The False Choice of Happiness

At the close of the Saturday Morning session of this last General Conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook warned us that:

The adversary has been successful in planting a great myth in the minds of many people. He and his emissaries declare that the real choice we have is between happiness and pleasure now in this life and happiness in a life to come (which the adversary asserts may not exist). This myth is a false choice, but it is very seductive.

Satan would have us believe that we're choosing between having happiness now or having happiness later (maybe). If that were true, then the wisest choice would be mostly determined by how long "later" is and how far it is away. In order to get the maximum amount of happiness, we should choose whichever option will give us the most happiness for the longest period of time. In Rich Burlew's webcomic, The Order of the Stick, General Tarkin, an evil dictator who knew he was in a fictional tale, decided that his would be the story of an evil emperor. In his mind, living like a king for several decades was worth the knowledge that he would someday be overthrown and likely killed by some hero. His choice was to have happiness now and an unhappy ending later.

Yet, even in fiction, I don't think that was a wise choice. In both Tarkin's universe and ours, we all are headed for an afterlife that will last for eternity. If we really do have to choose between happiness in this life and happiness in the next, choosing later happiness is always going to be a better choice. Besides, the quality of the "happiness" the adversary offers us is far below the quality of the happiness we get from God. In fact, it isn't really happiness at all - just momentary pleasure. The devil doesn't offer us happiness in this life or the next.

God offers us happiness in both. Elder Cook taught us that "Happiness in this life and happiness in the life to come are interconnected by righteousness." The question isn't whether we'll have happiness nor or later; the question is whether we'll have happiness now and later - whether we'll have happiness at all.

I used to buy into the adversary's premise that we can have happiness in either this life or in the eternities, but not both. But now, thanks to Elder Cook, I've come to realize that when we keep the commandments, we can have our eternal happiness and our mortal happiness, too. In light of this knowledge, I'm going to try harder to choose to follow God's plan for out happiness rather than Satan's plan for our misery. When I learned what the choice really is, it's easy to tell what the best choice is.