Suboptimist

Tea and Coffee they Despise…

I saved my frivolous post for the first entry at the new Central Node main page. It needs some polish, but we needed to get it off the ground. I am already tired from my first week of school. I walk, and I had forgotten that it takes a week to get used to walking three miles to school every morning. I am dropping my sociolinguistics class, since I took the same course last semester under a different title. Anyway, I am tired and the following is the only thing on my mind right now, so I hope it is clear:

Anyway, I think I bothered somebody today when I told her that the Mormon Word of Wisdom, the health code for Mormons, was neither original, nor entirely practical. It’s commonly said among Mormons that Joseph Smith possessed the divine knowledge to understand and be the first to proclaim that tobacco, alcohol, coffee, too much meat, etc. were bad for us. He wasn’t the first to say this: Sylvester Graham was (probably). Even before any sort of temperance movement, it was common knowledge that smoking too much could make you sick and that alcoholics were in a world of hurt.

Also poorly understood is that the Word of Wisdom was never obligatory until the 1920s when Heber J. Grant made it so. Why did it become an obligation? Probably for the same reason for any faith’s food law: a characteristic to identify an adherent as different from the rest of the population. This is where the question of practicality comes in. While it’s clear that smoking is a terrible health hazard, coffee and tea have been shown to have health benefits, as has moderate alcohol consumption. Strangely, while Latter Day Saints are encouraged to avoid overeating and excess meat in the same text of the Word of Wisdom, few do. It’s clearly easier to avoid some things than others.

Here is my problem: I know too many Mormons who have no problem lying, cheating, carousing, what have you, but would never go near a cup of tea.