Here it is: Agency Revisited

I have a couple ideas I’ve thrown around since I said I’d be writing this blog, since the topic of agency is dear to my heart. Most of which, I am not going to be addressing in this post. These other ideas revolve around the idea that agency is vital. And, I would love to do a series one day on this – i.e., how humility is vital for complete agency, how faith and not knowing is so important to our mortal experience and how agency is intertwined, and so on.

So, what do I want to say about agency? Mostly that choices matter. That agency matters. I got my degree in Psychology, and have heard arguments for and against it all four years. See, in science, agency doesn’t fit, so researchers often conclude that agency is an illusion we live by to give some kind of purpose to life, but that it is impossible for us to really change, it is impossible for us to really choose for ourselves. They can't prove agency is real, so it must not be. Personally, I agree—With the idea that we can’t prove agency empirically.

I also don’t think we need to. Agency is still real and anyone who says otherwise still acts as if they have agency anyway. I’ve known professors who believe we have agency on Sunday, but in their research and classrooms, proclaim that it is a myth. And, it’s just sad to me.

I want people to know that agency is one of the most beautiful and vital gifts from God that we have. Without it, there really isn’t a purpose to life. It’s not just something we pretend to have so we feel better. AND even if it was, I would still live the same way.

We do have agency, so I won’t dwell on that. I’ve written about agency a few times on this blog, and don’t know what more to say except that we must choose deliberately. If we aren’t choosing, who is? If you say you don’t have agency, who is accountable for your choices, good or bad? Well, certainly not you. If you couldn’t choose otherwise, then all your bad decisions and consequences aren’t your fault but neither are your successes and your growth.

Agency is often described as the ability to choose otherwise. And we do all the time. When a driver cuts us off, we have many choices: keep driving, keep driving and become angry the rest of the day, follow the person to where they are going and yell at them, turn around and go home, or stop in the middle of the road and demand justice. Obviously, we have more choices than that. But, what I am trying to get at is that we must determine where we are going. Choose to follow God a little more consciously today. Choose to cast anything holding you in a world of sin away. Yes, it may be in your nature now to get offended easily, but it doesn’t have to stay in your nature. Rise above it with help from our Eternal Savior and His Atonement for us.

I often leave connecting ideas out when I try to be brief, but I have a testimony that agency is real. It is from God, and we are expected to choose deliberately.