Alma 36)

Faith is belief based on ideas , and ideas are not limited to what we personally experience. For example, a group of people long ago had a powerful experience while hearing accounts of people they had never before met:

9 And again, when they thought of their brethren who had been slain by the Lamanites they were filled with sorrow, and even shed many tears of sorrow.
10 And again, when they thought of the immediate goodness of God, and his power in delivering Alma and his brethren out of the hands of the Lamanites and of bondage, they did raise their voices and give thanks to God.
11 And again, when they thought upon the Lamanites, who were their brethren, of their sinful and polluted state, they were filled with pain and anguish for the welfare of their souls. (Mosiah 25)

Through reasoning alone, these people were able to marshal the same emotions and lessons learned as they would have had they passed through the same experiences themselves. We have voluminous material for such experiences in the scriptures. How often do you read them while sincerely placing yourself in the same situations? Do you faithfully project yourself into similar circumstances, extract reasons and desire from the account, and apply them to your present life with future outcomes in mind?

Beyond scripture, God will make information available to us by other media and through people we cross paths with:

21 And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing.
22 For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing.
23 And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come.
24 And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of men, which were good; and all things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise men were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them.
25 Wherefore, by the ministering of angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing; and thus it was until the coming of Christ. (Moroni 7)

Learning through reason opens to us a much wider learning channel than personal experience, not only because some mistakes in life are irreversibly constricting, but also because we are limited in experience by time and circumstances. It is very foolish to assume that what you understand through personal experience is all there is to know about the issue at hand.

If we will not learn through reason, God’s only remaining recourse is experience. Learning through experience tends to be slower and more irregular than learning through precept, which can happen instantaneously and as often as the person seeks it. Experience tends to be far more painful and permanent than precept. Even then, how one reacts to information is always up to them.

God has made you free to choose. No one is ever forced to believe. Every step in the faith cycle includes your choice. Desire is a choice. Reasoning is a choice. Acting according to reason is a choice.

The only thing that isn’t your choice is the outcome. This is determined by God’s law ordained before the foundation of the world. You choose the outcome by how you choose in the previous steps of the faith cycle.

God’s responsibility is to provide the opportunity to acquire sufficient information to know, as much as can be known ahead of time, the set of possible actions before you, and the outcomes stemming from each of them.

God’s responsibility is not to make the choice for you or to plainly dictate which path you should take. The more plainly God leads you, the less faith it is possible to exercise, and therefore the lesser the blessings possible. The opportunity to acquire information preserves your ability to exercise faith in ways that giving you the information directly could not. God, being wise and loving, will use every means he has to make as much information available to you as possible while still preserving faith. For example, he could make the information available through means that defy conventional wisdom, such as through a person that others think is foolish, or through a path that requires great humility, or in a way that requires great belief in him. Examples of these three include, respectively, outsider prophets like Elijah, Naaman the Syrian being instructed to bathe in a river he thought was below his stature, and Nephi seeking directions on the Liahona.

God’s responsibility is not to make it easier for you to choose one or the other, but if he mercifully does so, it won’t be by magic. It will be by increasing your awareness of the negative consequences of suboptimal choices through your own experiential suffering.

God has given each of us the immutable agency to choose what we desire and how to act. This is the test of mortality.

Desire is things as we wish they were. God has given you the power to reason in order to reveal more of reality, but he will not force you to desire what is of the greatest benefit. What you desire is your choice.

Reason will show you how to act, but reason will not force you to act. It is through reason that you are an independent entity. Reasoning is how you digest information from external sources into your own information. Information can come from anywhere, and it is your responsibility, and yours alone, to seek information, to evaluate information, and to assess its worth. You, and only you, can assess the worth and implications of information through reason. You get to choose to believe or reject reasons. You get to choose to assess the value of each piece of information. Choosing not to exercise this right does not absolve you of the responsibility of reasoning. It just means you will end up wherever the current leads you. It means you have abdicated the gift of agency. It is highly unlikely that one who takes the passive approach will get very far at all in or after this life.

How rare is the person who does only what they have a sufficient reason to do, will not relent while they continue to, and changes as soon as given sufficient reason to!