Obedience and Agency - Choosing to Obey

As you may have gathered by this point, I somewhat struggle with the concept of obedience. Specifically, I falsely view obedience as a loss of agency. We have all been given agency, the ability to make choices for ourselves, but obedience seems to demand that we give up that gift. When we obey someone, we let them make our decisions for us, effectively surrendering our agency to them, or so I thought. However, I know in my mind that the act of obedience is not a surrender of agency, but a use of it. Obedience is a choice, one of many we could make.

Every time someone gives us a request, or even a demand, what they are actually giving us is information. The information merely informs us of both the action that the requester wants us to take and the consequences that might follow as a result of choosing to do otherwise. We still have the choice, but now we can make a better-informed decision. Unless I'm mistaken, this is true in the case of every request and demand, but it is especially true with God's commandments.

God knows every choice we could possibly make and what will happen as a result of those choices. He knows which results are most desirable and which choices will lead to those results. And, because He loves us and wants what's best for us, He informs us of the best choices we can make, or rather the best rules we can live by, because He knows that, if we follow those rules, the eternal net results of our choices will be immeasurably positive.

However, with or without any requests, demands, or commandments, all of our options remain open to us. Even without commandments, we could make all the right choices by some coincidence or accident. There's nothing stopping us except our lack of knowledge that we're supposed to do it. And, even in the face of the strictest demands, we can choose to do otherwise (and then face the consequences of that choice). Demands and commandments neither restrict nor expand our options; they just tell us what some of our options are and why we may or may not want to choose a few of them.

Obedience is not a sacrifice of agency. As we choose what to do and whom to obey, we retain our ability to choose. We can change and make up our own minds, regardless of what choices are presented to us and what choices we've already made. Obedience is a choice, not a surrender of choice. We can choose whether to be obedient or not, and as long as we're obeying God, who doesn't try to trick us into forming compulsive habits, that obedience will still allow us to retain our agency and our ability to choose.