In my experience, a lot of “devoutly” religious people are like this.
I grew up Independent Fundamental Baptist (westboro, but less vocally homophobic) and my dad told me a few years ago he secretly kept a stash of alcohol in the garage while he was quite aggressively teaching that the Bible expressly forbade consumption of alcohol that could get you drunk because of a long argument that basically amounts to “Paul said so.” (The proper response to that is “fuck Paul”, obv. Paul was an asshat.)
You can twist anything into anything if you try hard enough, and they’re really good at it.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
“[…] even had chocolate with Mormons […]”?
Uh. There is absolutely nothing in the Mormon Word of Wisdom that says anything about chocolate. There isn’t even anything about caffeine. The phrase used is “hot drinks”, which has been interpreted by the Mor(m)on prophets to mean specifically coffee and tea (but not herbal tea). A particularly zealous bishop or stake president might counsel against caffeine consumption, but AFAIK they aren’t going to prevent you from going to a Mormon temple if you chug a case of Red Bull and Bawls every single day.
Source: raised Mormon, was active for 25-ish years, former missionary.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Bit of an aside but I love fucking with (ex)-you guys. I have a stack of pamphlets from The Church of the SubGenius and am well practiced in the religious dogma contained within, I turn the tables on em real quick and talk about our great guru J. R. “Bob” Dobbs as long as I can hold them while they get visibly annoyed lmao. See how they like it for a change!
InquisitiveApathy@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
The way it was always explained to me was anything containing even a small amount of caffeine was problematic. I appreciate you correcting me on this.
KamikazeRusher@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Yeah… unfortunately, confusion about this particular subject exists because members often look for the underlying justification on things and then extrapolate from there.
(I’m going to paraphrase and shorten things a lot here so we don’t have to dive into definitions and technicalities. Bear with me.)
The doctrine brought forth about this is what’s referred to as “The Word of Wisdom,” which was a short outline of what things were deemed as “harmful” or otherwise “unsuitable” for the body. The idea being that the Lord was promising to people that if they didn’t ingest these things, they would live a healthier life as a result. “Hot drinks” was mentioned and clarified a century later to mean “tea and coffee.” Furthermore, “tea” refers to black and green tea, and not necessarily herbal tea.
People, by nature, want to understand the “why” behind things. You also have people who want to understand where the line begins and ends so they can tiptoe it. Enter the rumor that since the “hot drinks” referred to “tea and coffee,” they both have not-so-insignificant amounts of caffeine in them. Obviously that must mean drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, plus foods such as chocolate, must also be in violation of this, right?
Well, the issue with that is people think they’re applying “the spirit of the law” (meaning the larger picture behind it) when they’re actually applying “the word of the law” (taken at face value). The idea behind the Word of Wisdom is to take care of your body by having a balanced diet and not eating too much of a particular thing. Certain items were called out explicitly; if caffeine were the true issue, then it would’ve been called out instead. But it wasn’t, and there have been some clarifications to emphasize that caffeine itself is not the explicit reason behind it. (However the idea of “addiction” could extend to caffeine if someone were to consume large amounts of it regularly, but addiction or dependency can occur even to things like Tylenol when too much is consumed, so targeting it specifically is silly.)
So in short, it’s a mixture of misunderstanding and overzealous practice. Caffeine is perfectly fine. Just like anything else: make sure you’re not consuming too much of it.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I really cannot blame anyone for the confusion because a lot of this comes from the LDS Church itself and their often confusing clarifications of their positions. Like with caffeine specifically they have a long history of forbidding its use and then suddenly they reinterpreted it the way you’re suggesting. I’d say that’s fairly atypical for most religions nowadays and it’s a unique aspect of the LDS church that their interpretations are fluid like that.
The alternative for most other religions in the US is just that they never get specific and so most members hold conflicting views and interpretations. Both of the techniques I find very odd since you’d think that these differences would have faith based answers, but instead appear almost bureaucratic in nature
TheOneCurly@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
But also mate which is hot, caffeinated, leaf juice, is a-ok and totally not tea.