February 5–11: “Free to Choose Liberty and Eternal Life, through the Great Mediator.” 2 Nephi 1–2
Why is agency so important to Heavenly Father, even though some people use it in hurtful ways?
No doubt Agency is crucial to God; this is a crucial part of Latter-day Saint doctrine. But why? This question gave me pause. But only for a moment.
Agency is valued by God because God aims to help His children BECOME godlike, which is only possible through agency. Forcing goodness is pointless and sometimes harmful.
Because of Jesus Christ, I am “free to choose liberty and eternal life.”
Agency is a signature doctrinal point for Latter-day Saints. In this week’s Come Follow Me are questions about why agency is so valued, both by God and as a target by Satan. Satan’s plan has always been to eliminate agency, even curbing it on the way. Note that, whoever does it, reduction of someone’s agency is violence against that person. The most extreme example of this would be slavery and even indentured servitude. More clever examples are the way current businesses “help us” into:
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no longer doing things ourselves
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no longer being ABLE to do them ourselves
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Because the options are all in the control someone else, they are soon able to take them away.
An example of this from my every-day experience is the prevalence of Freemium models in software. Another example that has touched my family recently has been streaming provider’s sudden change to their infrastructure, taking away our ability to share and split the bill on streaming options with some of our family’s households.