Evil and agency.

I was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting today, along with my wife and our daughter Sariah, about agency, liberty, choice and accountability, and linked topics.  Below are my prepared remarks.

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In what sense is “evil” a thing? Evil doesn’t “exist” in the sense of having mass, taking up space, etc. Evil is an attribute of conscious thought and intent.

For example: If I throw you a baseball, and you miss the catch and it hits you on the head, that isn’t evil, it’s just an accident.

If I throw the baseball intending to cause you harm — even if the trajectory is the same as in the other example, and you are no more injured than in the other example — then it is an evil act, because I intended something evil by it.

So. as conscious beings, we have the ability to intend evil. This becomes a problem in most Christian theologies, and there’s an entire class of theological arguments called “theodicies” which attempt to explain the apparent contradiction between three premises:

• God is all good.
• God is all powerful.
• Evil exists.

The apparent contradiction is that if God is all-powerful and evil exists, then God must not be all-good, because he would intend to create beings who are capable of evil, which an all-good being would presumably not do.

Or, if God is all-good and evil exists, he must not be all-powerful, and was unable to create us without the flaw which allows evil to exist.

To my knowledge, the revealed doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains the only solution to this problem — the only theodicy — which holds water.

It hinges on a single verse in the Doctrine & Covenants:

D&C 93:29: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”

There is some debate, among the people who think about such things, as to whether “intelligence” as used here is identical to the “intelligences” referred to in Abraham 3:22, where the term refers clearly to premortal spirits, or whether “intelligence” is the pre-existing material from which God the Father organized his spirit children, similar to how He created this world from unorganized matter. But the fact remains: Both in the creation of the world and our own creation, the substance of medium from which God the Father organized what we call “His creation” was uncreated and uncreatable,and in some sense co-eternal with God.

This is the solution to the problem of evil, then. Because God did not “create” us from nothing — “ex nihilo” is the Latin term that has historically been used — there is, at some level, something in each of us which is eternal and independent. Because God did not create us wholesale, He is not responsible for our choices because, at some fundamental level, there is a spark for which we, not He, are responsible.

When the scriptures speak of the “agency of man,” then, we are not talking about something which we would not have unless God gave it to us. Rather, we are talking of something inherent in us as organized intelligences, which, according to Moses 4:3, Lucifer sought to destroy (not just a gift which he wanted not to give to us) but which God has chosen not to curtail. It’s the difference between a wind-up toy and a cat. One can only act if we intentionally wind it up. The other will act on its own intentions to the degree that you don’t lock it in the bathroom when you go out.

During the leadup to the 2012 election, which Mitt Romney’s candidacy lead to what was called a “Mormon moment” in the national media, many voices from all spots on the political spectrum expressed misgivings and even skepticism about how a Latter-day Saint could function in the public sphere. But I read one column from a rather libertarian commenter, who was excited to relate to his audience the idea from Latter-day Saint doctrine of the council in Heaven and the two competing plans. His conclusion in his column was that there was no other religious community which could claim even half of the devotion to the concepts of liberty and personal accountability as the Latter-day Saints, because not only is it “baked into” our theology, it literally describes the reason we are here on Earth at all.

However.

Understanding the concept of agency as we do removes from us one of the more common excuses for sinful behavior that one hears repeated over and over: “That’s just how I am.” Or, “I was just born that way.” Or, most specifically incorrectly, “That’s just how God made me.”

There are many things about our personal circumstances which can be credited to or blamed on God to a greater or lesser degree. The circumstances of our birth, including the time, place, and parentage; our potential health or disability; very likely, to some degree, the talents and aptitudes which we have. It’s still a complete mystery to me how much of what I consider “me” are part of my core being, and how much relies on the circumstances bestowed upon me in mortality.

That said, knowing that there is an uncreated spark in each of us, something which can be described as “intelligence” or “the light of truth,” means that we are agents for ourselves. We have the ability to choose, rationally or irrationally, and thus we own the consequences of those choices.

And because we cannot know in mortality the degree to which the circumstances imposed on us influence the decisions of our true agent selves, we would be wise to assume as much responsibility as possible for our own actions and the consequences that follow.

Now. It is true that some of us, through no fault or agency of our own, have much more limiting circumstances and difficult hardships to contend with. Physical, mental and emotional handicaps which are in no way our own fault can and do add heartache and even anguish beyond anything which can justly be laid at our own feet. In considering that, I would appeal to the golfers in the congregation to consider this. In golf, a “handicap” is an extra limitation placed on a proficient golfer so that the game or competition will still be challenging, to keep him from breezing through it. If we are afflicted in our lives with handicaps of any sort, we would do well to consider it a sign, not of disability, but of ability — a necessary limitation so that our mortal life will still be challenging enough to help us grow.

I tend to believe that at the final judgment, we will finally see clearly what parts of “us” are merely mortal trappings, and what part is the true divine agent within. With that perspective, we will finally comprehend what we could have done compared to what we did, and every knee shall bow to Jesus Christ — not in subjugation or defeat, so much as in gratitude when we finally do understand with eternal clarity the blessings which His Atonement has wrought for each of us. We shall be in a position to finally know and declare that the judgments of God are just — in fact, because of the atoning sacrifice made on our behalf by the Son of God, we each of us, even the most unrepentant, will receive far more than we deserve.