Choices, Consequences, and Powers Beyond Our Control.

Our speaker in church today was riveting. With his permission,  I'm going to share the main point of his talk on Choices.

Every summer for one week, Kyle's family would visit a resort on a huge lake in Canada. The resort had all kinds of boating equipment available for use, and the  kids took full advantage of the opportunity to get out onto the water.

One day, Kyle went with his eight year old brother, and his ten year old brother, and borrowed a large plastic kayak type of boat. Kyle was twelve. They took this boat out across the wide, deep lake, and found a spot to go explore on the opposite shore. Each end of the boat had a rope attached to it, and the boys used one of these ropes to secure the boat on the shoreline. They simply tied it to a decent sized rock to prevent it from floating away.

After playing on the shore, the boys climbed back in their boat and paddled out into the water. For some reason, they decided to keep the rock attached, and they dragged it out with them till it was suspended underwater beneath their boat.

Something about that arrangement tickled their imagination to no end, and they played with a rock on the end of a rope for a while, till it slipped out of the loop and sunk to the bottom. They looked at each other and reasoned "if a big rock at the end of a rope is big fun, a bigger rock would be bigger fun!"

So back to shore they went. This time they selected a very large rock that took quite a bit of effort to move around. They secured the rope around it and went back out into deeper water. After some fun and splashing, pulling the rope and imagining the rock dangling below them, the rock slipped out of its knots and disappeared.

Again, the boys considered. "If a big rock was big fun, and a huge rock was huge fun, an enormous rock would be enormous fun!"

Back to shore they went. This time the rock was almost too big for the three of them to move. It was more of a boulder than a rock. They secured the rope around it tightly, and after much heaving and pushing, loosened it from the surrounding dirt and, paddling mightily, slowly dragged it into deeper waters.

This time they were amazed to see the massive rock pulled the front end of the boat to just an inch or two above the water line. The ten year old sat near the front, while the eight year old was seated in the rear with a life jacket on. Kyle was in the middle.

As they approached the center of the lake, which was tremendously deep, Kyle decided to use the rope on the rear of the boat to keep his youngest brother safe. He tied it tightly to his brother's life jacket.

At one point, though, the ten year old stood up to move around for some reason. His motion disturbed the balance enough that the front end dipped forward just a bit, and the back end lifted up just a bit.

That change in surface area and displacement was all it took for disaster to strike. The boat, pulled by the incredible weight of the boulder below, instantly flipped into a vertical position. Kyle was launched into the air. In one of those terrifying slow-motion-replay moments of life, he was able to see the boat disappear below the surface lighting fast, pulling his brother down after.

At this point in the story, the speaker paused to share some scriptures. He must have been a TV producer or something. Luckily, I'll not take any longer than this sentence to return to the story.

Kyle swam back to the spot where he last saw his brother. To his shock, and relief, he could see his brother only about 15 feet underwater, struggling against his life jacket, but slowly rising upwards. Kyle dove and swam with his might, trying to raise his brother.

Finally, they broke the surface, gasping for air. The combined buoyancy of the life jacket and the boat were just barely enough to overcome the weight of the rock. But as soon as the jacket reached the surface, the rock would rise no higher. If the rock had been but a few pounds heavier, Kyle's brother would have been lost.

A passing vacationer in a motorboat had seen the accident and quickly arrived. He dove in and cut the rope with a knife, freeing Kyle's brother and sending the plastic kayak to the bottom of the lake.

As he shared this story on the stand today, he was quite emotional. "I think about that day all the time," he said. "We were messing with forces beyond our understanding."

All of our choices have consequences. And some of those consequences are eternal in nature. Think about Alma the Younger, who, perhaps sick and tired of his father's unbelievable religion, went about trying to destroy it. He was messing with forces beyond his understanding, and soon found himself facing a crisis he had not imagined possible, and for which he was woefully unprepared.

All of us will someday face the consequences of our choices. Some come now, and some don't come till an unexpected wave or shift in the balance sends us plummeting into danger.


The safety the gospel offers is a tremendous gift. I'm not suggesting that every commandment supplies us with safety against some danger of the world. But I do firmly believe that a real strength pours into our lives when we live the gospel. That strength helps us get through the hard times, and to not only endure trials, but be improved by them as well.

I love this gospel, and the safety for the soul that it offers.

Lessons on leaders, wildfires, trust, and jumping into the burn.

A couple of stories were brought to my attention yesterday, which highlight important lessons on inspired leaders, crisis, and trust.

The Mann Gulch Fire

In August 1949, lightning struck a slope above the Missouri river in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness in a place called Mann Gulch. It started a fire that would go down in history.

SmokeJumpers 1948

Soon after the fire started, a team of 15 smokejumpers - a profession then only 9 years old - parachuted into the Wilderness and joined with another young firefighter already on the ground to begin working on containing the blaze.

From the beginning, the circumstances seemed particularly challenging.

Trouble starts

The team and their equipment were scattered widely due to the conditions of the air currents and layout of the land. The radio was destroyed. The single firefighter already on the scene, a 20 year old named James Harrison, had been fighting the fire alone for 4 hours, and was getting tired.

With the fire on the south side of the Gulch, the foreman, 33 year old R. Wagner Dodge, instructed the team to walk along the north side of the gulch to get in a better position to steer the fire into less flammable areas.

The firefighters, all between the ages of 17 and 28, got spread out. Dodge was bringing up the rear with Harrison when he saw the smoke at the front of the fire begin to boil up - a sure sign that the wind had changed and the fire was intensifying.  He hurried to try and catch his men.

Faith is the act of an educated person and full of moral significance. Without it you have absurdity.

Francis Bacon, a noted philosopher of and famous advocate for the scientific method, wisely said:

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Despite his advocacy for science Bacon realized, as did Nietzsche of my last post, that only with a return to faith can one to make sense of the world. (Nietzsche of course never made that return and so died worrying that "being deceived [is] one of the conditions of life.")

In this post I hope to do a few things. First, suggest that the rise and fall of scientism or logical positivism in the twentieth century is a microcosm demonstrating Bacon's quote is just as true as ever. Second, use the sentiments of David Foster Wallace to emphasize that faith above anything else is the hallmark of a free and truly educated person. Lastly, I want to end with Terryl Givens's feelings surrounding the idea that only by faith can our decisions have moral significance.

Faith-less worldviews are self-defeating:

The collapse of positivism and its attendant verification principle of meaning was undoubtedly the most important philosophical event of the twentieth century. Their demise heralded a resurgence of metaphysics, along with other traditional problems of philosophy that verificationism had suppressed.  - The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology

Critics of Bacon's above quote will often quip that, given he lived so long ago, surly his beliefs are no longer applicable. However, the rise and fall of scientism or logical positivism in the twentieth century is a microcosm showing his quote is just as true today as it ever was.

Scientism or more generally positivism is the idea that all things that are true can be known by some type of objective verification.  In other words, it is a philosophical worldview where faith is not required because we can verify all things that are true. In fact, one of its foremost advocates, Bertrand Russell, along with his colleague Whitehead set out to prove this was at least true in mathematics. However, as we discussed in our last post, Gödel's theorems unleashed a bombshell making their endeavor forever hopeless.

Interestingly, scientism and positivism fail for an even deeper reason lampooned in the comic above: All worldviews that require the verification of all things are self-defeating. Such wolrdviews state that only claims that can be tested and verified in some objective sense should be believed. However, this claim itself cannot be verified objectively (and it is not empirically testable) so by such advocates' own criteria the worldview should not be believed!

Or as stated on the Wikipedia a little more formally:

Critics of logical positivism [showed] that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated consistently. The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency of the theory... 

Wittgenstein's principle of verifiability posed fairly obvious problems in any scientific context. No universal generalization can ever be verified... . It is also unclear what the status of the principle itself is, that is, whether it is meaningful by its own criterion of meaningfulness... Thus began the program of the "liberalization of empiricism."

In other words, it was quickly shown that worldviews that demanded objective verification of all truth suffered from three giant problems:

1. As discussed in our linked post above, Gödel's theorems showed such a worldview is mathematically impossible.
2. Even if you ignored #1, philosophers quickly realized such worldviews are self-defeating. One should reject them by their own criteria!
3. Science, and specifically empiricism, would become abandoned if such a worldview is taken seriously as it is impossible to objectively verify science. Hence, the move to the "liberalization of empiricism" discussed in the quote.

Unfortunately, #2-3 above did lead a lot of people to quickly take the exact opposite worldview that states we can't know anything is objectively true. This outlook gave rise to post-modernism where all "truth" is merely opinion and can be quickly deconstructed.  Of course, if the post-modernist takes his claims seriously he will have to admit his own belief in post-modernism must also not be objectively correct rendering his own worldview just as self-defeating as scientism or positivism.

However, there is a way out that is as old and still true as Francis Bacon's above quote: Faith! Having a self-defeating worldview is only necessary for those who take a black and white approach to life that either all or no truth can be objectively verified. Consistency and sanity is only restored when one admits the only rational approach through life is one where faith is embraced along side methods of objective verification.  IE: to live by study and also by faith.




Exercising faith is the act of a free and well educated person:

Some more modern thinkers have had some great insight into the importance of faith. David Foster Wallace in his famous This is Water commencement speech made a couple of key observations. First, all the facts you know are perfectly consistent with several interpretations even if you can't see it. Hence it takes faith to interpret any situation. He tells this story:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God... And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" 

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.

Though Wallace gave a simple example, in reality nearly every string of facts has multiple interpretations. It is an act of faith by both sides in determining what interpretation best fits.

Second, the hallmark of an educated person is that they both realize the above and understand they are free to choose what has meaning and what doesn't:

There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship... You get to decide what has meaning and what doesn't. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.

There are no atheists in the "I don't need faith" sense.  Everybody takes strings of facts and decides for themselves what interpretations have the most meaning. However, the difference between one who is free versus who is not is the ability to see this. And it is the mark of a well-educated person how to wisely place faith and meaning when such a concept is understood.

The only real sheep/ignoramuses are those who, upon coming across a string of facts, insist there can only be one meaningful interpretation who in the words of Wallace:

[have] a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

Only a fool as mentally enslaved as this prisoner would conclude facts could remove faith from life. Facts do no such thing. Faith is what is required to make sense of life no matter what set of facts one uncovers. Fortunately, some are free enough to see this and wise enough to know that they "get to decide what has meaning and what doesn't... That is being educated, and understanding how to think."

More than anything, what you have faith in is full of moral significance. 

One last observation from Terryl Givens. Here Given's suggests that faith is required for our decisions to have moral significance:

The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true, and to have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing them to be true. I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice—and, therefore, the more deliberate and laden with personal vulnerability and investment... 

We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is positively laden with moral significance.

In other words, if God made everything that is true so obvious it is impossible to believe different, there would be no moral significance for believing or acting. You can't see what is really in a person's heart when they are compelled to believe or act a certain way.

However, as we have discussed before, we find ourselves in a position where all things related to moral significance require faith.  Thus those rational values and beliefs you are willing to put faith in in the midst of uncertainty is an ultimate measure of what is truly in your heart and thus is full of moral significance.

Conclusion: Bacon's wise observation that "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion" is as true today as it was when it was penned hundreds of years ago. In fact the 20th century once again showed, with the rise and fall of scientism and positivism, that any attempt to remove faith from one's wordview consistently leads to logical absurdities like self-defeation. Faith therefore is in fact necessary to have a coherent worldview of reality.

Also, as David Foster Wallace discusses, everyone must exercise faith to make sense of the world and "the only choice we get is what to [have faith in]... You get to decide what has meaning and what doesn't. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think." Those who both understand the necessity of faith and are wise enough to choose for themselves how to apply it are those who are truly free and know how to think. Furthermore, Terryl Givens astutely observed that it is only through faith that our actions and beliefs have any moral significance. It is how you employ faith that is the true measure of who you really are and what is in your heart.

The Agency Equation

Agency is one of the foundational principles of the gospel similar to love, or obedience. Without agency, the plan of salvation would have no effect. Indeed, it was agency that was the dividing factor between those who chose to follow Satan and those who chose to follow God the Father. And since Satan continually “[seeks] to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3), a firm understanding of what agency is and what conditions are required for it is critical in understanding the plan of salvation and the purpose of this life.

Satan's War on Free Agency

One of the best books I've ever read on the topic of agency is Satan’s War on Free Agency by Greg Wright. In this book (also available from Deseret Book), Greg Wright dissects agency into its fundamental ingredients and clearly distinguishes it from other concepts which are often confused with it.

To anyone who wishes to better understand the principle of agency, I highly recommend this book. The following is a summary of some of the high-level concepts and the scriptural behind the principle of agency discussed in this book.


 

 

The Coin

Choice, freedom, and knowledge are required for agency

Throughout the book, the author uses a metaphor of choosing a coin from the palm, or palms, from someone's hands to describe the different aspects that make up agency.

Choice = Two or more options

If you place a coin in your hand, close your fist, present it to someone, and ask them to pick a hand, did they really have a choice? This seems a bit retorical, but it forms the basis for agency. If only one option exists, there is no choice.

Freedom = Choice + different consequences

If you place a coin in each hand, present them to someone, and ask them to choose, do they have have freedom? No, because no matter what they choose, the consequence of the choice is always the same (they always get a coin). Furthermore, they are making the choice blindly with no idea of the consequences. You need different consequences for different choices in order to have freedom.

Agency = Freedom + foreknowledge of the results

If you now place a coin in only one hand, close your fist around it, hold both fists in front of you, explain which hand the coin is in, then have them choose. Do they have agency? Now it seems the ingredients necessary for agency are there. Here we have multiple options, different consequences, and an understanding of the consequences of the different choices are. Agency requires knowledge of the results of different choices.

So, we have the following distilled equation:

Agency = two ore more options + different consequences from different choices + foreknowledge of the consequences of those choices

Discernment between choice, consequence, and action is fundamental to exercising agency in our lives. It's also important to note how the person choosing must trust you and exercise faith in your telling them which hand the coin is in.

Choice Explained

This above notion of choice is well supported in the scriptures:

• 2 Ne 2:11–12
  

  11. For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
  12. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

• Alma 30:8
  

  For thus saith the scripture: Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve.

• Helaman 2:27
  

  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.

• D&C 37:4
  

  Behold, here is wisdom, and let every man choose for himself until I come. Even so. Amen.

“I don’t have a choice.”

This phrase is often misleading. When we use this phrase we almost always have a choice. What we most often mean is we can’t control the outcome(s) (e.g. we don’t have freedom).

One example is someone trapped in a burning building on the 13th floor with no help in sight. This person may think they don’t have a choice, but they actually do. They can run into the fire, continue calling for help, or jump out the window. The problem is that all of these choices are likely to lead to the same result: death. So when we think this person has no choice what we actually mean is they have no freedom. It is important to separate our notions of choice and freedom. Claiming we have no choice is debilitating and undermines faith. But always being able to see the different choices available to us is enabling and faith promoting.

Freedom Explained

Freedom, itself, has different dynamics.

 

No Freedom without Law

• D&C 88:36–38
  

  36. All kingdoms have a law given;
  37. And there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or a lesser kingdom.
  38. And unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions.

  
  

No Freedom without Consequences

Though this stands to reason simply by virtue of the fact that a law is not a law unless it is enforced and thus has a consequence, Satan has repeatedly tried, an succeeded, in telling the lie that either there are no laws or that their penalties do not exist or matter. The scriptures teach otherwise:

• Alma 42:16–17,27
  

  16. Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal as the life of the soul should be, affixed opposite to the plan of happiness, which was as eternal also as the life of the soul.
  17. Now, how could a man repent except he should sin? How could he sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment?
  27. Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto him according to his deeds.

• 2 Ne. 28:8, 22
  

  8 And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.
  22. And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.

• Alma 1:3–4
  

  3. And he had gone about among the people, preaching to them that which he termed to be the word of God, bearing down against the church; declaring unto the people that every priest and teacher ought to become popular; and they ought not to labor with their hands, but that they ought to be supported by the people.
  4. And he also testified unto the people that all mankind should be saved at the last day, and that they need not fear nor tremble, but that they might lift up their heads and rejoice; for the Lord had created all men, and had also redeemed all men; and, in the end, all men should have eternal life.

No Freedom without the Atonement

Since freedom requires different results it is important to realize that without the Atonement, the outcome of all of our lives would be the same. Thus it is Christ who makes us free:

• 2 Ne. 2:26–27
  

  26. And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.
  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.

• 2 Ne. 9:7,10
  

  7. Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement—save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more.
  10. O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit.

• Mosiah 5:3
  

  And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives.

Agency Explained

Agency has different dynamics within it as well:

No agency without knowledge

• Moses 7:32
  

  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;

• 2 Ne. 2:5
  

  And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.

Agency requires stewardship

Any definition of the word stewardship as it is used generally emphasizes things like duty, obligation, responsibility, etc. Christ used the concept of stewardship throughout His parables (Matt. 20:8; Luke 12:34; Luke 16:1–2). In modern days, Christ has reiterated the principle of stewardship as it pertains to our agency:

• D&C 70:3–4, 9–11
  

  3. I, the Lord, have appointed them, and ordained them to be stewards over the revelations and commandments which I have given unto them, and which I shall hereafter give unto them;
  4. And an account of this stewardship will I require of them in the day of judgment.
  9. Behold, this is what the Lord requires of every man in his stewardship, even as I, the Lord, have appointed or shall hereafter appoint unto any man.
  10. And behold, none are exempt from this law who belong to the church of the living God;

• D&C 51:19
  

  And whoso is found a faithful, a just, and a wise steward shall enter into the joy of his Lord, and shall inherit eternal life.

• D&C 72:3–4
  

  3. And verily in this thing ye have done wisely, for it is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity.
  4. For he who is faithful and wise in time is accounted worthy to inherit the mansions prepared for him of my Father.

 

Agency leads to Accountability

As responsibility is a crucial part of stewardship, agency naturally leads to accountability

• D&C 104:11–13, 17
  

  11. It is wisdom in me; therefore, a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall organize yourselves and appoint every man his stewardship;
  12. That every man may give an account unto me of the stewardship which is appointed unto him.
  13. For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures.
  17. For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.

• Helaman 14:30
  

  30. And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free.

• D&C 101:78
  

  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.

 

Modern Day Prophets and Leaders on Agency

The principle that agency requires choice, freedom, and accountability has been repeated by modern day prophets and leaders as well.

• Elder Bruce R. McConkie:
  

  All of the terms and conditions of the Lord’s eternal plan operate because man has his agency, and none of it would have efficacy, virtue, or force if there were no agency. Agency requires opposites; agency demands freedom of choice; agency decrees personal accountability for sin.
  A new Witness for the Articles of Faith, 1985

• Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander of the Quorum of the Seventy:
  

  What is the agency of man but the right to make choices within a framework of opposition and the assumption of responsibility for those choices?
  The Path of Growth, Ensign Dec. 1999

 

Satan Seeks to Destroy Agency

Often when it is discussed how Satan “[seeks] to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3) the first, and sometimes only, response is that he wanted to force us to be good. Having a more intricate understanding of agency helps us see that forcing us is only one way Satan can destroy agency. To destroy agency, Satan would have to do any combination of the following:

1. Force us to choose good by taking away choice (no options)
2. Remove consequence from action (options but not different results)
3. Remove accountability or responsibility for our actions (options and different results but no accountability)

It is interesting to see at what degrees Satan uses these different tactics. Personally, it seems to me that his most popular and enticing tactic would be the second or third one. How often do we see people, including ourselves, seeking to avoid responsibility for or the consequences of their actions?

Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander of the Quorum of the Seventy explained:

What is the agency of man but the right to make choices within a framework of opposition and the assumption of responsibility for those choices?
The Path of Growth, Ensign Dec. 1999

Also, in the 1999 Old Testiment Seminary Manual it states:

Most people thing that he [Satan] would have forced us to do right, but that is only one possibility. Certain conditions are necessary if we are to have agency…Satan might have destroyed our agency by eliminating any one of those [conitions] and he is still trying to destroy our agency using the same techniques of deception and lies.
1999 CES Teacher Resource Manual

By understanding the agency we have been bestowed by God, we can better understand how to be good stewards of that gift as we overcome the lies and deceptions Satan would have use believe concerning it.