Latter-day Saints, Go Ahead and Have That Coffee (or Even Wine!). Your Faith Itself Says You Can.
By: Rhett Wilkinson
Tags: Scripture, Mormon, Religion, Lds, Religion And Spirituality

‘Not by commandment or constraint’

Long-prohibited in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been coffee, tea, wine, tobacco and “strong drinks” in the faith’s Word of Wisdom. The problem is, Latter-day Saint scripture — in the very section that gives health code recommendations to adherents — allows for their consumption.

In Doctrine & Covenants 89 (verse 2), it says “A WORD OF WISDOM … to be sent greeting, not by commandment or constraint.”

The golden language of the Latter-day Saint revelation when it comes to adherence on the Word of Wisdom. (photo credit: missedinsunday.com)

Things began to go off-track from what God said, according to the faith, when the church in 1902 made the Word of Wisdom part of the church’s temple recommend requirement, according to “The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement.” Having been advised by church prophet Joseph F. Smith to be understanding with elderly folks, church leaders were lenient with that body of the Latter-day Saints. Then in 1921, church president Heber J. Grant made following the guidance of the Word of Wisdom a no-excuses church law in order to go to the temple, according to “The Word of Wisdom.”

Why did church leaders go ahead in mandate-making with the Word of Wisdom when the scriptures say it is “not by commandment or constraint” and when the scriptures are supposed to have the words of God?

Could the leaders have gained enough power to be able to start wresting with their own eternal doctrine? In other words, is it as simple as “power corrupts,” Latter-day Saint-style?

For Grant, it’s probably as simple as him making the requirement during Prohibition, which started just the prior year. (Prohibition was the forbidding by statute of the transaction and manufacture of alcohol.)

Grant may have seen the Word of Wisdom as an opportune excuse to get his followers in accordance with the law on alcohol. Or, he thought it would be easy to make the Word of Wisdom a temple recommend requirement (easier than it was for Smith) since Latter-day Saints would en masse be following the law anyway.

It would be fascinating to get into the heads of Smith and Grant when it comes to making the Word of Wisdom a temple recommend requirement.

But we can read the scriptures at any time. D&C 89:2. Never has any passage of scripture come into my mind as much as this one has done many times to mine.

Now, according to their faith, this still doesn’t excuse the Latter-day Saints I presumably saw at Starbucks who are buying coffee, as they are doing it on Sunday and thus violating the Sabbath.

(They looked among the 65 percent of Utahns who are LDS, with a rank-and-file appearance of white shirts, conservative dress and the like.)

But I had to remind myself that they weren’t double-sinning, according to the faith, with the coffee consumption because of the text of the very section with the health standards. I had to remind myself that my ex-wife’s Latter-day Saint attorney wasn’t sinning, according to the faith, when I ran into her (while legal proceedings were ongoing) while she was getting coffee.