Freedom to Choose

Families grow stronger as they understand that the foundation for freedom and liberty is moral agency – the freedom to choose. We had agency when we lived as spirits in heaven before we came to this earth. While we lived with our Father in Heaven, He presented His plan for our happiness. He explained that He had prepared a new home for us where we would receive physical bodies and learn many things that we could not learn in heaven. He told us that we would have the ability to choose how we wanted to live our lives on earth. He said that we would one day return to live with Him if we made good choices.

After Father in Heaven presented His plan, another plan was presented to us by Lucifer. Lucifer's plan would insure that we all returned to heaven. To do this, our agency would be taken from us - and we would be forced to be good. There was a war in heaven (Revelation 12:7) because those who chose to follow Lucifer's plan wanted to force everyone else to choose it also. Those who wanted to keep their agency or freedom to choose won the war in heaven and were allowed to come to earth, receive bodies, and learn new things. Those who wanted to use force were cast out of heaven without bodies.

Among those who came to earth are some people who think they are so intelligent that they want to tell others how to live their lives. These people are sometimes called social engineers. They like to use the force of the government to change mankind and to cause them to fit a master plan. These plans are very much like the plan we rejected in heaven.

Many different programs are used to change mankind through the force of the government. Progressives are currently trying to gain control of the citizens in this nation by forcing some of these programs on our nation under the mask of health care reform, climate change, cap and trade, etc. Previous programs in other countries fell under the titles of Nazism, fascism, socialism, and communism. They were all administered under the control of a dictator such as Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc.

We fought a war in heaven over agency. Heavenly Father considered agency to be so important that He allowed one-third of the hosts of heaven - His children - to rebel and to choose to live another way.

Our nation was founded on liberty - the freedom to use our God-given agency to make choices. Our Founders fought and won a war that we might have liberty. Now we are in a war to see if we can retain our liberty. The words agency, freedom, independence, and liberty all describe the Right to Choose. Understanding the importance of moral agency helps all of us to be stronger.