"IT'S A MATTER OF AGENCY"
As I was pondering how to write about the current lack of initiative among many in the West, I came across this headline's article. What does "Agency" really mean? Here are a few excerpts from the article: "Agency is the ability to look at a situation and believe there’s something you can do about it. One of the things I’ve noticed about people with high agency is that they don’t necessarily have better circumstances. They simply see more possibilities within the circumstances they have."
"They don’t necessarily have more resources. They’re often just better at figuring out what to do with the resources in front of them. It’s the way they seemed to view obstacles. The obstacle wasn’t a stop sign. It was a problem to solve. And sometimes solving it meant doing something that wasn’t in the conventional playbook. That’s agency. Agency means thinking for yourself. You can’t give someone agency. You can show them possibilities, challenge their assumptions, help them see another door. They have to decide to walk through it."
For several decades now, young people have been trained to depend on the government and government-funded hospitals, clinics, schools, colleges and universities for things previous generations had to provide for themselves. When I was growing up in the 1950s, we had a large garden that I had to dig up with a shovel to prepare for planting, then pull the weeds, water the garden, and pick the crops, and mow lawns to pay my clothes and school fees: I had my own lawn care business. My Mom canned or froze enormous quantities of food to provide for her six children. She sewed pajamas for us, skirts and dresses for the girls, and shirts for the boys. If we had to go to the doctor or the dentist, we paid cash for it on the spot. We walked to school and back, made and brought our lunches – a sandwich and an apple – to school in a brown paper bag. If we decided to go to college or university, we worked our way through. I started a tailor-made clothing business, got married in a custom-made silk suit, and borrowed only a bare minimum for college so I could pay off the loans in just a few years after graduation.
But now, many children don't learn basic housekeeping, gardening or hands-on life skills. They can ride a bus for free to and from school, get free breakfasts and lunches in school, subsidized or free "healthcare" – contraceptives and abortions so they can freely "sleep around" with whomever they wish, go to higher education on loans of tens or even over a hundred thousand dollars, sliding through these institutions, many with only "fluff" degrees in subjects that won't provide a living wage. They're spoon-fed 20-second sound bites of pseudo-information on their smartphones to which they're addicted. If they're out of range of WiFi or a cell tower, they become entirely paralyzed, lost and helpless. In short, they haven't aquired agency to think and act on their own.
This dependency on the government was especially impressed on me during our 17 years of missionary service in Russia. People automatically expected some vague "they" to provide all sorts of things and services... for free. A curious feature of the Russian language is the unnamed "They" – one doesn't need to even use the word "They" to start a sentence, simply say: "Ought to give free medical care" or "Should care for the disabled" or "Must provide free education through college or university." The unnamed subject of these sentences was, of course, "The government." As missionaries, we as "rich Westerners" should give them free Bibles, theological training, and financial support for their pastors. So "The West" had replaced "The government" in their thinking. One Russian told me sadly, "We have unlearned how to work."
For several years after we returned from Russia, I volunteered as a job counsellor in low-income neighborhoods. This experience showed me how much unemployed people have "unlearned how to work." Several times, they told me: "All I need is to show the people at the unemployment office that I've applied for 3 jobs, so I can get my check." They have lost their "agency," their adult independence, and have become dependent on the government. That is the norm for many people today. How can this have happened in America?
For centuries after Christ was on earth, His followers practiced genuine Christian "charity" – agape-love. In the KJV version, 1 Cor. 13 uses the word "charity" for "agape" which means divine, selfless love for others. The Apostle Paul, on the way to Jerusalem to be arrested and sent prisoner to Rome, called the elders of the church at Ephesus together and told them – "I coveted no one's silver, or gold, or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities, and to those who were with me. In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Yesous, that he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (Acts 20:33-35). Paul also wrote to the church in Thessalonica – "For even while we were with you, we gave you this command: If anyone is unwilling to work, he shall not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10).
In my article "SEEK THE WELFARE OF THE CITY" you can learn how the Early Church put these teachings into practice by building hospices for the poor and elderly, hospitals for the sick, and orphanages for the street kids. The Church, not the state, balanced Christians' personal charity with individual responsibility and "agency." But in the 7th and 8th centuries Constantinople and much of southern Europe that had been under Christian rule, with the Muslim conquest, Christians were under pressure to adopt Islam. There was a special tax on the "dhimmi," non-Muslims, to either convert or pay this tax. Also, Christians were not allowed to have any social outreach minitries, at best only worship within the four walls of the remaining churches, or at worst... death. And after WW1, with the end of the Ottoman (Muslim Turkish) Empire, communism rose up and began demanding the same sort of submission to the atheistic state.
Today we see that these two worldviews, Marxism and Islam, are becoming more openly allied. You might wonder how an atheistic ideology and a theistic religion could be allies: both share the same spiritual essence – they deny that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. we read in 1 John 4:2-3 – "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus is the Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit who doesn't confess that Jesus is the Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already." That shared spirit between Marxism and Islam is Antichrist.
In the middle of the 20th century, Western society also "flipped the script." In place of church-established schools, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and orphanages, with the post-war "baby boom" we needed more schools right away and various denominations or local school boards didn't have the funds, so the U.S. government offerred to subsidize the new construction projects. And I distinctly remember in junior high school the government promising they wouldn't interfere with the curriculum of schools. But later they felt the "need" to set up the U.S. Department of Education... and as they say, "the rest is history" – federal "guidelines" were established that soon became rules in order to receive federal aid. In the 1970s, WW2 veterans were retiring, many had war injuries, needed hospitalization, and church-established hospitals couldn't handle the growing needs, so again the government stepped in. Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and Baptist hospitals were bought out and became city- and state-owned hospitals.
So by now, people in the West automatically think that's the way things ought to be: "what is" has morphed to "what ought to be." (Unspoken subject) Ought to give free medical care" or "_______ should provide free education," etc. The default way of thinking now is "let the government do it." And the First Amendment's guarantee of "freedom of religious expression" has morphed into "freedom of religion as long as you keep it to yourself or inside your church building" – just like it was in the Ottoman Empire, the USSR and still is in Russia today. What is the answer? We must be unafraid to boldly confess our faith. We must insist on our God-given right to publicly express in word and action our Christian beliefs and morals! We cannot shrink back! This is why we've developed "The ARC" concept, the Agape Restoration Community.
You can read our whole newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2026-10-10.htm, and share it!
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