In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
When I was in third grade, my class had a series of lessons celebrating the diverse heritages of our students. One day, the mother of a Chinese-American student came to talk to the class about Chinese culture. As was typical of these presentations, she brought in snacks. This was always a welcome development for a class of third graders. But this time, I wasn’t excited. I was nervous. She had made tea for the class to try, and I wasn’t sure if I should have any. Part of my religious education covered the Mormon health guidelines, dubbed the ‘Word of Wisdom.’ From Doctrine and Covenants, the part of canonized Mormon scripture where these guidelines are found, I knew I was forbidden from smoking, drinking alcohol, and having coffee or tea. These activities polluted the body, were detrimental to health, and prevented one from connecting with God.
I had a bad feeling about drinking the tea, a feeling I had been taught was the Spirit of God warning me about danger. Still, I couldn’t see how it would be harmful, and I didn’t want to make a scene in front of my classmates. How could I make this choice?
I recalled there being a distinction between drinks that were ‘strong’ and ‘mild,’ and drinks that were ‘hot’ and ‘cold.’ Strong drinks and hot drinks were bad, while mild and cold drinks were allowed. I thought I had seen my mother drinking tea on occasion when she was sick. I vaguely remembered that there were multiple types of tea, and ‘herbal’ teas were okay. I didn’t know what tea was, except that it was made from leaves. Did that make all tea ‘herbal?’ I didn’t know what to think.
My classmates were happy to try it, but in Church I had been taught to resist peer pressure and not compromise my standards to fit in. The woman giving out the tea seemed nice, and I didn’t think she would try to pollute the bodies of the other students. But I knew above everything else that I had been raised with special knowledge, and that sometimes the knowledge of the secular world lagged the special knowledge given by God to Mormon prophets and leaders.
That day I was lucky. Grant, another Mormon kid, was a student in my class. Living in North Carolina, Mormons were a small minority, and this was the first year of my education where I remember having another Mormon in my class. I was young for my grade, so while Grant was in my class in elementary school, he was a year ahead of me in Sunday School. He would know what to do. I watched him for a cue, but he looked as uncomfortable as me. When it was his turn, he quietly declined the tea, so when the teacher got to my desk I did too.
Growing up Mormon, one of the prominent teachings is that one must “be in the world, but not of the world.” Mormon doctrine teaches that life is a test where individuals must be tempted to prove their worthiness for admission into the Celestial Kingdom, the upper echelon of heaven. A Mormon publication for youth counsels to “…avoid the sometimes evil and destructive pursuits of the world—especially when they are contrary to the gospel standards. We should not be caught up in the current trends of society when they are not in harmony with revealed truth.” My standards were God’s standards, unchanging and absolute, and I had been emphatically warned about stooping to the level of my peers.
In the summer before 8th grade I went to my first Boy Scout camp with my Mormon Scout troop. Before we entered the mess hall at meal time, all the troops lined up in parallel in front of the flagpoles, where one of the counselors would lead the camp in saying grace. They would hold up a large poster board with a short prayer on it, and the campers would recite it together. When I saw the prayer, I didn’t know if I should say it. I had been taught a very formal and strict manner of praying. Prayer was quiet and reverent, and had a distinct cadence and vocabulary. Old English pronouns like ‘thee,’ ‘thy,’ ‘thou,’ and ‘thine’ were used in place of normal pronouns like ‘you’ and ‘yours.’ This manner of prayer showed proper respect for God and was all I had ever known. Grace at Scout camp was not this. One grace was called the “Superman Grace,” and involved posing as superman flying, launching himself into the sky, and looking strong and tough while thanking God for the blessing of food.
This grace did not meet my standards for reverence, and my gut told me I shouldn’t participate, because it would be offensive to God. I figured my troop would say our own prayer the correct way once we got inside and sat down. Before joining in the grace, I waited to see the reaction of the other Mormon kids in my troop. They would know what to do. Since we were standing single file, I waited to hear the boy behind me recite the words, and see the boy in front of me begin the choreography. When they joined in the grace, I did too, but I felt dirty about it. After we got inside the crowded and noisy mess hall, I realized that we would not say our own Mormon prayer later. I felt we had compromised our standards to fit in with the other troops. I was the youngest kid at camp, so I didn’t voice my concerns to the older kids and leaders. This compounded my guilt, as I knew I lacked the courage to stand up for what was right.
In the Gospel of Mark, some Pharisees approach Jesus. The Pharisees were a sect of Jews that are critiqued several times in the New Testament for their focus on upholding rules and maintaining traditions over caring for the well-being of others. They approached Jesus to scold his disciples for eating without following the Jewish custom of washing their hands. Jesus chastises them for being shallow, saying “Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men… There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man” (Mark 7, KJV).
The Pharisees and their hand-washing custom would be validated 1800 years later by microscopes and the germ theory of disease, but Jesus’ point was that the Pharisees were missing the big picture. God doesn’t care about what type of meat you eat, but how you treat other people.
The Word of Wisdom was taught to me as a special insight that would improve health. It was revealed truth, to be placed above secular knowledge. Joseph Smith proclaimed smoking and chewing tobacco were harmful much before the rest of the world caught on, evidence of his foresight. So tea was bad.
The policy on soda was much less clear. My mother never bought a lot of soda, because it had too much sugar and wasn’t healthy, but I would occasionally drink root beer or Sprite. My understanding as a kid was that caffeine was forbidden, so Coke and Pepsi were not allowed but root beer was ok. I thought it was borderline scandalous that a couple of my extended family members drank Coke.
As I grew older, I learned that caffeinated soda consumption was a divisive issue among Mormons. The scriptural language states that “hot drinks are not for the body or belly.” An official handbook of instructions given to local leaders advises that “the only official interpretation of ‘hot drinks’ in the Word of Wisdom is the statement made by early Church leaders that the term ‘hot drinks’ means tea and coffee… Members [should not] use harmful or habit-forming substances.”
Some people felt, as I had been taught, that the caffeine was the problem. Judging from the amount of people who can’t function without morning coffee, it’s clear how caffeine could qualify as a habit-forming. The “hot drinks” language was just Joseph Smith’s way of talking about something that he could not yet name.
Other people felt that since soda was usually served cold, it was not against the rules, even with caffeine. By avoiding Coke and Pepsi, I think I was in the minority.
Interestingly, I drank a lot of hot chocolate as a kid, and I don’t recall any Mormon friends, even ones who would drink Coke, having a problem with hot chocolate. Caffeinated or not, hot or cold, it is very common in Mormonism for people to drink beverages with a lot of sugar as a substitute for the boost that others seek from caffeine.
At BYU, the Mormon-owned university in Utah, soda is very popular. Since school rules require strict adherence to the Word of Wisdom, students drink soda both in place of coffee as a stimulant, and in place of alcohol as a social event. Instead of campus bars, some people go to soda shops. According to a byu.edu article, ‘dependence on caffeine consumption has become a humble bragging topic among college students in LDS [Mormon] culture.”
Caffeinated soda was not sold on BYU campus from 1950 until 2017, which could be interpreted as an acknowledgement that caffeine was not-approved, even if this advice was widely ignored. In a 2012 press release, Mormon Newsroom, the official Church-owned media outlet, stated that “Church revelation spelling out health practices does not mention the use of caffeine.” Shortly afterwards, a university spokesperson claimed caffeine was still not sold on campus because “there has not been a demand,” a claim refuted by the student paper. In September of 2017, BYU announced that it would begin selling caffeinated soda on campus, claiming that “consumer preferences have clearly changed.”
So much confusion over soda! This contrasted with the clear position that tea is unacceptable. A curious conclusion, given that tea may reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease, while soda has been linked to obesity, diabetes, and increased incidence of heart disease. Why was tea banned in the first place?
In Doctrine and Covenants, it says that the Word of Wisdom arose from Joseph Smith praying about tobacco use by members during meetings. Brigham Young’s memory of the origin is quoted in the Journal of Discourses, a compilation of sermons and teachings of early Mormon leaders. Young, the man who would lead the largest faction of Mormons to Utah after Joseph’s death, recalls how early Mormon leaders would gather in Smith’s house to discuss Church affairs while smoking and chewing a lot of tobacco.
Often when [Joseph] entered the room to give [them] instructions he would find himself in a cloud of tobacco smoke. This, and the complaints of his wife at having to clean so filthy a floor, made [Joseph] think upon the matter, and he inquired of the Lord relating to the conduct of the Elders in using tobacco, and the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom was the result of his inquiry (J.o.D., v12, p158).
David Whitmer, a prominent early Mormon who later became disaffected, also reflected on the origin of the Word of Wisdom. He agreed that it was motivated by the same smoke-filled meetings described by Brigham Young, but implied even less divine intervention:
Their disgusting slobbering and spitting caused Mrs. Smith… to make the ironical remark that ‘It would be a good thing if a revelation could be had declaring the use of tobacco a sin, and commanding its suppression.’ The matter was taken up and joked about, one of the brethren suggested that the revelation should also provide for a total abstinence from tea and coffee drinking, intending this as a counter dig at the sisters. Sure enough the subject was afterward taken up in dead earnest, and the ‘Word of Wisdom’ was the result (An Historical Analysis of the Word of Wisdom, Paul Peterson, 1972, p20).
Divine origin or not, many records indicate that most early Mormons took the Word of Wisdom with a large grain of salt. Joseph Smith was recorded as drinking alcohol throughout his life, right up until the day he died (History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham H. Roberts, v6, p616). Current Church publications have excused Joseph’s drinking while upholding the current position by saying that the Word of Wisdom was just a guideline then, but it has since been upgraded to a requirement. By the 1930s, 100 years after its origin, obedience to the Word of Wisdom became one of the worthiness tests a person must pass to gain admission into a Mormon Temple. Clearly, God’s standards were not as unchanging and absolute as I had been taught.
As a church with a living prophet and the ideal of modern revelation and open dialogue with God, the Mormon Church has an easier explanation for new policies than many other religions. Different beliefs have different levels of importance, and different levels of permanence. Doctrine is supposed to be eternal, policy is more dynamic, and other forms of wisdom can be as fleeting as desired.
There is a lot of obfuscation around what qualifies as doctrine. The Word of Wisdom is found in a book called Doctrine and Covenants, but is apparently not doctrine. The Prophet can make proclamations, which may be doctrine, unless they become subject to future revision. Large parts of Mormonism came into existence by Joseph Smith speaking in informal settings, and much of this qualifies as eternal knowledge. But the racism of early Mormon leaders repeatedly insisting dark skin is the biblical mark of Cain (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v5, p332), (John Taylor, J.o.D., v12, p158), (Diary of Wilford Woodruff, dated January 1852), is written off as a product of the times and not originating from God, despite scriptural support in the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price (Alma 3:6, Moses 7:22).
What makes something doctrine? Doctrine, the eternal version of commandments, functionally describes Church leadership’s current position. Any beliefs that have been abandoned were never doctrine. Any confusion is your fault for misunderstanding.
I have spent too much time judging other people for drinking coffee, having more than one ear piercing, wearing shirts without sleeves, or getting tattoos instead of appreciating others for who they are. Growing up, when I saw people who were different from me, I would feel uncomfortable. I was taught to treat this feeling as a warning and respond by avoiding the people or situation. I missed out on years of potential learning experiences and human connections under the premise of protecting myself from bad influences. All this to uphold my expansive Mormon standards, which were much more temporal than advertised, often confusing, and frequently arbitrary.
There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
I was a Pharisee.
I hope to be more open accepting of different people and new experiences in the future. Being “in the world but not of it” never made any sense to me. I want to smell the coffee, drink the tea, and explore the human experience. But most of all, I want to utilize my own faculties for guidance, instead of outsourcing my life to someone else’s claims of divine wisdom. My lunchtime mug of hot tea is often the best part of a winter day. What type of doctrine would deny me that?
"I Lived," OneRepublic
