My mom and I were having a discussion last night concerning caffeinated sodas and the Word of Wisdom. I’ve been thinking pretty heavily about the topic since then and felt it worthwhile to share my thoughts.
I was raised to not drink caffeinated beverages. Since getting married I have relaxed that prohibition. I don’t care for any colas really, pepsi is okay, but I do LOVE Mountain Dew. My all time favorite soda is still A&W root beer, but sometimes a Dew really hits the spot.
I believe that while growing up it is important for parents to impart their values and prohibit those things they consider wrong. However, as a child grows and matures it is just as important for them to investigate and determine why they believe what they believe.
A key example is President Hinckley’s prohibition on more than one earring. I had my ears double pierced in college (to my parents chagrin) and had been considering a nose piercing for quite some time. I immediately took my double piercing out, although it pained me to do so. However, the issue of whether or not to get a nose piercing has dogged me over the years. Sometimes I would think, “it is not an actual commandment so why not?”. I finally came to be at peace with my decision a few weeks ago. I began searching the internet for stories from other mormons concerning nose piercing. I found a blog created by an ex-mormon who had a nose ring while still a member. She left the church for good after divorcing her husband and had made some pretty terrible life choices. She was pretty vile in her diatribes against her husband and was about as amoral as it gets. I was pretty repelled by her lifestyle and decided that I do NOT want to be associated with that kind of person.
My job now is to determine if I believe it is wrong to drink caffeinated sodas.
Below are the quotes I considered in my decision:
“Larry King: No to caffeine?
Gordon B. Hinckley: No to caffeine, coffee and tea.”
D&C 89:2 “…showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days”
Church Handbook of Instruction: The only official interpretation of "hot drinks" (D&C 89:9) 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 any substance that contains illegal drugs. Nor should members use harmful or habit-forming substances except under the care of a competent physician.
That’s right, just those three.
I believe it would be folly to take what President Hinckley said as a commandment from God (we could segue here into a debate on when the prophet’s words must be followed). If it is taken in that interpretation then we must no longer eat chocolate as well.
Here are some caffeine amounts to help put chocolate in perspective:
Coffee – generic: 133mg
Mountain Dew: 54mg
Pepsi: 38mg
Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Bar: 31mg
Hershey’s Milk Chocolate: 9mg
I guarantee that the amount of dark chocolate I have eaten in my life outweighs the amount of Mountain Dew.
Now, to the topic of substances that are harmful and habit forming: My dad doesn’t drink Pepsi because he felt he had become addicted to it. My friend doesn’t eat chocolate because she felt addicted to it.
There has been a lot of press lately about the glycemic index. The amount and type of carbohydrates we eat plays a pretty big role in how tired we feel in the afternoon. If you eat foods lower on the glycemic index you will not experience a big crash in the afternoon. I would equate this type of physiological reaction with that of caffeine withdrawal. It creates an effect, but no more so that many other substances and foods we already take into our bodies.
Since chocolate is not prohibited by the church I have to conclude that caffeine is either not the problem or it is only a problem in large quantities. If it is the latter then it is safe to say that the amount I am consuming is not harmful. So, yes I do believe caffeinated sodas are okay.
I don’t expect this to convince anyone either way. It was helpful to me in formulating why I think it is okay to drink caffeinated sodas.
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11 comments:
This is why you should think twice before letting your daughter marry someone who is not an eagle scout.
I agree. I don't think the Word of Wisdom is condemning caffeine. There are other bad acids in tea/coffee that aren't found in sodas. It's not the caffeine necessarily because of your argument about chocolate. However, if you can't function until you have a diet Coke or Mountain Dew every morning or once a day, then I would submit, you have a Word of Wisdom problem. ANYTHING that takes away our free agency albeit caffeine or something else, then it has become an issue that needs to be dealt with. Personally, caffeine in sodas doesn't affect me either way so I choose not to drink them. However, I buy diet Coke for Jared because he uses them to help ward off migraines. I would also say though, that you don't know how caffeine in sodas will affect children. My kids don't like soda anyway, so I don't have to deal with it with them, but others might. So I think it's just fine to shelter children from that until, as you said, they get older and can determine for themselves what they will do. I'm sure this is a great debate that will continue for ages.
these were my thoughts when dearly depart Hinckle-baby talked about double-piercings, etc. i worried and bothered about my double piercings for a few days, trying to decide whether it was one that i needed to follow, and if so, how strictly. one night while getting ready for bed, i had a thought come to me as clear as crystal: if i cared so much about my double-piercings (and I obviously did or it wouldn't be such a big fret to me), for ANY reason, then I was too attached to them anyway. so i took them out. like anything the prophet says, you have to first gain a testimony of it's truthfulness, then apply it to your life. that is a very individual action--thank goodness for free agency that allows us to make choices and be held accountable for them.
J,
I absolutely agree, I think we need to be careful with addictions to anything. I stopped reading fiction books for awhile because I felt it was adversely affecting my life. I think the energy drinks out there are way too much especially with how much they are appealing to teenagers.
Marv,
I had the same kind of thought process too about the double piercing, great minds think alike I guess.
I think it may clarify the issue to think more carefully about the reasons behind the suggestions against both of these types of things. I won't really respon to many of the specific things that either you say in your post or feel independently, this is just something I have thought about also.
I am certainly quite liberal and worldly about most things like this. Mormonism is not Puritanical--we believe in being in the world just not of it, and we can't become righteous by modifying our dress, diet or environment. That is why I believe strongly that the key to the R rated movie restriction is contained in the first seven words of the first conference talk it was mentioned in: 'My dear brethren of the Aaronic Priesthood...'. Slade has lived his life seeing R rated movies since childhood without ever transgressing the law of Chastity, Word of Wisdom, or even uttering one of the big bad words. In addition it has had the benefit of making him the kind of astute cultural anthropologist that can see beyond his own world, which unless you are only worried about your own salvation (a tendency in Puritanism) is very useful.
But unlike this type of thing where there might be some type of tradeoff or higher good to questionable decision making, and where there may actually be a benefit beyond the level of the individual who if weak might risk personal salvation, I think the specific issues are different because they are of a certain unique kind, and so I would encourage at least briefly and casually rethinking your position on piercing based on the slightly different perspective that I think they should be viewed with.
The purpose behind the recommendations about appearance and diet is not because these activities are inherently wrong, and so confining the debate to whether they are bad or evil (or not), and taking comfort in whether other Mormons do it (perhaps not the best guideline unless you think pyramid schemes are a great thing!) I think ends up being red herrings on both sides.
The piercing taboo and to a lesser extent the caffiene thing is NOT at all because these things are inherently wrong. If so the Saints would have been in some serious 'hot water' about the Mormon Tan years. But since things like soda and bodily decorations are somewhat frivolous and can be easily dispensed with if there is any question, I think it is good to be careful about both of them because they are both quite derivative of a culture that is not our own.
If one was to think about it honestly I would seriously doubt he would think that altering the body with a permanent piece of metal is inherently attractive (more or less not ugly); none of us would have thought of it on our own before it was cool. Come on, seriously. Who has believed anything like that since blue hair in the 80's?
Caffiene is less of a big deal but I am still mindful of it. It isn't a commandment, it is a social marker which I think is useful in some situations. I drink it myself (soda) but don't use it in social gatherings where I might be sending some kind of message about where others come down. Kind of like Paul among the non khosher. I honestly think this is a higher principle than even avoiding addiction, which sometimes is a medical necessity.
Piercing in general and specifically in our culture on the ear is a 2000 year old pagan practice that began to help evil spirits leave our bodies. Now I am not one to say 'Oooh nooo, paganism,' or I wouldn't be able to have a Christmas tree, but seeing the extremity it is taken to does give me at least the general feeling of this type of extremely non-Christian origin, and I suspect it does for many.
There are many respectable traditions like wearing the wedding ring on the left hand (it was thought to provide the direct route to the heart) that began with paganism, and so I don't eschew all of them, but there does certainly get to a point like all the Wiccan crap where it seems like the proponents are, whatever they might say, experiencing the alluring pull of an alternate belief system with all of the accoutrements of coolnes and anti-ordinary that they often employ to sell themselves to nonbelievers. If one of those traditions, like the wedding ring or the Christmas tree, were to loose its cultural significance as a sign of the alternative culture (as both of those have done but I am not sure yet about piercings beyond the ear) then I would say go for it. Thinking about inherency in any one behavior (name the behavior it is hard to find one) is a futile exercise because the more sophisticated question should be not what should I do but why should I do it and what purpose would it serve me, my family, and my God.
So I think much more than a health or morality issue, the Word of Wisdom and any spoken or unspoken dress codes like white for Priesthood really exist to isolate us as a culture, with all of the positive side effects for a religious community that that entails.
Most long-term success as a religion involves some kind of dietary restrictions and dress codes that serve to not only constantly remind us that we are the 'Lord's peculiar people' but also so that we stand out in a crowd, not blend in. As the rest of the world chooses to be increasingly studded, tattooed and otherwise bizzarely made up it makes us look more an more unique, and I think that is by design. The net result is very good for the goals of missionary work and being a good example that I think we should have.
That said, inherent in this argument is that the practice is not evil, so you won't get any 'lip' or 'nose' or other part from me. Hee hee.
Just to be clear I want to be sure that I avoid any hints of hypocricy that I don't need to. I am sure there are things I do that violate the principles I have outlined. I think Slade's beard thing definitely does. But since it was floated for discussion, I think that the things I have said bump the rhetoric to something more sigificant than whether or not someone will go to hell for piercing their nose or drinking Coke, which I think the answer to is certainly not, but I am not sure it is the only consideration.
I had actually dreaded logging back into this blog because I thought that I had probably kicked a bee's nest. But for some reason I think some of the things including Jacob's comment made it seem like you had decided to get a peircing. That would still be totally fine with me, and all, but while at least anyone seems conflicted and searching for answers to dillemmas I figured that I would add what I thought about the whole thing. I think it makes things like whether to perform rather arbitrary things like what to eat drink wear or do on Sunday assume real importance by the larger context of the main things we are asked to do as a Christian, which are namely to value other people's feelings even above our ability to demonstrate how religious we are. So while froma practical standpoint I think that it is very useful for us all to assume that wholesome fresh all american look, I would never judge anyone for not doing it, or judge or criticize anyone for anything that only means something really in terms of whether it is a persona expression of religious devotion. Whether someone abstains from a substance, keeps the sabbath, or does oodles of geneology could be anything from actual religious devotion to empty ritual, and it is pretty much how people treat each other than will probably indicate which is which in a given individual. That is why that is really the hardest thing to do because it is the hardest thing to fake - we can never be genuinely kind and tolerant to anyone out of any but a Christian motive, although we can do plenty of temple service or wear modest clothing or whtaever for many reasons.
Nope, no piercing for me. I generally feel more tolerant than most people concerning changes from "all american" clean looks. However I know there is a significant portion of people in our church that are not tolerant. It makes me laugh when I think about how standards have changed, especially when it comes to facial hair. Anyways, the main reason I decided not to get the piercing is because I KNOW that people will have a first impression of me that is not correct. Quite frankly I'm too lazy to deal with that sort of misconception. And no, you did not kick a bee's nest, I'm just lazy with responding to blog comments :)
So as the only blogger who has read this, with quite substantial piercings (nose, belly button, four in one ear and three in the other) I thought I should be completely narcassitic and share my views.
I sometimes worry about the perception that people will have of me when they see my tattoo and piercings, but I firmly beleive that I will get more satisfaction from proving them wrong about me, then from them labeling me as normal when they first meet me.
I never really thought about why I got these until my lovely sister Jocelyn remarked to me that I am just doing this to upset my parents. I was convinced of that for the longest time and wouldn't really think on it until I had a friend ask me why I thought it was okay to "defile" my body in such a way. I was a little hurt that she referred to my piercings as graffiti and almost took all of them out. However after much deliberation (and looking at the receipts from the piercings and pictures of the Corey family nose) I came to my own conclusion....
I was always taught as a kid that my body is a temple. I don't view my piercings or tattoos as litter, but as art. As Mormons, we decorate our temples as beautifully as we can, and in my opinion, this is pure beauty to me. I think they're unique, interesting, and fun. So if my body is a temple, I will decorate it accordingly.
I've never been like everyone else... meticulous in my designing and decorating. I have always loved the randomness and spontanity that comes with my life. I view these as part of that. I am different from the rest of my family and each one of them is different from each other too. We all have our own little weird quirks, it just so happens that one of my mine has to do with needles, metal, and ink.
I also love looking at tattos and seeing the different creations that people can come with. I like hearing the stories behind each piercing and tattoo. They are all different and meaningful to each person and I am thankful that I can appreciate how people style themselves without passing judgement.
I know that I will always be viewed as the wild child in this family, but I am glad of that distinction because it makes me who I am... the most levelheaded wild child that I know.
So in conclusion to this very random comment...
I love mountain dew and piercings and tattoos, but I love more that my family loves me in spite of them.
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