A Logical Reason to Keep the Commandments

Yesterday, I mentioned a logical reason to keep the commandments. Last night, I explored the logic a little further. The thought process went something like this:

Is there a God?
Did God create the world?
Does God know how the world works?
Did He create people?
Does He know how people work?
Does He know what makes people truly happy?
Does He know what makes people unhappy?
Does He want people to be happy?
Can He communicate with us?
Would He tell us what to seek/avoid to be happy?
Has He already told us?
Do we want to be happy?
Should we follow God's instructions?

Logically, the answer to all of those questions is "Yes."

Some people may argue whether God really exists, but as far as I'm concerned, there's more than enough evidence to support it for me to believe that it's true. And think about this: Just about every civilization on earth has had stories and traditions that indicated their belief in some kind of higher power. If (percentage-wise) almost everyone who ever lived on the earth believed there was a God, there must have been a good reason for that. But I'm preaching to the choir here. I'm pretty sure most of you already believe in a God. After that, the rest falls into place.

God created the world, and us. He knows how the human mind works because a) He created us, and b) He's been watching us for a long time. He knows what makes us happy or unhappy because He understands us. He wants us to be happy because He loves us. He can communicate with us, and He has - through prophets, scriptures, and the feelings in our hearts. He has told us what we need to be to be truly happy. So if we want to be truly happy, we should keep God's commandments.

The trouble is that keeping the commandments can be hard, while doing other things that simulate happiness temporarily is easy. That, I'm afraid, is where things fall apart. When the choice is between getting temporary happiness easily now and getting better, more permanent happiness later, after some difficulty, people frequently take the first option. Our Heavenly Father knows is not in our best interest, so He tries to teach us wisdom and patience and self-control and delayed gratification, and fasting helps with a lot of that, but the choice is still ours to make, and it always will be. No matter how difficult we feel it is, we can still make the right decision, and no matter how much help God gives us, we can still make the wrong decision. We need to have wisdom within ourselves. We need to learn patience and self-control. We need to learn that it's better to obtain true happiness after years of effort than it is to get fake happiness whenever we want it.

Logically, it all makes sense, but in practice, it's not that easy.