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An eternal gift of choice, moral agency (Part 2)
Satan’s attack on agency
We recognise the gift of agency as a central aspect of God’s plan proposed by Him in the great premortal council, and that “there was war in heaven” to defend and preserve it. Satan has not ceased his effort “to destroy the agency of man.” He promotes conduct and choices that limit a person’s freedom to choose by replacing the influence of the Holy Spirit with his own domination. Yielding to his temptations leads to a narrower and narrower range of choices until none remain and to addictions that leave one powerless to resist. While Satan cannot actually destroy law and truth, he accomplishes the same result in the lives of those who heed him by convincing them that whatever they think is right is right and that there is no ultimate truth; every man is his own god, and there is no sin.
Of course, Satan’s ongoing opposition is a useful and even necessary part of moral agency. The scripture states: It must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter, they could not know the sweet.
Remember, that we retain the right and power of independent action. God does not intend that we yield to temptation. Like Jesus, we can gain all we need in the way of a mortal experience without yielding.
The central role of Jesus Christ
We have reviewed the elements of moral agency and its divine origins, but we must always remember that agency would have no meaning without the vital contribution of Jesus Christ. His central role began with His support of the Father’s plan and His willingness to become the essential Saviour under that plan. The plan required a setting for its implementation, and Jesus was instrumental in the creation of this planet for that purpose. Most important, while the Fall of Adam was a critical element of the plan, the Fall would have frustrated the plan if certain of its consequences were not mitigated by the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It was necessary in God’s plan for our future happiness and glory that we become morally free and responsible. For that to happen, we needed an experience apart from Him where our own choices would determine our destiny. The Fall of Adam provided the spiritual death needed to separate us from God and place us in this mortal condition as well as the physical death needed to provide an end to the mortal experience.
Without more, however, these deaths would have defeated the plan after having made it possible. Death had to be permitted, but it had to also be overcome or we could not return to the presence of God. Jacob, another prophet in the Book of Mormon, explained it this way:
For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfill the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection…
. . . For behold, if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more.
And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself…
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.
So, if our separation from God and our physical death were permanent, moral agency would mean nothing. Yes, we would be free to make choices, but what would be the point? The end result would always be the same no matter what our actions: death with no hope of resurrection and no hope of heaven. Good or bad as we might choose to be, we would all end up, in Jacob’s words, “devils, angels to a devil.”
With resurrection through Jesus Christ, the Fall can achieve its essential purpose without becoming a permanent death sentence. “The grave must deliver up its captive bodies,” “hell must deliver up its captive spirits,” and “the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous” so that “the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls, having a perfect knowledge like unto us in the flesh, save it be that our knowledge shall be perfect.”
But there was one more thing that Christ needed to accomplish so that moral agency could have a positive potential. Just as death would doom us and render our agency meaningless but for the redemption of Christ, even so, without His grace, our bad choices or sins would leave us forever lost. There would be no way of fully recovering from our mistakes, and, being unclean, we could never live again in the presence of the “Man of Holiness.”
We cannot look to the law to save us when we have broken the law. We need a Saviour, a Mediator who can overcome the effects of our sins and errors so that they are not necessarily fatal. It is because of the Atonement of Christ that we can recover from bad choices and be justified under the law as if we had not sinned.
Professor C. Terry Warner stated: Human agency was purchased with the price of Christ’s suffering. This means that to those who blame God for allowing human suffering, Followers of Jesus Christ can respond that suffering is less important than the gift of agency, upon which everything else depends, and that none of us has paid a greater price for this gift than Christ.
The Saviour’s exemplary use of moral agency
The Saviour’s use of moral agency during His lifetime is an instructive example for us to follow. At one point in His teaching He revealed the principle that guided His choices: “He that sent me is with me: The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.” I believe that much of the Lord’s power is attributable to the fact that He never wavered in that determination. He had a clear, consistent direction. Whatever the Father desired, Jesus chose to do.
John reported the following response to Jesus’ statement that He did always those things that please the Father: As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
So, being Jesus’ obedient disciple just as He is the Father’s obedient disciple, leads to truth and freedom. Then He added, “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free, indeed.”
I recently read of a young British girl who learned in school about the characteristics of water along a shoreline that signal the approach of a tsunami. Two weeks later, on vacation with her family in Thailand, she observed those phenomena and insistently warned her parents and the people around her. They escaped to higher ground just in time when the December 26, 2004, tsunami hit south Asia. More than a 100 people owe their lives to that girl’s knowledge of certain truths of the natural world.
But the Lord’s statement that the truth will make us free has broader significance. “Truth,” He tells us, “is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” Possession of this knowledge of things past, present, and future is a critical element of God’s glory: Does anyone doubt that, as a consequence of possessing all light and truth, God possesses ultimate freedom to be and to do?
The Lord promises that if, in the exercise of our agency, we follow His example and do always those things that please Him and the Father, then we will come to know and understand all things:
We should, however, be encouraged by what John said of the Saviour: And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness.
So, we might presume to follow in His footsteps and receive grace for grace and truth for truth until we also receive a fulness.
Samuel Enos Eghan
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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