The Death of "Free Agency"

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

Elder Bednar's teaching that Free Agency is no more and is replaced with Moral or representative agency is in the OP.  It is a video of him teaching such.  First he creates a strawman where believing saints believe they "can do what they want to" but such seems like a caricature of believing members.  Reality is that the old framing for agency was that the Church would "teach them good principles and let them govern themselves"  meaning that each member was permitted space to choose the right without any coercion and could decide for themselves what choices to make as to progress and move forward in the gospel.  But at 2:10 in the video He limits moral agency not to one is permitted to make choices after having been taught good principles but rather at baptism and even more fully at the temple, one gives up their free agency and is now obligated to choose the "covenant path" Then if you immediately follow that up with the video of the member of the stake presidency in the OP you can see he is definitely using Bednar's rationale to impose that potential males youth or young adults have no choice.  They gave up agency at baptism and now MUST go on missions.  Then the image above shared on Reddit is a second witness that such rhetoric is permeating the Church with someone above local leaders imposing that local leaders at least in some places go out and teach Bednar's Doctrine of agency and use it to impose all young men must serve missions.  

No one I have ever known in the Church has said "I have agency, I can do what I want"

Also part of the issue is that Mormonism absolutely taught "free Agency" for two hundred years emphasizing "I teach them good principles and they govern themselves" as seen in the quotes above and has also taught that members are under covenant even if that covenant is made at an age when one can't understand what they are getting into that one is obligated by covenant to perform certain operations & behaviors.  But this talk by Bednar goes slightly further and you can see how such a subtle shift can be used by local leaders to teach concept that run counter to the 200 years of "free agency" that the Church taught.

I think Joseph Smith is rolling in his grave.

[ksfisher]

1 minute ago, jkwilliams said:

No worries. 

It is, however, understandable why this subject was not addressed in a general conference session.  Regardless of whether the teaching was appropriate or not, private communication would seem more prudent on this subject. 

[Tacenda]

39 minutes ago, pogi said:

I really don't think he is trying to alter any doctrines on agency.  He is simply trying to clarify it.   I have been doing a little digging to try and understand what he is saying and found another video where he says the following:

It seems clear to me that he is not changing any doctrines on agency, simply trying to be more linguistically precise.   Unfortunately, I think his off the cuff remarks caused more than a little confusion.  

And there's no such thing as homosexuals in the church.  I couldn't help myself. 

 

[Tacenda]

12 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Maybe The Unclear Deacon is Bill Reel ... 

No, Bill's posts were full of spelling errors, or grammar errors. Sort of like someone that texts stuff and doesn't care to capitalize etc. The Unclear Deacon's posts could pass the English teacher muster test for sure! 

[Stargazer]

41 minutes ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

Decades?  Prophets, Seers, And revelators who can't lead us astray taught for CENTURIES "Free Agency" combined with "I teach them good principles and they govern themselves".  It certainly was part of the discussions taught in the 90's https://archive.org/details/Discussion4EternalProgression/page/n5/mode/2up section 4-7

You're quibbling over semantics. Tripping over perceived shades of meaning. In a language which, along with all other human languages, is incapable of complete, eternal precision.

The term "free agency" was finally recognized as not quite correct, and a better term (a scriptural term) was "moral agency," and so that's what we're using now. What's the effective difference? I really don't see any.

41 minutes ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

"We Are Free to Make Choices - In addition, we are free to choose between good and evil. We are responsible for our choices. As we come to know good from evil and choose the good, we become more like our Father in Heaven"  

Yes, of course. But we can only make absolutely free choices if our knowledge is perfect. Unfortunately, our knowledge is actually far from perfect, and cannot be made perfect in mortality. So, in a sense our ability to make free choices is limited. Yet, I may still choose between perceived evil and good, and my choice will be recognized by God.

41 minutes ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

You can't be free to choose if you are coerced. 

Of course you can. No matter how severe the coercion, you are still free to choose the right, as you understand it. Even if you are so coerced that your action is constrained, you still have freedom to choose in your own mind. If I am captured by the enemy, and the enemy applies tortuous pressure to the degree that the only escape is to tell my secret ("We attack at dawn."), then my constrained choice to tell my secret cannot be counted against me. In my honest opinion, at least. 

If a monster takes me and my child prisoner and tells me that if I don't kill my child, it will kill me, do I not still have the freedom to choose? Of course I do! 

41 minutes ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

For one to be "free" to make choices those choices must be free of coercion, shame, manipulation. 

The only way to make this true is to have all choices be of no consequence. Which is absurd. There are always consequences to every choice. The most basic consequence is "opportunity cost," where by choosing one thing you forego the other thing. The old adage "You can't have your cake and eat it, too" is an example of opportunity cost, and it illustrates the consequence of all choices. There is no untrammeled choice. Anywhere or anytime. Because there are always consequences of one sort or another. And yet agency is not destroyed.

41 minutes ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

Otherwise we aren't proving anything to God other than we cave into pressure.  We must perceive a balance and see room for faith.  If Church leaders impose that one is not "free" to choose and must XYZ then I don't see how such can be framed in a healthy way that represents the gospel as I taught it/ was taught it in the 90's

You know, a church leader telling young men that they "must" serve a mission is no different than the same church leader telling them that they "must" pay tithing, they "must" get married before having sex with a woman, they "must" not commit murder, or they "must" conform to everything else that is recognized as a necessity in order to obey the laws of God.

And in all that "musting" we still have the right to say "No, I don't think I will." 

Agency is not denied just because there are both commandments and consequences.

[ksfisher]

7 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

And there's no such thing as homosexuals in the church.  I couldn't help myself. 

 

That's been gone over ad nauseam before.  He was saying that we don't label people in that manner.

[Tacenda]

8 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

That's been gone over ad nauseam before.  He was saying that we don't label people in that manner.

Yes, but like the agency talk, he needed to do better at explaining, or do better at paying attention to how it's going to come across.

[ksfisher]

15 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Yes, but like the agency talk, he needed to do better at explaining, or do better at paying attention to how it's going to come across.

Perhaps, but I think some people understood what was meant but chose to deliberately misconstrue what was being taught.  

[ksfisher]

32 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Sort of like someone that texts stuff and doesn't care to capitalize etc

Those kind of post are like nails on a chalkboard. 

[Raingirl]

2 hours ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

Elder Bednar's teaching that Free Agency is no more and is replaced with Moral or representative agency is in the OP.  It is a video of him teaching such.  First he creates a strawman where believing saints believe they "can do what they want to" but such seems like a caricature of believing members.  Reality is that the old framing for agency was that the Church would "teach them good principles and let them govern themselves"  meaning that each member was permitted space to choose the right without any coercion and could decide for themselves what choices to make as to progress and move forward in the gospel.  But at 2:10 in the video He limits moral agency not to one is permitted to make choices after having been taught good principles but rather at baptism and even more fully at the temple, one gives up their free agency and is now obligated to choose the "covenant path" Then if you immediately follow that up with the video of the member of the stake presidency in the OP you can see he is definitely using Bednar's rationale to impose that potential males youth or young adults have no choice.  They gave up agency at baptism and now MUST go on missions.  Then the image above shared on Reddit is a second witness that such rhetoric is permeating the Church with someone above local leaders imposing that local leaders at least in some places go out and teach Bednar's Doctrine of agency and use it to impose all young men must serve missions.  

No one I have ever known in the Church has said "I have agency, I can do what I want"

Also part of the issue is that Mormonism absolutely taught "free Agency" for two hundred years emphasizing "I teach them good principles and they govern themselves" as seen in the quotes above and has also taught that members are under covenant even if that covenant is made at an age when one can't understand what they are getting into that one is obligated by covenant to perform certain operations & behaviors.  But this talk by Bednar goes slightly further and you can see how such a subtle shift can be used by local leaders to teach concept that run counter to the 200 years of "free agency" that the Church taught.

The church teachers agency, not “free agency”.  There’s a difference. 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

are the quotes that originated by one human and then stated with credit given to the original author then reposted with credit still given to the original author, plagarism?  That seems weird.  The op contains a multitude of quotes with the original author credited in each quote.  

You copied and pasted content from somewhere else and did not cite the source. That’s blatant plagiarism. Own it. 

[bluebell]

17 hours ago, InCognitus said:

It was copied and pasted from a post by Bill Reel on reddit.  

Aw.  That makes sense that it was created by Reel.   

[Calm]

5 hours ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

No one I have ever known in the Church has said "I have agency, I can do what I want

You haven’t hung around teens enough.  

[Calm]

5 hours ago, The Unclean Deacon said:

the image in the OP that imposes such.  The only question is if you believe the comment real?  Along with at least 3-4 other places where such suddenly in this moment seems to be being taught.  Could all of these folks be simply coming to the same idea in a vacuum at the same time?  hmmmmm

Or they are reading what is being said on the Internet and that causes them to interpret what is being taught that way.

Would you accept anonymous sources as credible for claims you think are unlikely?