Agency Came Up In Church Today…

The lesson in elder’s quorum was on agency, and the teacher asked us to define agency. One said the ability to choose. Another followed-up with a distinction that it was the ability to choose in relation to morality. A third then said that we can be forced to do immoral acts but it is what our hearts and minds have chosen that matter, not necessarily the act itself. I then chimed in.

If agency is really what your heart chooses then how can it ever be taken away? I honestly cannot imagine a world where this could be taken away. And so it makes me wonder, and I have always wondered this, what Satan’s Plan really was? How would Satan take away agency? How? I just don’t see that.

There were some follow-up comments directed at my comment that referenced the fact that when we are tempted and we give in to those temptations then our choices are limited because we become subject to Satan. Ergo, because we have lost options, our agency has been limited. I have heard this explanation many times, mostly in Sunday School. Basically that, the more you sin the more options you lose and hence the more agency you have lost.

I thought about this for a while. The thing that came up for me was that someone that grows up in an evil environment is indoctrinated in evil early on and commits sin early and will be more susceptible to commit more sin right? The interesting thing is that the exact same thing happens in righteous families. They indoctrinate their children early in the ways of righteousness and make it hard for them to sin.

Do you see where I’m going with this? If agency is all about options, the evil person has the righteous options removed and thus their options are reduced. The righteous have the evil options removed … and hence their options are also reduced? Right?

As it turns out, that is exactly the case. But the thing is it doesn’t matter that your options are limited. It isn’t about the number of options, what agency is, what God means when he says he gave us our agency, is that there is an option that God has made available and that option is the opportunity to be exalted. Agency in the gospel sense revolves around this one option. It seems that agency is the ability to choose God (and exaltation) and has nothing to do with the number of choices one has. This seems to be consistent with the fact that the exercise of agency lies in ones heart, not necessarily with ones actions. This also agrees (albeit looking at it in a from a different angle) with statements that say sin limits agency, it does, very much so, in the sense that it reduces your ability to choose God. Because the more you sin the more you become a captive to sin (and the devil) and your ability to choose God and exaltation is reduced.

For the first time this makes sense to me. I can now see how agency could be taken away, which is what the scriptures say Satan wanted to do with his Plan. It doesn’t mean that our inner choice, which happens in the heart, can be taken away. On the contrary I don’t think this can be taken away. Nor can it or was it given from God, it is something that is intrinsic to each of us. But I still don’t see how Satan could force everyone to be righteous and save everyone. That makes no sense to me. Thoughts?