As I sit here, working on a delicious bottle of Coconut rum, I've been pondering some of the oddities about the word of wisdom that I followed for so many years:

1) Caffeine

This has always seemed bizarre to me - not that the WoW is against it, but that it is so ambiguous and is allowed to be by church leaders. Consider:

On one hand -

- Caffeinated beverages aren't sold on official church campuses (ie, temple cafeterias, the COB cafeteria, BYU campuses).
- Gordon B. Hinckley explicitly said on Larry King that we don't drink caffeine.
- Many members refuse to drink caffeine.
- Caffeinated beverages are a no-no on most church-sponsored youth activities.

On the other hand -

- Plenty of Mormons openly drink caffeine and are not called out by their leaders (many of whom openly drink caffeine themselves).
- There are rumors that one or more of the 15 are consumers of caffeinated beverages.
- It isn't on the TR interview.
- As an employee of the church, I attended a number of internal meetings and conferences that had plenty of caffeinated beverages available, provided by LDS Food Services (unless non-employee members were also to be in attendance, in which case caffeinated beverages were not allowed).

I quit drinking caffeine regularly a number of years ago because of some health problems it was contributing to, but I still think it is odd that the state of caffeine with regards to the WoW is so muddy.

2) Different degrees of importance for different parts

The WoW clearly states that meat should be used sparingly, but I'm not aware of anyone being denied a TR because of this clause. It is odd to me that someone could eat meat for all 3 meals every day and still be considered to be following the WoW more than someone who had one drink per month.

3) Fails to protect against modern health problems

Many in the church like to claim how prescient the WoW is with regards to preventing health problems, yet it proscribes few of the things that are causing the obesity and diabetes epidemic in America. Indeed, it prohibits tea, which can actually be healthy, and fails to prohibit things like excess sugar. The clause prohibiting excess meat is virtually ignored.

--

What once seemed like a reasonable and easy to follow list of healthy rules now seems like a silly tool to control members.

I have yet to find a vet that uses tobacco on sick cattle...

D&C 89:
8 And again, tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill.

Well, I assume...I've used it this way on my horses.

You can pack loose tobacco into a wound, wet it down, and bandage it, and it will draw out the infection. Worked amazingly on a leg wound on one of my horses. I've used it on myself that way too--I got stung by a bee on my hand, so I put some loose tobacco on it, wet it down and wrapped it up, and it drew the inflammation right out. Didn't even itch! Although I suppose I was breaking the word of wisdom using it on myself...and Joe didn't specify that I could use it on my horse--only on my cattle. I'm a sinner =)

Tea, coffee and alcohol can be safer to drink in parts of the world were clean water is not available.

Oh silly...that is why you bless it, then you can drink anything.

Tea and Coffee shown to have health benefits. Cafeinated drinks shown to be unhealthy

Most of the WOW is ignored.

Hot Drinks-interpreted later to mean tea and coffee. But, what about ice coffee or iced tea

Mormons say that JS was ahead of his times, with tobacco being shown to be unhealthy many decades later. But, other things such a glass of red wine (and even moderate drinking of any alcohol product), tea, and coffee have been shown to health benefits.

Of course, the mormon spill is that it is not really any specific item that matters and it is not as much of a health code as it is a law of obedience (to see if we will obey).

Except that the idea that tobacco is harmful for you is hundreds of years old. We just didn't have medical studies, proving what everyone already knew, until fairly recently.

In Section 89 mildly alcoholic drinks made of barley (beer) are encouraged. It's just the strongest drinks with high alcohol content that are discouraged (not forbidden) by section 89.

I think Section 89 could have been written from simple observation. Strong drinks make you sloppy drunk when you drink a bunch, but a nice glass of beer just relaxes you.

Same with tobacco. Surely there were people dying from tobacco-related lung diseases back then, and an observation would probably show those who smoked the heaviest had the most problems.

The Word of Wisdom has turned into a nightmare. But as far as Mormon scriptures go, section 89 is fairly benign in comparison to other LDS scriptures.

I have it on good authority (BIL works for the church maintaining temple square) that Monson's preferred drink is diet Dr Pepper. They have cases of it at the COB for him. I'm pretty sure all Dr Pepper has caffeine in it. So, if you're a member and want to drink caffeine, go ahead, you're just following the "prophet".

As a side note, BIL said he sees Monson driving his golf cart (with lights flashing) in the underground tunnels to get from building to building. Monson can go to any of the connected locations (condo, COB, temple, etc.) without showing his face above ground.

If it's Dr. Pepper, then my respect level bumped up for him ever so slightly.

As far as him going anywhere underground, does he quietly mumble "quack quack" to himself and adjusting his monocle and his cape?

That would explain an odd thing I've noticed lately among the caffeine drinking mo's I know.

3 mo's that I know drink mountain dew every day, suddenly switched to DR. pepper. I thought that was odd. Apparently the word is out that the prophet drinks dr. pepper.

LOL... or maybe he wants to change the name from MORmon to MOLEmon.

apatheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> As far as him going anywhere underground, does he
> quietly mumble "quack quack" to himself and
> adjusting his monocle and his cape?


LOL! Love your imagery of the Penguin (from the second Batman movie) here! TSM does sorta resemble Danny DeVito in that role. ... Don't suppose there are any King Penguins in those tunnels?

As for the WoW: Dr Pepper is the caffeine of choice for most of the TBMs I knew, even one Bishop in my old ward. Then there were the extremists who wouldn't touch caffeine in any form, but grew pudgy and puffy from sugar.

the WoW never made sense to me.

why isn't caffeine listed on ingredients of pop/soda?

could be because there is no 'caffeine' in nature, but named plants contain it.

the wiki article was informative.

in the 70s, ChurchCo wrote in one of their 'famous' SM ltrs that de-caf coffee was OK. This makes me wonder why they don't post those ltrs online... Oh; got it.

does anyone... such as Good Housekeeping, etc. publish a reliable analysis of caffeine % in common food/drinks?

I think the beverage industry wants to be cagy about that.

I just checked and caffeine is on the ingredient list of my diet dr. shasta and my diet pepsi lime.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's always listed as an ingredient.

Caffeinated beverages are not available at church events to avoid even the "appearance" of evil.

I can't tell you all the trouble I've gotten into every time I've drank a coke.

O........Please DO!

The WOW does not say not to drink coffee or tea. A prophet somewhere at some moment in time interpreted "hot drinks" to mean coffee/tea, but then, that is not logical. Otherwise one would have to include hot chocolate and soup. I have some ideas what was meant by "hot drinks" since I can't find anything on line about what that might have meant. It may have meant don't sit around drinking tea and gossiping when you should be working, or it might have mean hot toddy's. It's anyone's guess.

Joel H. Johnson related that on a Sabbath day in July (1833) following the giving of the "Word of Wisdom," when both Joseph and Hyrum Smith were in the stand, the Prophet said to the Saints: "I understand that some of the people are excusing themselves in using tea and coffee, because the Lord only said 'hot drinks' in the revelation of the Word of Wisdom. Tea and coffee are what the Lord meant when he said 'hot drinks.'(Johnson, J. H., A Voice from the Mountains, p. 12)

Thanks. Nice to know the source from which that came.

If the LDS church behaved as churches should, it would counsel its membership against drinking caffeine, backed up by either scripture or research, and done in an educational manner. It wouldn't add any form of health measures to any worthiness interview, neither would it perform worthiness interviews in the first place.

Instead we have a system controlled by the claim of an inside track to God's truth, and since a prophet long ago became excited about prohibition in the US, we have a strict and outdated health code that, because it came from a prophet and thus God, is now a moral code. No amount of teaching or research can overcome that. The best we can hope for is that enough generations will die off and that someday a prophet will evolve with a more enlightened attitude towards these health matters. This change will lag far behind the rest of society, as all mormon changes do, but I'm sure it will come eventually.

"Instead we have a system controlled by the claim of an inside track to God's truth, and since a prophet long ago became excited about prohibition in the US, we have a strict and outdated health code that, because it came from a prophet and thus God, is now a moral code. No amount of teaching or research can overcome that."

+1

I think you can take that section and insert whatever you want in it.

"Instead we have a system controlled by the claim of an inside track to God's truth, and since a prophet long ago became excited about _________, we have a strict and outdated ______ code that, because it came from a prophet and thus God, is now a moral code. No amount of teaching or research can overcome that."

For the record, I don't think Hinckley said that "we" don't drink caffeine. I think he said "I don't drink it."

But, follow the prophet.

Actually, from what I remember, he quoted a non-member who was commenting on how mormons don't drink caffeine. Then again, after quick research it looks like he said "no to caffeine" to Larry King. Hardly revelation conditions, but it works for many mormons.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2012 09:45AM by kimball.

My sister likes to tell a story that SWK went to the temple and pleaded with God to ease up on the coffee drinking rule because he thought it was too strict. God answered him and said NO.

Has anyone else heard that one?

There is also the story of someone got onto an elevator with one of the prophets. The prophet told them that if they knew what he knew they would go home and do all they could to get their food storage in order.

That was "blacks", not "black coffee." :)

Wine - the way I look at it is that if Jesus (for all TBMs that claim to follow him) felt it was ok to use wine for the last supper, which was supposed to symbolise his crowning act of atonement, then why would he decide nearly two thousand years later that it probably wasn't so great after all - and then further allow his prophet to reinterpret 'his' words some years later and completely outlaw it altogether.

Think about it logically and you can see that it makes no sense whatsoever. Wine was used for the Last Supper 'do this in remembrance of me' etc, but actually, don't you dare touch a single drop now or you will be a sinner.

Some will respond with the old 'yes but it wasn't wine it was merely grape juice that was used' - Welches were not pasteurising grape juice two thousand years ago in the Middle East. Very quickly after being crushed, the grape juice would start the natural fermentation process.

Same goes for the turning water into wine saga at the wedding at Cana. TBMs need to go read their bibles and then decide if Jesus is simply schizophrenic, confused or just keeps changing his mind.

The WoW says no coffee or tea. This would include all teas, including herbal teas, and decaf coffee.

The caffeine is just the common substance that most people drink coffee and tea for. Just because coke contains caffeine does not mean it falls under coffee or tea. So, ice tea is out, even herbal tea, but jolt is in.

Caffeine is not banned in the WoW, just coffee and tea.

As for meat, well, we all know how some scriptures are important and others are not.

It reminded me of my HT (a husband and wife team) growing up. the husband explained that herbal tea is "not really tea as it has no fermented tea leaves." So herbal tea was ok, like Celstial Seasonings, Earl Grey is not. He claimed it was the fermentation that made black tea so bad for people. So that makes green tea ok, right?

I don't know if this is a ward level justification or what. There's so many different opinions from leader to leader who knows what to believe!