Keep the Commandments

Why are our happiness and keeping God's commandments inextricably intertwined?

Humans desire happiness and are driven to seek it in many ways. Some seek it in pleasures or possessions, others in exhilaration and extreme sports. Some believe they will find it in money, power, or fame. Some seek it in learning some new or strange thing. And the list might go on and on.

Our Heavenly Father has created us that we might be happy and provided us all that we need to find happiness. He knows and loves us best, and knows what will make us truly happy. He teaches us that without righteousness there can be no happiness and that wickedness never was happiness. (See 2 Nephi 2:13; Alma 41:10) He has given us His commandments that we might be happy.

Among the many reasons this is true, two stand out to me. First, his commandments lead to happiness, because he has decreed that it be so; He has conditioned many of His choicest blessings upon obedience to His commandments.

"There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— [a]nd when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated." D&C 130:20-21.

"And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold outfaithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it." Mosiah 2:41

Those who seek happiness by violating God's commandments seek that which can never be obtained, because it runs contrary to the law of God.

But a second and related reason that happiness is found in keeping the commandments of God, is that the commandments themselves are designed by a loving Heavenly Father to make us happy, to make us like Him.

Joseph Smith taught:

Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. [Teachings, 255–56]

God's commandments are not capricious or random in nature, but their very object and design is our eternal happiness. Even when we don't see how that can be the case, or we think we know better what will make me happy, we should lay aside our own wisdom and trust in our loving Heavenly Father, for He knows best what will make us happy.

My favorite scripture is the following:

"But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." 2 Nephi 2:24-25

To the degree that we keep the commandments of God, to that degree and no greater shall we find happiness in this life and in the world to come.