Reg Christensen lives in the Midwest with his wife, Carol. They have seven children and seventeen grandchildren. Reg has fulfilled a variety of callings in the Church and he and Carol have been blessed with many service opportunities as Pathway missionaries and service volunteers at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, to mention a few. While living in Jerusalem, they served in the Bethlehem branch, Carol as the Relief Society president and Reg as the branch president. His happy times come from being with family and friends, reading, writing, woodworking, leathercrafting, exploring nature, and blessing lives with his handyman skills. He has published several books, including Unlocking Isaiah: Lessons and Insights that Draw Us to the Savior.
Enter Reg…
Our gift of agency—the power to choose our beliefs and actions—is an essential part of God’s plan for us and is one of the greatest gifts of all eternity. But, as with all good things, mortality brings opposition, darkness, and the misuse of God’s gifts.
I recently read a credible and carefully researched biography of a notorious dictator, Mao Tse-tung. Some of the past writings about him were apparently sanitized and sugar-coated, with the dictator himself presenting a skewed account of his life and misuse of his power. What a vile man!
Before reading this, I thought I had heard most of the cruelest means of oppression and torture; yet the malicious tactics of evil people seem limitless. I am grateful that in the eternal plan of Heavenly Parents, Satan will finally lose his power over us.
Why Is Wickedness Allowed?
In considering this wicked man of the past and the noise, destruction, and chaos of the current world, one cannot help but wonder why God allows so much wickedness. Why does He permit people to persecute and hurt each other?
If He loves us, why does He allow us to self-destruct as result of our poor choices? Could He not stop all the violence in the world? If so, why doesn’t He?
Why do we as peace-loving people allow so much corruption and debilitating trauma in our society? Isn’t there some way we could limit the power people have to hurt others?
Freedom to Choose
For illustration, let me offer a belief and a scenario: I believe in and uphold the freedom of a person to choose to arm himself and to enter and rob a bank. The key phrase here is “to choose.”
Of course, I abhor lawlessness and do not condone anyone stealing property or threatening harm to fellow beings. But the freedom to choose is God-given and cannot be revoked.
Any person has the freedom to choose to do whatever he or she desires, realizing that every choice has a consequence, be it good or bad. God has declared,
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.” 2 Nephi 2:27
The Power and Privilege
So, what are the implications of this principle for you and for everyone? How are we to navigate the chaos of a perverted world where all of God’s children have free choice to do whatever they please—some for the betterment of and some for the destruction of our society? Here are two definitions of inspired wisdom from a respected leader, Elder Dallin H. Oaks:
“Agency [is] an exercise of the will, the power to choose. Freedom [is] the power and privilege to carry out our choices.”
All people have agency—the power to choose what they believe. We may believe in and worship God or we may believe in and worship nothing. We may use our agency to lead us to greater good or we may choose a downward spiral of darkness that leads us to the destruction of ourselves and others.
Freedom—the power to act on our choices—must have limits. For the sake and sanity of our society, we must organize ourselves as individuals, communities, and governments to establish appropriate laws and barriers to the destructive use of the power to act.
Invoking the example of the bank robber once again, we may hopefully use our individual and collective divine love and wisdom to intervene early in his life to influence him away from his inappropriate thoughts and actions and guide him toward goodness. If we are unsuccessful, hopefully he could be controlled in a restricted, monitored environment where his freedom is limited in what harm he could do. And as a last resort, if he is in the act of using his freedom to steal from and threaten others, hopefully he could be disarmed and confined before he causes damage and harm. He may exercise his power to choose, but we try to prevent him from exercising his power to act in a destructive, dangerous manner. Ultimately, however, if he succeeds in robbing the bank, then he must suffer the consequences of his actions according to both the laws of God and of man.
How Will We Use Our Power?
This is how I believe you and I and everyone are connected to our mortal world. We are here in a laboratory to see how we will use our power to choose— whether we will choose light, leading to greater light, or choose darkness, leading to disappointment and pain. God has said,
“And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” Abraham 3:25
Certain conditions must be present for us to fully exercise our power of choice. There must be opposition—there must be bitter in contrast to sweet. God allows suffering to be present so that we may be tutored in recognizing and choosing good.
“For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so . . . righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.” 2 Nephi 2:11
We must have the power to choose. Gratefully, God has granted us this power and will not rescind it. In speaking of our God-given laws and constitution, the Lord has taught,
“That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, 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.” Doctrine and Covenants 101:78
There must be law. Through His laws and commandments, God structures and provides our planet to sustain our lives and designates for us what is right and what is wrong. Some laws, such as the law of gravity, are obvious to us and carry definite and immediate consequences. If we step from a roof, we fall and are likely to be injured.
Other laws, such as the law of chastity, are often cleverly disguised to some as being unimportant or outdated. One who breaks this law may not seem to suffer immediate consequences, as such are often more subtle and eternal.
Knowledge Is Power
We must have a knowledge of good and evil. As we navigate our mortal test, we are to continually learn and review what is right and what is wrong.
Our Heavenly Parents help by communicating with us through Their holy word spoken through scriptures, living prophets, and the power and promptings of the Holy Ghost. As we properly comprehend and apply these elements of agency, we learn by our own experience that right choices lead us upward to freedom and eternal life and that wrong choices take us on a downward spiral into disappointment and sorrow.
Making the Moral Choice
As we make our journey through our test of mortality, Satan will cleverly attempt to confuse issues. For example, he may scream out “Pro Choice” when the battle is not about choice—we already have freedom of choice as our irrevocable gift from God. The battle is about making the right choice—the moral choice.
Satan also tries to confuse our divine nature—even intermingling understandings of our origin with that of lower life forms. If he can persuade us that we are mere animals, he more easily leads us to act as such. When our daughter was young, I came home one day to discover that she had her pet cat confined in a box. When I asked why, she told me that the cat was being punished for bad behavior—it had killed a bird. This was an opportunity to teach her that animals do not have moral agency and are thus not morally accountable for such actions. I am not sure how much it registered with her at that young age, but it was fun for me. Now that she is older, she understands, and she has even used this example in teaching her own children and others about agency.
Elder Boyd K. Packer discussed how some use their agency to:
“look down at animals and stones to find the origin of man . . . they train themselves to measure things by time, by thousands and by millions.”
He then taught,
“But agency is ours as well. We look up, and in the universe, we see the handiwork of God and measure things by epochs, by eons, by dispensations, by eternities. The many things we do not know we take on faith.”
May We Act in Faith
May each of us see the issues of life clearly. May we look up to our Heavenly Parents to seek our origin and destiny. May we act in faith on the matters we do not yet know, realizing that we do know all we need to know to make correct choices. May we properly and gratefully exercise our wonderful gift of agency and, by doing so, be guided forward and upward to eternal life—the greatest possible gift that Mother and Father in Heaven could grant us.
