Agency, the ability to make our own choices and control our own circumstances, is something that many of us prize. In human experience, however, it often seems as though one individual or group’s agency comes at the expense of another’s. Perhaps it seems right to use our time and resources to help family and friends, but then we can’t move forward with our own plans. Or maybe a boss won’t approve staff training because she fears competition for her job, or we’re assigned a task but not given the resources or authority to carry it out. What can we do then? A Bible account hints at a path forward.

The story tells of an apparently hopeless situation, with a city under siege and out of options. Victory by the enemy king seemed inevitable. But, the Bible reports, one “poor wise man” had an idea. And that idea saved the city (see Ecclesiastes 9:14, 15). 

In the Bible story, the “great king” attacking the city believed he was using his agency to deprive the city’s inhabitants of theirs. But the wise man, in exercising his wisdom, did not actually deprive the king of the agency to carry out his evil plan. In reality, the king had no such power. In the universe of God, Love, agency is the ability to do only good, for each individual, as the offspring of divine Love, possesses and expresses only good and works in harmony with every other child of God.