Agency

"Moral Agency"-Elder Christofferson

The Elements of Moral Agency

1.  Alternatives among which to choose.
 -“opposition”—righteousness and its opposite, wickedness; holiness versus misery; good versus bad.
-For these opposites or alternatives to exist, there must be law. Law provides us the options. It is by the operation of laws that things happen. By using or obeying a law, one can bring about a particular result—and by disobedience, the opposite result. Without law there could be no God, for He would be powerless to cause anything to happen (see 2 Nephi 2:13).
2.   For us to have agency, we must not only have alternatives, but we must also know what they are.
-If we are unaware of the choices available, the existence of those choices is meaningless to us.
-But with the Fall, both they and we gain sufficient knowledge and understanding to be enticed by good and evil—we attain a state of accountability and can recognize the alternatives before us.
-The beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it pours knowledge into our souls and shows things in their true light. With that enhanced perspective, we can discern more clearly the choices before us and their consequences.
3.  The freedom to make choices
-King Benjamin reminded us that in addition to giving us the freedom to choose, God makes it possible for us to use the gift because He “is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another”.
-Freedom of choice is the freedom to obey or disobey existing laws—not the freedom to alter their consequences.
- “We are responsible to use our agency in a world of choices. It will not do to pretend that our agency has been taken away when we are not free to exercise it without unwelcome consequences.” (Dallin H. Oaks)

Satan’s Attack on Agency

-Yielding to his temptations leads to a narrower and narrower range of choices until none remains and to addictions that leave us powerless to resist. 
-“It must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet” (D&C 29:39).
-Like Jesus, we can gain all we need in the way of a mortal experience without yielding.

The Central Role of Jesus Christ

-His central role began with His support of the Father’s plan and His willingness to become the essential Savior under that plan. The plan required a setting for its implementation, and Jesus was instrumental in the creation of this planet for that purpose. Most important, while the Fall of Adam was a critical element of the plan of salvation, the Fall would also have frustrated the plan if certain of its consequences were not mitigated by the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
-The Fall of Adam provided the spiritual death needed to separate us from God and place us in this mortal condition, as well as the physical death needed to provide an end to the mortal experience. 
-Death had to be permitted, but it also had to be overcome or we could not return to the presence of God.
-Thus, if our separation from God and our physical death were permanent, moral agency would mean nothing.
-With resurrection through Jesus Christ, the Fall can achieve its essential purpose without becoming a permanent death sentence.
-We need a Savior, a Mediator who can overcome the effects of our sins and errors so that they are not necessarily fatal. It is because of the Atonement of Christ that we can recover from bad choices and be justified under the law as if we had not sinned.

The Savior’s Exemplary Use of Moral Agency

-“He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29; see also 3 Nephi 11:11).
-Being Jesus’s obedient disciple—just as He is the Father’s obedient disciple—leads to truth and freedom.
-To the secular world it seems a paradox that greater submission to God yields greater freedom. The world looks at things through Korihor’s lens, considering obedience to God’s laws and ordinances to be “bondage”.
-Likewise, as our understanding of gospel doctrine and principles grows, our agency expands. First, we have more choices and can achieve more and receive greater blessings because we have more laws that we can obey.  Second, with added understanding we can make more intelligent choices because we see more clearly not only the alternatives but also their potential outcomes.
-The Lord promises that if, in the exercise of our agency, we follow His example and always do those things that please Him and the Father, then we will come to know and understand all things.

Testing as Part of the Essential Experience

-The gift of agency is intended to give us experience. We “taste the bitter, that [we] may know to prize the good”.
-Joseph Smith was told to expect some severe opposition despite making good choices.  We must prove to Him and to ourselves that we can consistently make the right choices and then stick to those choices, come what may.
-God is interested in what we are becoming as a result of our choices. He is not satisfied if our exercise of moral agency is simply a robotic effort at keeping some rules. Our Savior wants us to become something, not just do some things. ⁵ He is endeavoring to make us independently strong—more able to act for ourselves than perhaps those of any prior generation. We must be righteous, even when He withdraws His Spirit, or, as President Brigham Young said, even “in the dark.”

"Only Upon The Principles Of Righteousness"- Elder Larry Y. Wilson 

-The right to use the priesthood in the home or elsewhere is directly connected with righteousness in our lives: “The powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness”. It goes on to say that we lose that power when we “exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of [others], in any degree of unrighteousness.”
-We lose our right to the Lord’s Spirit and to whatever authority we have from God when we exercise control over another person in an unrighteous manner.⁴ We may think such methods are for the good of the one being “controlled.” But anytime we try to compel someone to righteousness who can and should be exercising his or her own moral agency, we are acting unrighteously.
-When setting firm limits for another person is in order, those limits should always be administered with loving patience and in a way that teaches eternal principles.
-Compulsion builds resentment. It conveys mistrust, and it makes people feel incompetent.
-Unrighteous dominion is often accompanied by constant criticism and the withholding of approval or love.
-If parents hold on to all decision-making power and see it as their “right,” they severely limit the growth and development of their children.
-Wise parents prepare their children to get along without them. They provide opportunities for growth as children acquire the spiritual maturity to exercise their agency properly.
-Helping children exercise their agency properly requires teaching them how to pray and receive answers to their prayers.
-President Henry B. Eyring has said, “Of all the help we can give … young people, the greatest will be to let them feel our confidence that they are on the path home to God and that they can make it.

 a. How might the excessive use of rewards and punishments interfere with both the parent and the child's agency?

     b. When a child misuses their agency, who is to blame?  The parent or the child?

     c. Why do you think this doctrine might be one of the most vital for parents to understand?