Announcement!
In poking around the new lds.org I found a documentary on the compiling of the LDS version of the scriptures including the Topical Guide! It is pretty cool and you should defiantly check it out! But just a warning, it is about an hour long.
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In 7th grade we studied the Middle Ages in our language arts class and as part of that study we read a delightful little booked called "The Midwife's Apprentice." The story is about a poor orphen in the middle ages and how she becomes the apprentice to a midwife. Along the way there are stories of her living in a medevil village and what it was like. At one point in the story, the village people find strange hoof prints in the dirt that they concluded must belong to the Devil and follow the tracks to places where they catch several members of the village who were mean to the orphen girl in the act of commiting various sins. Later on the reader finds out that it was the girl who was making the tracks for the purpose of getting back at those people who were unkind to her.
Though this little encounter is cute to read, what stuck out in my mind all these years was how the village priest pardoned all the people caught claiming "That the Devil made them do it, and who can resist the Devil?"
The Devil made me do it? To me that sounds like a little kids saying "Jimmy next door made me angry, so I broke the lamp!" I am not saying that the Devil isn't a terrible and dangerous enemy in our lives, but God expects us to resist temptation. 2 Nephi 2:27 says this quite clearly:
27 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.
Elder Hales gives further definition to this concept in his great talk this last conference on Agency. In it he states:
"We teach that agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and “to act for [ourselves] and not to be acted upon.” Agency is to act with accountability and responsibility for our actions."
Agency is what makes progression possible. Our ability to choose is the greatest gift God has given us. In Moses 7:32 God is explaining all he had done for his children including giving us our agency or our ability to choose:
32 The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;
Choice is what makes us able to become like God some day, and the ability to choose good over evil is a divine potential in each of us waiting to be cultivated. Joshua in Joshua 24:15 boldly used his agency to choose God and as we know he along with the house of Israel reaped great rewards for their choice:
15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you thisday whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
The greatest use of agency we know is that of our Savior in the garden as described in Matthew 26:39:
39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.wilt.
We can follow Christ's example in obedience. We can have a bit of Heaven in our own hearts as a result of good choices because even though there may be pain and sorrow we can still have peace in knowing that we chose as God would have chosen.
I would like to conclude this broad topic by saying that agency is integral in the scriptures and in our lives. Read through the scriptures listed, follow the footnotes and you'll understand so many new and wonderful things about who we are and what God really has planned for us. I would like to finish this topic with a scripture from Doctrine and Covenants 101:78 that I believe does a great job summing up agency:
78 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.
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