Let Your Light so Shine

(This was written by Mike)

While studying for my Master’s Degree, I took a class on the prompt effects of nuclear weapons.  One of those effects is an electromagnetic pulse.  This is a rapid and powerful change in the electromagnetic field.  While by itself it is completely undetectable to the human body—it can neither be seen nor felt, it can have devastating effects on electronic devices.  The changing electric field causes electrons to move in conductors, which can cause a current in electronic devices that will burnout the chips.  Electronic devices can be protected from the effects of an EMP through a process known as shielding.  An electromagnetic field cannot penetrate a continuous, conductive container.  These containers are known as Faraday cages.  By placing devices within a Faraday cage, they will be safe from the effects of the pulse.  Besides destroying electronics, an EMP has another interesting property—it can make fluorescent light bulbs glow.  While a nuclear weapon creates a very drastic change in the electromagnetic field, other devices can cause smaller changes that will still cause a light bulb to glow.  The more intense the change in the field, the brighter the bulb will glow.  Imagine how fun to see a light bulb just sitting on the table start to glow without being connected to anything.  Not long ago, scientists would have denied that such a thing was possible.  Electricity, if they even knew what it was, had to pass through wires, they might have said.  Today, the truth is common knowledge among those with experience in such things.

It can be instructive to consider that people have something like an internal light bulb and the spirit is like an EMP.  When we are in the presence of the spirit, something within us resonates, much like the bulb in the presences of an EMP.  Like the scientists of earlier times, some people claim that because they can’t see or feel the spirit—because to them it is “unobservable”— it must not be there.  These people sometimes keep their own “detector”, their internal light bulb, locked tightly in a Faraday cage.  In this way, even when they are in the presence of the spirit, they are unable to detect it.

The scriptures repeatedly talk of light and truth, and refer to Christ as the light and the Redeemer of the world.  Thinking in terms of light bulbs and electric fields helps me to understand what these scriptures mean.  They also give a new meaning Christ’s injunction:  Let your light so shine.