I skyped with my sister last week and she told me she had to give a talk in church on agency or freedom of choice. She didn't want to merely regurgitate the same old stuff and I immediately thought of a talk by Kathleen Flake that I've referred to before on my blarg. The link there to listen to the talk doesn't work anymore, so here's a new link. If you haven't listened to the talk, I think it's worth a listen. One of the things she talks about is that typically we think of agency as freedom to make choices, which is true. If I stop there though, that kind of limits what is possible for me.
She expands agency and says that it is also the freedom to make meaning. It's pretty easy to sit back and let other people tell us what things mean. It's particularly easy to fall into that rut in church or politics, because there are plenty of people who are willing to dogmatically tell us what things mean and there are even more people who allow others to dictate to them the meaning of all things. Each of us, however, is blessed with a mind and a body and spirit and the power to explore for ourselves, with the help of the Divine, and discover what things mean.
The next morning I was driving to work. I got a bunch of audio recordings of some of the Sunstone sessions I went to in August and I've been listening to them during my commute. I was listening to one by Phil McLemore called "Hindering the Saints" and he talks about how some aspects of church culture hinder us from spiritual exploration and growth. He talks a bit about the power of choice. Here's my transcription of what he says.
We talk a ton about using free agency, our power of choice, to keep commandments and do the right thing; however, it is a known fact that most human beings are bundles of conditioned perceptions and responses and that only about 5% of our choices are the result of conscious, aware decision making. This is the reason so many good people fail in their best efforts to become Christlike and to fulfill their spiritual potential. Instead of continuing to beat the drum of using our agency to choose the right, when 95% of our spiritual will power is in captivity to physical, emotional and cultural conditioning, why don’t we talk about how agency can be expanded. It is not expanded by listing over and over what is right and what is wrong. This results only in boredom, guilt and frustration. It is expanded as one moves into the inner path and is reborn through the purifying influence of God’s love and grace. In this process, the old natural man, usually subconscious patterns and habits, are weakened and as the inside is cleansed, the outer being becomes clear and clean and suddenly choices in harmony with divine nature are more easily made.
I think a lot people don't realize how much of what they choose to do is the result of that bundle of conditioned responses or a role they think they need to play. I think lists of what is right and what is wrong is a good elementary foundation, but eventually the time comes to move beyond that and explore who you are and what things mean to you in your individual situation and how you can find peace and love and happiness.
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Great comments! I think this boils down to the fact that each of us is responsible for our own salvation, our own relationship with God, our own testimony, our own actions. The Gospel is a vehicle to facilitate getting us to these ends, not the ends themselves. How we apply the gospel (and agency) is indeed an individual thing that we must "explore" on our own - with the help and guidance of the Spirit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these thoughts. It is a rare treat to read something that opens up one's mind, even just a little bit, to a new way of looking at the world. This post has done that for me, so thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete"The Gospel is a vehicle to facilitate getting us to these ends, not the ends themselves."
ReplyDeleteAmen!
Thanks for you comment, Invictus.
Great post. I'll be thinking about it for a while, and deciding how I can better use my agency. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post Jon. Here's my brutally honest comment.
ReplyDeleteMcLemore's ideas about agency are thought-provoking. They are also unacceptable in the prevailing culture of modern Mormondom. While I applaud McLemore for his efforts to helps us expand what agency means and how we can apply it, I am pessimistic about his ideas being applied by among rank-and-file Mormons. Of course, as you know, I'm not exactly much of an optimist when it comes to these things. (I'm also curious about McLemore's use of the phrase "[T]he outer being becomes clear and clean and suddenly choices in harmony with divine nature are more easily made.")
Most Mormons see agency as a simplistic, light vs. dark decision-making process. It's either liberty and eternal life or captivity and death. McLemore asks, "[W]hen 95% of our spiritual will power is in captivity to physical, emotional and cultural conditioning, why don’t we talk about how agency can be expanded?" The answer is that do so would undermine the physical, emotional and cultural (I would add spiritual to that list) conditioning that serves as the foundation for most Mormons' church experience. The church is the vehicle for conditioned obedience, which is seen as heaven on earth according to the laws of church culture. The gospel isn't seen as a vehicle at all, unless it is equated with the church, which is both very common and very wrong. This doesn't mean most Mormons are bad people. On the contrary. But it does show that the limitations of the "list of rights and wrongs" approach can be suffocating to many of us. How ironic that it's easier to find spiritual boredom, guilt and frustration (read: captivity) at church than it is to find spiritual insight and a connection to the divine.
Joseph Smith once said that "Happiness is the object and design of our existence." I think ideas such as this attract many people to Mormonism. But whether you're a multi-generational member or a first-generation member, you soon learn that compliance to a narrow set of "right" choices and "right" answers from the spirit is the only legitimate application of agency. This realization is often the first step on the path out of the church for many people.
I would feel much more a part of the church if I had even a small sense that spiritual exploration and the search for personal meaning were valued. As it stands now, I can't see how the church can help me in my individual situation find peace, love and happiness. I mourn that personal reality with great sadness. But I also find a great depth of happiness, meaning and fulfillment in areas of my life once closed off. Many of the trade-offs are good.
Pablo, you raise a lot of really good and valid points. You describe a lot of what is sick and unhealthy about church culture. I guess for me, that's where the agency to make meaning comes in. Even though I might be in a minority, I can decide what Mormonism means to me. Even though many others choose to live and experience their Mormonism a certain way, doesn't mean I can't live and experience it differently. Sure, it makes it a lot harder when I'm in the minority and there aren't many others who think like I do, but I find that I learn a lot about myself and my place in the world through allowing myself to sit with that tension of not following the herd.
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