Maybe this has been discussed before a bunch (still a bit freshly out), but it just occurred to me as I was reading another thread.

As Mormons, we were taught the great plan of salvation: god had a plan for us to come down and be tested, satan wanted us to do it his way and not have a choice but that was not god's way so he was cast out, Jesus volunteered to go down and show us the way and be our savior...

"Free agency" is made a big deal of it all - we were to have free agency and the right to choose. Yet, thinking back on it all, the mormon church teaches very much against free agency while still pretending that we have it.

If we truly are supposed to choose for ourselves, why would we be told that it's the ONLY true church, with the ONLY legitimate saving ordinances on earth? Why are we told that people who leave the church have strayed and are lost and that their eternal fate is in jeopardy? If the church truly believes we have a choice of what and how to believe, it wouldn't give ultimatums and threaten us with being separated from our families.

It's another endless example of fear and coercion. Choice be damned.

It's free all right ... with strings attached . Which makes it not free at all . It's a do this or else mentality .

Strings attached all right.....you're as free as a marionette!

What happened to man's agency during the flood of Noah? Seem's like God ceased being God when in his wrath he joined the dark side and embraced Satan's plan (i.e. slayed the younglings, so to speak).

It's crazy that JS taught that god would never take away a person's freedom to choose good or evil. And TBM's believe that. However he also taught that God sent an angel who would cut off his head if he did have sex with young girls and other people's wives. Isn't that god taking away both his and the girls freedom of choice? Yet tbm's don't see a conflict?

Now that you mention it, they kind of do see "Do this OR ELSE" as an exercise in free agency. I think they understand agency differently.

When I was in the MTC, there was a new infomercial being produced by the church. "Manipulating your feelings: On the way home" or something like that. It was a heartwarming story of a family that tragically lost a child in an accident and then were immediately stalked by super righteous mormon girl and all their sadness was covered in by the denial and distractions by the church...

Anyway... in one tender loving scene, super righteous mormon girl and sad lost non-member girl were talking about agency. Mormon girl said something to the effect of "It works like this, by doing exactly what our leaders say, the choice to do bad things goes away, so we can choose to do good things." Basically, she said, by the church taking away all our choices, we have more choices...

Even as a very strong TBM, this made no sense to me. I sat there a little stunned that they would say it that way.

I always looked at "agency" as taught by the church didn't mean, "freedom of choice" it mean, "freedom to choose a consequence"

I never thought about it as a TBM. I thought I WAS using my free agency by "choosing" to live the gospel.

Funny thing about that free agency. It's like being given two options: you can either walk on this road I picked out or you can jump off a bridge. Now, that's not really a true choice, is it? It's more like coercion.

Mormons don't believe that they are polytheistic reincarnationists that only believe in free agency in the abstract not in practice.

Reincarnation - Plan of salvation shows at least 6 worlds. Preexisting, earth, celestial, telesales, terrestrial, outer darkness. 7 if you count Kolob. And 10 if you the levels of celestial Kingdom that one can progress up as I understand.

Polytheistic - Elohim, Jesus, Adam, Joseph Smith are all goes. Plus we can all become Gods.

Free Agency - Plenty of examples above of the lack of free agency in Mormonism both practice and doctrine. But the example that I always think of is why can't TBMs support someone who claims they would like to go to the kingdom for whatever reasons?