Are coffee and tea really so bad?

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I think it is fair to say that people are leaving the church all the time. To return to the anology of the “Applecart” – people are tumbling out all the time. If we take the view that everyone of these people are in danger of hellfire, then we would want to minimize these losses. It would seem that even changes that were important for the church survival and progress (such as cessation of polygamy and extending the priesthood to all males) caused some otherwise stalwart members to fall off…Sometimes the path ahead becomes so rocky that a change of course is prudent despite that percentage of membership that may feel betrayed by the change – I just don’t forsee this with the WOW…I absolutely believe that it can be done, but I just don’t think it pays off in a cost benefit analysis. How does it benefit the church for members to start smoking and drinking…Now perhaps a more subtle way to do this would be to simply stop asking it as a TR question

I think it could definitely benefit the Church to stop completely alienating so many members and investigators that drink or smoke simply because of the sheer numbers that fit into this category worldwide. I know there are many people that were raised Mormon that now have a very negative impression of the LDS Church mostly because of the WoW and other strict rules they don’t really want to hear about anymore. So now some of them will strongly discourage their own children from having anything to do with the Church either and it often becomes the end of the line for the family tradition after several generations. I’m not saying the Church should openly encourage drinking and smoking and completely reverse their position in one step; I just think it would be better to focus more on the spirit of the law more than the letter of the law in this case in any lessons and talks and maybe baptize new members and invite inactive members back without acting like they absolutely need to completely repent of these habits permanently or else they might as well not even bother to associate with the LDS Church.

[Anonymous]

Well said, DA. Focus on the spirit of the law, not the literalness of substances (is that a word?)…anyway, +1 to what you said.

[Author]

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