So, we must have agency.

Agency is vital to our Heavenly Father’s Eternal Plan. Wait, what is agency? Agency is our ability to choose right from wrong. Without agency, we would have to do the right thing, and we would physically not be able to do the wrong if we tried. Now, why do we need it? I have 5 reasons: 1: Our goal in life is to become like He is. He used his agency to choose to be perfect. Since we have agency too, we can at least try to be like Him. But if we did not have agency, we would have to be like him. But then we would not be like him, since he chose, and we are not choosing. So, we must have agency. 2: But wait, if agency did not exist, we would not need a Savior. Jesus would not have come. But then we would not have anyone to be like, and we would lose our goal. So, we must have agency. 3: Since we have agency, we sometimes do not know which path is the right one until we are halfway down it. If we did not have the choice, we might not understand why one is right and why one is wrong. So, we must have agency. 4: Also, if we did not have agency, there is not a wrong. However, as Second Nephi 2:11 starts, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” So, if there is no wrong, then there is no right, and it does not matter what we choose, so we would not need agency anymore. But, since there are a right and wrong, there is agency, and so, we must have agency. 5: Also if there is no right and wrong, then, as Lehi teaches Jacob in 2 Nephi 2:13, “And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.” So, we need agency.

Of course, if we have agency, we can make mistakes. That is why He came to Earth, to provide a way for us to repent. In heaven, Satan proposed a plan where nobody can choose. Jesus countered that plan with his: that we do have agency. Of course, God sent Jesus. Why? Because Satan denied us agency, and, as we know, we need that.

Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve said this in a BYU talk in September 2010: “As a boy, I had the job of shellacking a wooden floor. As I neared the end of the task, my father found me in a terrible predicament. He literally stood at the door and laughed. I had worked from the only door to the far end of the room. I had painted myself into a corner, without a window. There was no escape! At that point I had two choices: sit down and accept being stuck for many hours until the varnish dried or walk back across the floor, undoing all I had done. I knew what it would take to refinish it properly. The sanding and refinishing—I knew what was ahead of me, and so did my father. Because of the way I used my agency in painting the floor, my agency was diminished. In fact, my choices were not only drastically reduced but my agency was gone.” We can apply this story to our lives. If we do something wrong, we have fewer choices. Sometimes, we have no choices. We do need agency, but if we use it wrongly, we could lose it. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.