Question: Why do we even have choices? 

Answer: Because agency is very important to God

Question: Why is agency very important to God? 

Answer: Because He wants us to be independent decision makers, able to make good choices without compulsion. 

Question: Why does He want us to be good decision makers? 

Answer: Because sometime, He is going to hand us Eternal Power, and say, "Ok, Go be gods and goddesses and make worlds and rule galaxies." And there is not going to be any supervision. 

I assume that nobody advises God on what is right and wrong. No offense to Lyndon B. Johnson, but the buck really DOES stop here.  God doesn't have recourse to calling some Heavenly Help Hotline and asking, "Ok, so, how exactly should I react to 1/3 of my children rebelling against this plan of salvation?" 

He has to make the decision Himself.

In a billion or so god-years, we will be under the same pressure. And so God is carefully training us to take that power. 

And so God gives us this incredible power of agency. 

Insert comic strip here. 

Skeptic #1 "Some gift, God! Thanks!" 

Skeptic #2 "No joke... what good has ever come out of giving mankind agency?" 

Skeptic #1 "Wars, rape, genocide, Bruce/Caitlinn Jenner... the list could go on." 

They have a point. People regularly use their agency to create mega-sized messes of their own lives (sad) and of other people's lives. (tragic.) 

What kind of Father would take His children from a safe, happy, simple environment where choices are relatively black and white, and thrust them down to an unhappy, confusing, temptation-rife world, ruled over by a sadistic and malicious trickester and his horde of demon-liars? Has God abandoned us? 

No. 

So what's the catch? 

Limited Agency. 

Giving our agency back to God. 

God understands that it's a two-edged sword. If He gives us too MUCH supervision, we lose all the advantages of living in a world as semi-independent spiritual teenagers. If He gives us too LITTLE supervision, even those of us with great intentions would make a real mess of our lives and bring misery upon ourselves and others. 

So, He solves it in a very simple and elegant way. He gives us (practically) unlimited agency, with the guarantee that we're going to mess up. And then, once we're sick of messing up and being miserable, He makes us an offer. "I gave you your agency," He says, "now, give it back to me, and I'll show you how to use it." 

The teachings of the gospel regulate an incredibly wide variety of things in our lives. Here's a brief list of things that the gospel instructs us on. 

• Diet
• Clothing
• Time Management
• Media
• Reading selection
• Love
• Marriage 
• Dating 
• Education 
• Interpersonal Relationships
• Budgeting 
• Exercise 
• Parenting...

In fact, that's one of the things that is often so repugnant to people investigating the church... the seemingly endless lists of prohibitions, restrictions, instructions, and rules. 

But it's a trick, really. God tricks us. Because as soon as we get to the point where we say, "OK, God, I'm sick of doing things my way! I want to do things your way!" and we start following all those long lists of rules, we find out that they don't really regulate as much of life as we thought they did! 

It's almost exactly like a sneaky, silly trick. God says, "give me your whole will," and we fight and pout and complain and procrastinate until it's too painful to resist anymore. And so, we humble ourselves and say, "All right! My will is yours, Heavenly Father. Tell me what to do." 

And He smiles, and doesn't tell us anything! 

Right at the moment when you give up your whole will to God is the very moment when He starts trusting you to make your own decisions! Isn't that weird? 

Why is that? 

I think it goes back to Heavenly Father's original purposes. 

God knows we need the chance to make good choices, but those choices have to be our good choices, not his good choices. So, He gets us to the point where we really, really have a desire to do right. He pounds us with trials until our souls really desire goodness.  We have this desire to choose the right... and the He requires us to SEARCH for the right choice. He requires us to read the scriptures, apply logic and life experience, and counsel with people older and wiser than us. 

The commandments are really training wheels. They're difficult, but once you master them, God expects you to do many things of your own free will. It's sort of like the 400 level courses in college. A lot more freedom, but also a lot more responsibility. 

So, how do we educate our desires? Well, for a long time, God would tell me what the right choice was.  FOR EVERYTHING. Between the ages of 17 to 21, I prayed about everything in my life, and 94% of the time, I got a clear, unambiguous answer. 

And then I got home from my mission. BAM. Iron curtain. I still prayed about everything in my life, but I only got answers about 30% of the time. 

I have a few theories about this. 

It's almost as if I received so many right answers that I know what a right answer feels like. I don't need a heavy-handed confirmation. 

For example, if you are trying to teach a child to recognize a cow, and they ask you "is this a cow?" then maybe they'll get it wrong about 30 or so times. "No, that's a Dalmation." But kids are smart, and after the 300th cow, you will probably stop answering, because they've correctly identified 239 cows in a row, and they darn well know themselves that YES IT IS A COW. 

So, congratulations! The silence does not mean God isn't answering. It means He trusts you.