Othello and Night and the poems of Peter have caused me to question of free agency. In primary and on my mission we often talked about free agency as this beautiful gift from Heavenly Father that is just a part of the plan for us to return to Him. The problem is that in Othello and Night, and in some of the poems about Peter the question is not so much about a persons ability to choose his complete destiny. Eliezer and Desdemona were stripped of much of their freedom. Cassio and Othello became instruments for destruction because of their willingness to trust and listen to people, which would appear to be a good use of free agency. I guess the question that I keep coming back to is that free agency doesn't always make sense in the primary and missionary use of the term.
It's not a matter of listening and choosing what's right. Sometimes you are offered only bad choices, and sometimes you are the victim of poor decisions of others. At other times, times that are just as hard (although initially they don't appear as such), we are forced to choose between a number of options that are all equally good. We choose, and that choice doesn't work, and we choose another, and that also doesn't work out, but yet Heavenly Father still refuses to remove our ability to choose. He didn't take away Iago's agency, he didn't stay the hand of the fascist nazis, he didn't stop Peter from denying Christ, or the hands of the Roman soldiers from crucifying his son. He honors our agency, and that may be the greatest wonder of them all.
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