Outside the Blog -- by Jon Young

To Latter-Day Saints, agency is our freedom to make choices.  The concept is simple enough, we think, that we may not notice a particularly common misunderstanding.   Consider two examples:

1.  A high school student decides she does not want to attend seminary, but her parents will take away her privilege to drive if she does not. A friend explains that she should be able to avoid seminary and keep driving the car since agency gives her the right to choose for herself. 

2.  The same student is late to class so she exceeds the speed limit and gets a ticket.  Having agency, she chose to exceed the posted speed limit and experienced the consequence.

These two examples of how we might understand  agency are clearly not the same.  In the first, agency is  the freedom to choose between alternatives with limited coercion and ignored consequences.  The second is a choice to do right or wrong by an imposed law which has a consequence.  If we look to the scriptures to understand agency, we find it is most like the second situation with Heavenly Father as the law giver. This concept of agency has the following attributes:

• God gives us knowledge and will
• Law is imposed
• Choice(s) are made
• Consequences are realized

Agency is a gift from God

In Moses 7:32 we read:  "... I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;" 

Agency is a personal choice between right and wrong

The Guide to the Scriptures on LDS.org states agency is "The ability and privilege God gives people to choose and to act for themselves."

Agency requires personal accountability for consequences

D&C 29:39 reads "And 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—"

Returning to example #1 above, the young student does not want to chose to obey a parental rule, she wants to be rid of it and the imposed consequence.  By avoiding both law and consequence under the guise of  "agency," she hopes to deny herself agency as it applies to her dilemma with her parents.  We often see ourselves and others invoke the right to agency in situations where we may seek exception to life's best practices or to disobey appropriate laws or counsel we may not agree with.  

What people really want when they seek to avoid law and consequence is freedom. Don't get me wrong, freedom is a good thing when the laws and consequences we want to avoid actually impede our personal and collective ability to improve and find greater happiness.  When rule of law increases our ability to progress, learn, and make good choices, freedom from those rules is not good.

Agency allows people to define their moral and social freedoms.

President Marion G. Romney taught this idea in a General Conference address.

Free agency, however, precious as it is, is not of itself the perfect liberty we seek, nor does it necessarily lead thereto. As a matter of fact, through the exercise of their agency more people have come to political, economic, and personal bondage than to liberty. -- Marion G. Romney October 1981.

So we might then say that capitalists and communists don't produce or reduce agency, rather the human use of agency creates capitalists, communists, or any other system of social governance.

Consider Elder Boyd K Packer's view of agency as stated in the 1992 General Conference talk "Our Moral Environment".  Here he states there is really no such thing as "free agency" from which various "pro-choice" arguments are derived:  

... we pass laws to reduce pollution of the earth, but any proposal to protect the moral and spiritual environment is shouted down and marched against as infringing upon liberty, agency, freedom, the right to choose.

Interesting how one virtue, when given exaggerated or fanatical emphasis, can be used to batter down another, with freedom, a virtue, invoked to protect vice. Those determined to transgress see any regulation of their life-style as interfering with their agency and seek to have their actions condoned by making them legal. 

As a Latter-Day Saint, reading this initially invokes thoughts of political controversy over drug use and abortion, but do we, highly conservative as a group, sometimes argue the right to "agency" or "freedom" as justification to oppose laws that protect the environment, promote public education, and care for the infirm or disadvantaged?  I believe we do, and we do it too often.  Clearly some freedoms are not virtues and our call to freedom obscures selfish desires, even from ourselves.  

Lack of freedom does not take our agency away

Recall the case of Joseph in the Old Testament whose jealous brothers sold him into slavery. The results of Joseph's good choices didn't necessarily lead him to freedom.  His choice to obey his father and refusal to commit adultery actually resulted in slavery and then a prison sentence!  Whether he was a slave, a prisoner, or at the height of his political power governing all of Egypt, agency allowed Joseph to rise above his circumstances even as his freedom diminished or increased dramatically.  Agency itself was not sacrificed or created by Joseph's situation.

Another notable example is the experience of Jewish Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl.  In Steven Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Successful People," Covey reveals that Frankl's choice to cope constructively and give meaning to his experience in the Nazi death camp gave him a type of "freedom," which aligns better with the LDS concept of agency.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Understanding that agency is not freedom can empower us!   Understanding this we can no longer excuse ourselves from righteous doing because something restricts our freedom to do something else.  There is nothing to blame for not finding a great deal of purpose or meaning in our lives regardless of our situation.  There will always be right and wrong choices life asks us to make and to learn from.

Personal thoughts on the proper role of freedom in government

Although freedom is not the fundamental gift that moral agency is, I recognize freedom's importance for personal and community prosperity.  Freedom, as I define it here, isn't unfettered access to any choice we'd like to make.  Freedom is the set of choices that allows the highest potential for human achievement physically, intellectually, and spiritually.   This optimal set of choices isn't a constant and may need to change based on current challenges or new knowledge.  I recognize freedom to choose one's own business and to determine what they should produce and at what price typically leads to economic prosperity.  I also believe there are many choices that government should regulate in a way that ultimately protects or leads to greater freedom for all.

When people are victims of random circumstances that cause great suffering, or public goods require sufficient contributions, or anywhere the human mind is generally prone to bad choices, adding some public encouragement or discouragement through law is perfectly defensible.  All military, police, fire, education, health care, safety net programs, environmental protection, and retirement plans for the larger community are justifiable.  They can increase personal freedom to make good choices now and for future generations if we implement them wisely.