Posted by:
Wally Prince
(
)
Date: September 29, 2018 09:13PM
This is silly.
They're just talking about "Jack Mormons." This is nothing new and nothing that started with millenials. This is a phenomenon that has existed as long as the Church has existed.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jack_MormonInitially, "Jack Mormon" was a label given to non-Mormons who liked Mormons and to some extent participated in the Mormon community. It quickly morphed into a label that mainly refers to Mormons who habitually ignore some or many of the clearly defined "commandments" and "rules" that apply to church members.
The way that the Word of Wisdom is applied by the Church and has been applied for generations is, in many respects, irrational and stupid. But there's no ambiguity in how it is applied. There's no room for a believing Mormon to say that the rules against coffee drinking, alcohol drinking, etc. are just random brain farts of some old dead guys that don't need to be followed. Once you cross that line, intellectual honesty dictates that you admit the logical consequence of your position, i.e. that the Church is not led by god-appointed, god-anointed leaders and, therefore, is at best just a social club with a religious theme.
You can't logically choose a "middle way" in Mormonism. You can try to start your own belief system within Churchco, but that's a whole other ball of wax.
The actual teachings of Churchco's top leaders since the beginning is that there is no middle way. (And the essence of Churchco as a belief system is whatever its top leaders teach.) Being a Jack Mormon means either: (1) the Jack Mormon sticks around for the social benefits/community, but does not really believe; or (2) the Jack Mormon finds some aspects of the belief system, such as it is, inconvenient and essentially defies the inconvenient parts but, not wanting to deal with the logical consequences of that defiance, just blithely pretends that it's not really important to think about it too much. (In the overall scheme of things, it probably isn't important to think about it too much because the Church is not what it claims to be. But that is the logical consequence that the typical Jack Mormon refuses to deal with.)
This paragraph is hilarious:
"Riess and co-researcher Benjamin Knoll — whose book, 'The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church,' is due out in March — discovered that among more than 1,100 members they surveyed, THOSE THEY DESCRIBE AS FAITHFUL AND OBEDIENT MORMONS,' 10 percent and 18 percent, respectively, report they have had either alcohol or coffee in the past six months, both of which the Word of Wisdom forbids."
Unless I'm reading it wrong, they are essentially saying that a certain percentage of "faithful and obedient Mormons" are not faithful and obedient Mormons. Sounds like they need to go back to the drawing board, define their terms, and then start over.
Of course, if it was just a one-time "sin" and the Mormon in question felt all kinds of guilty and "repented," I guess it could make sense to label them as a "faithful and obedient Mormon" who had a moment of weakness. But the article doesn't seem to be talking about THAT kind of Mormon. It's talking about Mormons who don't feel like the temple stuff and the word of wisdom stuff needs to be taken seriously.