Agency

I just finished reading a book called, Added Upon by Nephi Anderson for my LDS literature class and was just amazed at how much it got me thinking about so many important doctrines of my church. Anderson takes our LDS beliefs about the pre-existence, earth life, death, resurrection, and the millennium and kind of turns the book into a historical fiction novel. All through the novel, we follow the lives of two characters, and the people that they meet throughout their eternal existence. Homan and Delsa, in the pre-existence, become Rupert and Signe during their mortal lives on earth.

The thing that was most interesting to me was the idea of agency. That was what the war in heaven was mostly about. Would we follow Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, and be guaranteed a painless, sin-free life, having all our choices already made for us, ensuring us all a spot in heaven when life was over? Or would we follow Christ, whose plan was almost the exact opposite? There would be pain, sorrow, and sin. But because of these things, we would also be able to experience and understand complete joy and happiness. We would be able to choose for ourselves. We would make mistakes but then use Christ's atonement to renew our lives and start clean again. Every day we could do this.

In the first section of the book, as we follow the lives of Homan and Delsa in the pre-existence, Homan meets a man named Sardus, who can't decide if he wants to follow Christ's plan or Lucifer's plan. Homan is trying to convince Sardus of the beauty of Christ's plan: to be able to choose for ourselves and become better people through His atonement. Sardus states, "We have the right to think and to act as we please, and I consider Lucifer in the right."

This quote really struck home to me because he is right. We all had the right to follow Christ or to follow Lucifer. Even in the pre-existence, agency was most important to us. Our Heavenly Father gave us the option to choose between the two presented plans. It is ironic to me that Sardus would not listen to his friend, Homan, because he valued his agency and wanted to choose for himself. But Sardus's choice to follow Lucifer would have taken away his right to think and act for himself, something that was obviously important to him.

As I've come to a point in my life where I have to make decisions all on my own, there are times when I wish that someone would just make them for me. If only my patriarchal blessing was a little less vague. If only I knew exactly what my mission was in this life. But I made the choice to be closed off from the world before. I wanted to go through this life, to be tested and strive to become the best person that I can be.

Sometimes I wonder what was going through my head when all of this was unfolding. Was I strongly fighting to defend the Savior's plan? Or was I just one of those who had chosen the Savior but didn't really have a strong opinion about it? I wonder how many of my friends from my pre-earth life chose to follow Lucifer's plan. Was I sad when I realized they would never be able to obtain physical bodies? I wonder if I fought for my friends, if I tried to convince them of the benefits of being able to choose for ourselves. But even if I fought as hard as I could, in the end, we all had our agency and could choose the plan we wanted.

So now, when I wish that Heavenly Father would just tell me exactly what to do, I have to remind myself that I wanted this. And then I have to make the choice and face the consequences, whether they be good or bad.