Agency & Authority

When my children were small, there was never any question about who was in charge. I was the boss of them because I was their parent, and my right to exercise parental authority was unquestioned because we all knew I rightfully possessed that authority. As a parent, it was my responsibility to care for and protect my children, so the authority I had came with power that enabled me to do so. That parental authority gradually diminished as each child grew into adulthood; and that’s as it should be.

When I was a child

The period of transition from childhood to adulthood usually occurs during our teenage years, but puberty is about more than just our physical development into adults. It’s the time when we begin to lay aside our childish thoughts and reasoning. It is a time when we are observing and assessing the values and behaviours of the adults around us, and deciding for ourselves how we feel about things, and what values and beliefs we will live our own adult lives by. We transition from being extensions of our parents into individual adults in our own right.

Children are meant to be gradually weaned away from parental authority and responsibility as they grow physically, cognitively and emotionally. When we help them safely learn how to step out from the umbrella of our parental authority and responsibility, we are empowering them to take up authority and responsibility over themselves.

When I had parental authority over my children, it was only because I had responsibility for them. That parental authority came with power to enforce it, but only until such time as the transition from childhood to adulthood was complete. Once a person is able to take authority over themselves, not only do they become responsible and accountable for themselves, but they also then have power over themselves. This is agency.

Agency

Agency is the capacity to influence our own thoughts, attitudes, actions and behaviours. Agency is knowing we have the ability to shape the course of our lives because we are now the boss over ourselves; it is the sense of control we feel over our lives. Agency is knowing that we have power because we have the freedom to make choices, and acknowledging we are responsible for the choices we make. Agency is being in full possession of ourselves and having the assurance that we have the power, the right, and the privilege to do so. Agency basically equals authority over ourselves.

As children, we were trained to respect parental authority and to operate within the boundaries of it. Once we become adults, not only is it incumbent upon us to respect our own agency, but to also responsibly exercise the authority each of us has over ourselves, and similarly operate within the boundaries of that authority. In this context, agency means being responsible with, and accountable for the words we use, how we use our bodies, how we spend our time and resources, and how we manage our thoughts and feelings.

Any power we have with agency is essentially only meant to be exercised over ourselves. We are not meant to misuse our agency in a negative or destructive way upon others by influencing them to do what is wrong, or effectively forcing them to do what they are not truly willing to do, because that becomes an abuse of their agency.

Our words are meant to speak life, and not be used to flatter for personal gain, to cruelly humiliate or denigrate, to coerce into sin, or to deceive. Agency over our bodies means not using them to intimidate, dominate, threaten or harm anyone. Agency over our time and resources means using them in ways that honour God and build the kingdom rather than exploiting them for self-centred satisfaction. Emotional agency means understanding that our feelings deeply influence our thoughts, and that we have a responsibility, therefore, to keep rein over them. It means not allowing our feelings to rule our lives, but neither being so devoid of feelings that we become hard and unyielding. It means demonstrating our respect for the agency of others by considering how the consequences of our choices might affect them, and not using emotions to manipulate or emotionally blackmail people.

From the Beginning

From the beginning, agency has been an integral part of human life because God chose to make it that way. Regardless of gender, nationality, politics, age or religious views, no living human being is exempted from having agency and the choice that it affords us. God wants us to love him back because we choose to, not because we have no choice in it. Agency, therefore, equals choice and the freedom to exercise it.

Although other people may attempt to abuse our agency, or even try to rob us of it, God will never do so. That isn’t because He lacks the sufficient power to force us to do something, or even prevent us from doing what is harmful. Let’s face it – if He can build an entire world from nothing, managing us would be a toddle. But instead, he chooses to contain his power in order to honour his decision to give us agency. His nature is to be just and right (Ps 89:14), so by choosing to give us agency, God was effectively also choosing to limit his own power in order to remain just and right. Any faith we have in God is built on love and our trust in his justice and righteousness. Were he to override our free will for any reason, then that would make him unjust, and therefore unworthy of our trust in him.

Exercising Agency

In the garden of Eden, Eve had agency. Even if her reasoning for eating the fruit was not sound, Eve still ate the fruit freely and willingly, as did Adam. That meant what was lost had to be won back in the same manner – freely and willingly. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus also had agency because he came as a human. On the eve of his captivity, Jesus was acutely aware of his agency and the choice available to him. He knew he had the freedom to choose whether or not to go ahead with the plan of redemption, and it caused such anguish for him that he literally sweat blood. He knew that the immediate consequence of his choice would mean his torture and death, but he also knew that the destiny of the whole human race was at stake if he failed.

Consider for a moment that Jesus is as much human as he is God. The divine part of him was there when they worked out the plan to fix what went wrong in the garden of Eden. By the time he came as a human all those thousands of years later, he still had to be willing. God has had to exercise patience in a measure that is inconceivable to us, because having made the plan of redemption, he then had to wait thousands of years for just the right moment; the right time, the right place, the right people. Everything had to be perfectly aligned for the plan to work.

So the right moment comes. Mary exercises her agency and says yes. She could have said no, but she didn’t. As Jesus grew, he was protected by a relative obscurity – living the simple life of an average man from a small town carrying out his trade. There was nothing remarkable about him at all, until one day at the river when his cousin baptised him, and a voice from heaven rings out “This my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17 ESV).

From that time on, the spotlight is suddenly on him. He becomes more acutely aware of the weight of the plan he is carrying out. He is under constant scrutiny, and often challenged about what he teaches. His teachings cause outrage amongst the religious, but he is able to take comfort in the joy that others find in his words. Although the inexorable outcome of the plan is still like a distant cloud, Jesus chooses to rejoice in the here and now as people are healed and delivered from demonic oppression. He delights even more as they awaken to the truth of God’s love for them.

Crunch Time

After three years training those who must pick up the mantle once he is gone, the time has come. Perhaps his heart is heavy with sorrow on that last night, not only to be leaving his friends, and not only because one of them was betraying him; but because he understood the vagaries of human nature so intimately. Perhaps it grieved him knowing that despite all he was doing for us, so many would still be unwilling to hear to the message of hope and salvation. And yet perhaps he also consoled himself with the joyful knowledge that there would still be many that would hear and believe.

On that night, the burden he carries weighs so heavily upon him that he needs to be alone with God, because he feels his human resolve threatening to fail him. They have reached the crucial part of the plan they have waited so long and so patiently to execute. His own humanity wars within him, because he knows what is about to happen. He knows that as a man he has a choice. He knows he could say no, and that would be it: plan over. But he also knows that saying no would have devastating effects for all mankind, because he has stood as the Messiah before the world. If he were to change his mind now and say no, how would the world ever be willing to believe again? How can the world have faith if he fails to fulfil all that was prophesied about him?

When it’s crunch time, it takes three times of agonisingly intense prayer for Jesus to overcome his own humanity; to be able to freely and willingly say yes. And thank God for our sakes that he did. God could not have forced the human part of Jesus to say yes any more than the serpent could have forced eve to eat the fruit, because both Jesus and Eve had human agency.

Standard of Measure

Every adult has power and authority over themselves because they have agency, and this is by God’s design. But we need a standard against which to measure our thoughts, words and actions to ensure we use that power and authority properly. The only appropriate standard of measure and point of reference is God, because He alone is truly right and just. When we allow God to be our point of reference, then we can build a frame of reference and understanding by regarding his perfect values and attributes, then aiming to emulate them in our own lives.

Should we reject or dismiss God as our standard, then we are rejecting what is truly right and just, to instead determine for ourselves what justice and righteousness are. Our point of reference moves from the one and only perfect God, to our flawed and corruptible selves. Our measure becomes distorted because it is based on our own selfish wants, needs or desires, and we instead become our own gods.

Understanding Agency

Truly understanding our agency means knowing it gives us the freedom to exercise our will, and choose on a moment to moment basis where, when and to whom we might submit or obey. Becoming born again and coming into relationship with God does not automatically mean we must surrender our agency.

And yet, by making the free will choice to receive God’s forgiveness and redemption, shouldn’t that also mean we are willing to acknowledge Him as greater than ourselves? Shouldn’t it mean we are willing to actively be in relationship with this God that is able to forgive and redeem? Wouldn’t you want to be in relationship with someone that loves you so much that they are willing to be with you despite our flaws, and are able to make us into something infinitely better?

Because if we aren’t willing to actively be in relationship with God, doesn’t that mean we are just using Him for our own ends? Relationship with God is meant to involve more than just wanting Him to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If we are happy merely to have the benefits of the relationship without also accepting the balance of responsibility and accountability any relationship requires, what kind of relationship is that? It’s easy to love God when things are good, but do we toss him over the minute they’re not so good?

And if we do choose to be in an active and intimate relationship with God, then shouldn’t that also mean we could safely choose to yield our choices to God because we know and trust and believe that He loves us, and that His plans for us are for our good?

A Yielded Life

Yielding to God is a choice we should make because we believe He is trustworthy and just. It is a decision we make to believe the truth of it whether we can see it or not. Yielding to God is an offering we can make because we love him, freely given and without pressure. To me, that is the definition of submission: yielding our will to another because we choose to, without being forced or pressured to do so. God cannot make us love him; we love him because we choose to.

The simple fact is that by accepting God’s forgiveness and salvation, we have been bought and paid for. In one sense we owe him. But because he loves us and longs for us; because he is gracious and just, he will still respect our agency and not demand love or obedience from us. Although he technically has the power to do so, he chooses not force anything from us that we are not willing to freely give.

Once we become born-again, we are no longer meant to live for ourselves, but instead to ideally exercise our agency to choose God and others over ourselves for no reason other than we want to. Being born again does not make us His slaves, but we are completely free to choose to become His bondservants. If Jesus humbled himself before God to do His will, then ideally shouldn’t we freely and gladly do so as well?