So .. what is your favorite definition of Agency? One of the many I enjoy is from Elder Uchtdorf's BYU Devotional in July 2006 - "You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay the consequences of your choices."
About the term "free agency" ... "In years past, we generally used the term free agency. That is not incorrect, but more recently we have taken note that free agency does not appear as an expression in the scriptures. They talk of our being “free to choose” and “free to act” for ourselves and of our obligation to do many things of our own “free will.” But the word agency appears either by itself or, in Doctrine and Covenants, section 101, verse 78, with the modifier moral: “That every man may act in doctrine and principle . . . according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (emphasis added). When we use the term moral agency, then, we are appropriately emphasizing the accountability that is an essential part of the divine gift of agency. We are moral beings and agents unto ourselves, free to choose but also responsible for our choices." (Elder D. Todd Christofferson, Moral Agency, BYU Speeches 31 Jan 2006)
In a landmark talk, Elder Dallin H Oaks taught the following:
1. Before the world was created, we existed in the presence of God.
2. Free agency is a gift of God.
3. We had free agency in the premortal existence.
4. There Satan presented a plan that would have taken away our free agency.
5. When God rejected Satan’s plan, Satan and those who followed him rebelled and were cast out of heaven.
6. Pursuant to God’s plan, Adam and Eve made the choice that caused the Fall, making mankind subject to mortality and sin in the world.
7. We are here to be tested, and this cannot occur without opposition in all things.
8. To provide that opposition, Satan is permitted to try to persuade us to use our free agency to choose evil.
9. If we choose evil and do not repent, we can ultimately become captives of Satan.
And then went on to describe the difference between AGENCY and FREEDOM: -
"First, because free agency is a God-given precondition to the purpose of mortal life, no person or organization can take away our free agency in mortality.
Second, what can be taken away or reduced by the conditions of mortality is our freedom, the power to act upon our choices. Free agency is absolute, but in the circumstances of mortality freedom is always qualified.
Freedom may be qualified or taken away (1) by physical laws, including the physical limitations with which we are born, (2) by our own action, and (3) by the action of others, including governments."
Do you distinguish between these two concepts and can you tell the difference between them in your own life? When is your freedom restricted? How is your freedom restricted? How do people mistake agency for freedom? How can we best respond when people confuse the two?
For further reading:
Dallin H Oaks: Agency and Freedom
No comments:
Post a Comment