Today’s post is by Todd Smithson. The full title is The Two Paths to Integrity (Wholeness, Grace, and the God Who Never Withdraws).
On several occasions, I’ve begun a group discussion with what I call the vulnerability test.
Everyone stands. I ask one question:
“Who here has something about themselves that, if people knew it, you’d be afraid they would reject you for it? Sit down.”
Without hesitation, everyone sits. Always.
The speed of it reveals something profound. We don’t even need to think about it—we know. We all carry a hidden self. The experiment doesn’t expose a few exceptions to the rule; it exposes the rule itself: being human means living with parts of ourselves we believe are unlovable.
The Fragmented Self
We learn early that belonging is conditional. We hide our anger to keep the peace, our doubt to stay accepted, our desire to remain “worthy.” Slowly, we divide—a presentable self above the surface, and a forbidden one below. We become dis-integrated—a scattered collection of parts managed by fear.
Religious life often begins as an attempt to heal this fragmentation. We reach for God as the one who might hold all of us—the one safe enough to know the whole truth. Yet, for many of us, that longing meets a paradox. In my own Latter-day Saint experience, I was taught to see God as both perfectly loving and impossibly conditional.
The promise of the sacrament is that His Spirit will “always” be with us if we keep His commandments. But that “if” cuts deep. Because what happens when I don’t? The logic is simple: if sin causes the Spirit to withdraw, then God’s presence is fragile— and my worthiness, temporary.
And so the hiding continues, only now in the name of holiness.
The Two Options
If I want to live with integrity —that is, to be whole—it seems I have only two options.
Option one: never sin.
Keep every commandment, every day, so that His Spirit “always” remains with me.
This is the path of perfectionism—a life built on vigilance, not peace. It sounds noble, but it’s fueled by anxiety: the dread that one misstep will make me unlovable. It asks me to manage myself into wholeness, to become stainless by willpower. But no one can sustain that. We end up exhausted, hollow, and secretly ashamed.
Option two: abandon my view of a God who demands worthiness.
To stop confusing love with approval.
To let go of the image of a deity who withdraws when I fail, and instead discover a God who descends—who sits in the ashes with me, who refuses to be somewhere I am not.
The first path tries to achieve belonging through purity.
The second finds purity through belonging.
The Misunderstanding of “Cheap Grace”
The question naturally arises: If grace is unconditional, what then motivates us to change?
Isn’t this the danger of “cheap grace”—that forgiveness without condition breeds apathy?
The problem with that question is not its logic but its plotline. It begins with the wrong story.
Within the framework of original sin, humanity’s default posture is rebellion. We start estranged, and the goal of religion is to repair the damage—to earn our way back into divine favor. In that story, “worthiness” makes perfect sense. It’s the moral currency of a transactional covenant: sin creates distance, obedience closes it.
But change the plot, and the whole story transforms.
What if mortality was not a cosmic mistake but a developmental passage—a necessary descent into complexity and growth? What if God’s covenant was never meant as a contract between distant parties, but as a revelation of shared life?
Covenant, in this light, is not a deal struck but a relationship discovered. It is the realization of partnership with God, not the negotiation of moral debt. Grace is not an external reward granted after repentance; it is the very medium in which repentance becomes possible.
Grace always moves first. It is given, then received, and then given again through us —a current of divine life flowing through human experience. The purpose of covenant is not to contain grace but to channel it.
In this story, transformation is not motivated by fear of losing love, but by awakening to love already given.
We are not errant children clawing our way back to heaven; we are participants in the unfolding of divine life. The grand narrative of humanity is not a courtroom drama of guilt and pardon, but a coming-of-age story —God teaching His children how to love as He loves.
To live in that story is to realize that grace isn’t cheap; it’s costly in a different way. It costs us our illusion of separation. It costs us the small, anxious self that believes it must earn its place. And what it gives in return is the freedom to become whole.
The Maturation of the Human Story
Perhaps it’s unfair to harpoon the entire story that runs through legalism. Maybe it’s more accurate to see the whole biblical narrative—from Adam and Eve down to Jesus—as the unfolding maturation of every human life.
It mirrors Lehi’s vision of the Tree of Life. Though we long for the fruit of grace that grows there, the path to it winds inevitably past the great and spacious building. We all, at some point, take shelter in that glittering structure—the one built of pride, comparison, and control. We build it out of the best materials we know: obedience, worthiness, achievement, self-mastery. For a time, it seems safe. But eventually, the scaffolding begins to crack. The building of pride will not stand, and when it falls, we discover that its collapse was never our ruin but our beginning.
The system of pride—our desire to control life through perfection—must fail us before grace can free us. Only when our personal genius has been exhausted, when every strategy to secure love has run its course, do we begin to see clearly. In that moment, we encounter the same truth the prophets and poets have always confessed: we are nothing, except for the grace that precedes us.
Our resources were never meant to earn the tree; they were meant to be surrendered at its roots. What we thought would purchase belonging becomes the very thing that blocks it. Grace waits patiently for the moment our striving breaks open. Only then can it flow—not as a reward, but as the original reality beneath all effort.
In that sense, the entire human story is a journey from control to communion, from fear to trust, from merit to mercy. Law, worthiness, obedience—all of them are stages in the long apprenticeship of learning to live from love instead of for it.
The gospel is not a demand for improvement but an invitation to maturity: to grow beyond the economy of earning and into the ecology of grace.
The Ache Beneath Sin
There is an ache lurking beneath every sin—not one that avoids intimacy, but one that longs for it. Sin, at its root, is not rebellion against love; it is a misguided search for it. Every addiction, every compulsion, every act of self-sabotage is an attempt to feel connected, to be seen, to belong.
We call it disobedience, but it is more often disorientation—a soul seeking home in all the wrong places.
The tragedy is not that we desire too much, but that we settle for too little. We mistake control for safety, pleasure for connection, and performance for love. Beneath the surface of every “sin” is a wounded instinct—a heart that wants to be held but no longer trusts that it can be.
I’ve come to believe that sin reveals not depravity, but deprivation. It is the ache of a soul trapped in an intimacy-avoidant paradigm—yearning for love, yet shaped by fear to resist the very closeness it seeks.
If that’s true, then repentance is not punishment for wanting the wrong things, but the slow re-education of desire. It’s learning to bring that aching need back into the open, to trust that love can reach the places we’ve spent a lifetime protecting.
Grace doesn’t erase the ache; it holds it until it becomes a doorway.
The Return to Wholeness
If the story of humanity is not one of estrangement but of unfolding, then the point of faith is not to become something other than human, but to become fully human—alive, honest, and whole.
The vulnerability test reveals that most of us don’t trust love enough to be known. We live fragmented, fearing rejection from each other and from God. But the story of grace insists that there is no part of us that love cannot hold. Wholeness begins the moment we stop organizing our lives around hiding.
The great movement of the gospel is not upward but inward—not an escape from our humanity but a reconciliation with it. The Word becomes flesh, not to rescue us from embodiment, but to reveal that God has never been elsewhere. The Spirit is not withdrawn from our sin; it dwells in it, transforming what we most fear into the very site of redemption.
This is what covenant actually means: to share life.
It’s not a transaction for moral cleanliness but a mutual indwelling—“I will be your God, and you will be my people.” It’s the joining of divine and human stories into one. Grace, then, is not a pardon from reality; it’s participation in it.
When we let go of the God who demands worthiness, what remains is the God who creates worth.
When we stop hiding, what we find is not punishment, but presence.
This shift changes everything.
Our motivation to change no longer comes from fear of disconnection but from gratitude for belonging. The human heart naturally grows toward what it knows will not abandon it.
To live in grace is to finally rest from the exhausting work of managing appearances. It is to allow the Spirit to do the integrating work of love—to weave the hidden and the seen, the sacred and the ordinary, into a single fabric.
Integrity is no longer the moral achievement of the sinless, but the spiritual maturity of the unhidden. It is what happens when love reaches every part of who we are and finds no locked doors.
And maybe this is what salvation truly is:
not escape from our human story, but the revelation that the whole of it—the light and the dark, the fear and the faith, the sin and the grace—belongs to God.
The gospel, then, is not about becoming worthy of love; it’s about becoming aware that we already are.
- What do you think would be the response from a general LDS audience?
- Are both plot lines necessary or inevitable, are we maturing through stories, from fear based to grace motivated?
- What practices / doctrines in the church seem hopelessly trapped in the first path?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Wow!
This post and your post last week reframe the gospel in beautiful ways. Unfortunately I don’t see much at all in the way the LDS teaches these topics, to the extent that these would be a brand new religion in my opinion.
Todd,
You’ve given me a lot to think about. I hope I don’t come across (too much) as an old curmudgeon–but I wanted to throw a couple of old ideas on the table for consideration.
While I agree that much of our positive growth involves uncovering “things as they really are” I think it’s important to remember that the gospel is not only restorative but progressive as well. Not only does the atonement provide a way for us to remember and return to a loving God–it also opens up possibilities for us to grow in ways that are new to us. And so there’s a lot of new ground we have yet to cover–new to us, that is.
And with that in mind, I think it’s also important to remember that we grow by 1) receiving grace for grace and 2) moving from grace to grace–and I think the first step is the remedy to “cheap grace.” In other words, our growth–to some extent–depends upon what we do with the grace that we receive. This places us in the position of having to sweat and stretch a bit at times–and for good reason.
That said, I guess what I’m getting at is–even after we’ve gone through a paradigmatic shift–which itself can be a process–we’ll find ourselves being drawn through many rigorous experiences that are calculated to stretch and enlarge our souls. And some of that necessary “stretching” will be predicated upon our willingness as free agents to participate in the ongoing and unfolding mystery of our becoming like the Savior–albeit, through his sufferings and grace.
A long time ago I caught a few minutes of the film “Meet Joe Black” and a particular scene hit me like a load of bricks. Joe Black (a very young Brad Pitt) asks Quince (Jeffrey Tambor) how he knows he wife loves him. The script reads:
JOE: But she loves you? How do you know?
QUINCE: Because there’s nothing we don’t know about each other and it’s okay. I mean the deeper, darkest secrets — they don’t matter.
JOE: ‘The deepest, darkest secrets –‘?
QUINCE: Yeah, it’s like you know every inch of each other’s souls — and then you’re free.
JOE: What do you mean ‘free’?
QUINCE: Free to love each other. Completely. Totally. No fear.
In the actual film, Quince answers the question of how do you know she loves you with the line: “Because she knows the worst things about me and that is OK”
AI paraphrases the scene with two statements:
(1) “Love is knowing the worst thing about someone and loving them anyway”.
(2) “You’re free to love each other completely, totally. Just no fear. So there’s nothing you don’t know about each other, and it’s okay”.
Love of this depth is hard to achieve. It runs contrary to human instinct and human insecurities. Yet this is how God loves each one us. We have no secrets from God and God knows the worst things about us. Yet God loves me and loves you. To have Faith is to Love God as God loves You. When we are able to Love God as God loves us we are made Free for we are able to live without Fear, no longer worrying about how to keep our “secrets” from God.
I don’t think we have to subscribe to one of the options, legalistic perfectionist or tolerant belonging. People rather freely jump back and forth between the two, often the same day and sometimes in the same sentence. We do it to ourselves, sometimes striving for a goal but other times excusing ourselves for falling short. We do it with the kids, sometimes expecting good behavior or achievement, other times supporting them through failure or exercising forgiveness when they do something mean or foolish. Even LDS leaders do this, sometimes expounding both judgment and forgiveness in the same talk.
At the local level, I think “judge in Israel” is an unfortunate title that we bestow on bishops. We certainly don’t want a man called to that office to look in the mirror the next morning and say, “Okay, now I get to start excommunicating people!” The LDS Handbook gives rather more balanced direction to bishops, and we also use other metaphors to describe a bishop: as a counselor, a shepherd, an overseer. Unlike real judges, bishops get very little training or direction in how to interview, counsel, and/or discipline local members. On the whole, the trend for LDS bishops the last couple of generations seems to be moving away from judgment toward supportive counseling or, since they don’t often know what they are doing in terms of counseling, to simply practice supportive listening (which the Handbook endorses).
I long ago decided that the idea of a loving Heavenly Father and “you are here to be tested”, were completely incompatable. Then I went to the temple and heard “I will allow satan to temp you and try you that you may LEARN by your own experience to distinguish good from evil.” That’s not a test. That’s a learning experience. I really believe, in the end, the Atonement is going to save everybody.
OK, but to defend the traditional Christian view for a second, let me ask a question about an alternative setup.
If someone offers you a gift, is *your* acceptance of that gift a condition?
As in, they have given the gift, it’s ready for you, whenever you want it…but if you never take it, it will remain left there. Is that a condition?
if you think this is a condition, i’d be interested in understanding why/how.
Secondly, and slightly more complexly, are there good and bad ways to respond to gifts? If they are freely given, undeserved, and unearned, does that mean that a gift recipient can do whatever they want with their gift without anyone being able to say or think or judge that reaction? When we say someone is “ungrateful” or “spoiled” with respect to a gift received, what does that get at..?
When you describe original sin, you say:
Rebellion I can agree with. But the part I question is the word “earn”. I think in the traditional view, part of sin is thinking that it’s about earning (so we think that if we haven’t done enough to earn it, then we don’t get it). But grace is a gift. We do not deserve it, we do not earn it, and that doesn’t matter, because it’s a gift.
I do think that you get at a lot of the same ideas, for example, when you say:
However, I still think that your narrative in this post and through previous posts requires a setup that is “safe” and not “perilous.” Where people make teeny tiny oopsy woopsies, but not major mistakes.
I keep going back to the analogy of jumping from a cliff. This isn’t a small minor oopsy whoopsy. Jumping off a cliff is not “a necessary descent into complexity and growth”. It actually is a cosmic mistake. But the mistake is solely on humans. It was humans who did not trust God. It was humans who rejected God’s free gift.
What I like about your write-up is that I do think it meshes well with LDS thinking. I think Mormonism is more amenable to a universe of “oopsy woopsies” rather than a universe of mortal perils.
The way I would synthesize this in the LDS context, though, taking my part about gifts from way up top, is thinking about that parable of the piano and piano lessons. I’m too lazy at the moment to think through how Brad Wilcox and others originally proposed the parable, but I’ll simplify as follows: your parents have offered you for your birthday or whatever a piano and piano lessons. These are totally free — you don’t have to pay the instructor, you don’t have to pay back your parents, it’s just there for you.
But it’s your choice to practice, to pay attention to the lessons, to spend time at the piano.
If you don’t practice, or you slack off, what then..? What does that say about you? Is that a “condition” of being a musician here?
If you do practice diligently, does that mean you have earned the piano and the lessons? Is that the right way to think of it..?
Your thoughts strike me as similar to those of Adam Miller’s–grace is not God’s backup plan. Much like you, you posits that our view of God and grace are strongly correlated with where we start our story. For orthodox Christianity it starts with original sin, the unforeseen mistake. In that view we start as bad, a people needing redemption and grace is the backup to recover from that. Miller goes on to suggest that our story should start earlier, that creation itself and everything that flows from it–even the experience of sin–was an act of grace. In this view, we start as fundamentally good, full of all those attributes that we have lost sight of in our quest to achieve approval from God through obedience and other performances.
It has been fascinating for me, over the last couple of years, to see/recognize how our conceptions of God are driven by our societal or group needs. I always assumed I (and “we” collectively) was worshiping God, but it turns out, we are mostly worshiping our ideas of God. In the LDS faith, God loves conditionally because we need temple work (the ultimate level of worship) to mean something substantial. God loves conditionally because we need to be the ones with God’s authority. The differences between the teachings in the Book of Mormon and the Nauvoo period are striking. The conception of God changed a lot in there. You can see these changes especially in our music and what we choose to sing out. For the longest time, up until maybe the last 20-30 years, a lot of music has focused on a very cold, war-like, judgmental God. That has changed a lot.
I don’t know about the atonement any more. It depends on a very specific change of events and consequences of those events to even be a thing that is remotely needed–and that also comes from viewing humanity from a place as fundamentally bad. It just makes God look like a disaster, not really that omniscience and frankly just cold that he’d even remotely being okay creating beings that he’s mostly be ok with just throwing away. Again, not a great idea of God, but that is how we have talked about. But, the idea of coming here to learn is an interesting one. The idea of God who will suffer with us, that is interesting to me. I think there are a lot of things to wrestle with in there.
But, I’m done with the obedience tap dancing we do. I’m done with the facade. I done with the fear-based rhetoric, the threats of damnation to get me to choose a certain way–I’m out. If that means going to a “lower kingdom,” at this point I just don’t care, because honestly I think I’d be happier there. You’d think that a “plan of salvation” that only yields <1% success rate (success meaning celestial kingdom) would raise some major concerns–especially for the orthodox who love it so much. I think by any measure, it would mean the plan is terrible and we need a new plan. Maybe the God of that plan is not worth our time and we need a different one.
There is real evil in this world. Unspeakable cruelty and violence. No god worth believing in cares what you drink with your breakfast.
The Pirate Priest:
“There is real evil in this world. Unspeakable cruelty and violence. No god worth believing in cares what you drink with your breakfast.”
You might be right if it were just you or I–but the Lord is concerned with the welfare of a community. And because that community is imbedded in cultures that flagrantly peddle very harmful addictive substances he’s drawn the line (for the community) at a safe distance from them.
@Jack I appreciate the response. Your comment really helps illustrate my point.
I was of using the “doctrine” of hot beverages (but only specific ones, of course) to highlight just how absurd the concept of worthiness can be. I find it insulting to God that we Mormons honestly believe he should be concerned in any way that someone had a cup of coffee with their donut, while there are literal horrors being committed in Sudan at this very moment.
Now nobody is adding “very harmful and addictive substances” to coffee and tea. However, it’s true that those substances exist, but where does the sin lie? Is it on the consumer who falls victim to the disease of addiction, or is it the person selling them? Does the sin fall on the people living in generational poverty selling drugs out of desperation, or on the powerful leaders who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor?
Spending our energy and focus on inconsequential minutiae for a false sense of worthiness is the opposite of what Jesus taught.
I’ve very much enjoyed this post and your two previous ones. I hope you will keep posting here and let us know where else we may read your writings.
I see complete alignment between your thoughts and general teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ (of Latter-day Saints). Even for those with stark interpretations of sin, guilt, obedience and worthiness, their difference in perception is one of scope, not of category. Their thoughts are narrower, but not opposed to yours. Your cosmovision does not exclude theirs, rather it circumscribes it. It is encompassing.
Charitably, I presume their stricter view is what they need at this moment, scaffolding in their own process of learning, growth and discovery
@bhnardo I’m genuinely curious- why do you think the church leaders who claim to speak directly with God don’t preach a more expansive view of topics like repentance, revelation, and grace?
@bhbardo, apologies, I spelled your name incorrectly.
@Trevor H – Initially, wanting to be somewhat empirical, I looked back through the last 15 apostolic talks in general conference, back to Nelson’s final talk in April. I perceived six of them as expansive, six as neutral and three as unexpansive. It struck me, however, that surely others would perceive these differently, in both directions.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether we receive a message expansively, or Charitably. I believe that you and I can speak directly with God as much as anyone else, including church leaders. While I believe they have been called as church leaders, I’m not aware of any claim of infallibility or of speaking more directly with God than a regular person. (I would say that “we” sometimes treat them that way, which is a mistake.)
As humans, they/we are products of our time and place, our experiences, relationships, histories-futures, identities and desires. The light we receive is filtered accordingly, and in the process, tailors itself to exactly what we need as individuals, families and communities. How would the church be different if early members had headquartered in Canada, or Mexico, or Hawaii? I don’t know, but I’m confident it would be different on any of the spectra that are important to any of us, and yet still be Christ’s.
All should be allowed the dictates of our conscience (11th AoF).
“Don’t teach all our children exactly the same thing, if you teach them everything all the same, they won’t need one another, and the world will split apart.”
-Bruce (subiyay) Miller, Skokomish Elder
I think this is the nature of the atonement, sealing power, and of receiving each other’s messages expansively, with Charity. I may have meandered a bit. Hope this is useful to someone.
The above is from @bhbardo, just on my computer instead of my phone
“If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness.” Written on the wall of a Nazi concentration camp.
The Pirate Priest:
“Spending our energy and focus on inconsequential minutiae for a false sense of worthiness is the opposite of what Jesus taught.”
This helps me to better understand where you’re coming from–and I agree that we should be careful not to invert greater virtues with lesser virtues. Even so, I think our commitment as disciples includes bearing the burdens of our fellow saints–and it is in the spirit of concern for the welfare of the community of the saints that we should be willing to abide by a code of conduct that is calculated to preserve the group as well as the individual.
That said, this is the clincher for me: the are some few people out there who do develop addictions to coffee, tea, and other mild substances. And so the wisdom in drawing the line at the milder stuff is that it reaches the weakest of the saints–folks like me–who have strong proclivities towards addiction and substance abuse.
So on the one hand we might feel that drinking coffee is a small thing–so why should we fuss over having a cup of java in the morning? But on the other hand, if it’s such a small thing then we should be able to give it up without too much fuss for the sake of the community.
I, myself, am addicted to daily showers. This addiction is so strong that I have found myself on occasion showering more than once a day. There are some people whose skin is made dry and coarse by this habit. I will be deeply grateful if for the sake of the most fragile in our community, we all forego this dangerously addictive behavior.
I love this post. “What would be the response from a general lds audience?”
Recently I taught an elders quorum lesson about being “whole”. I taught repentance through the lens of shadow work, including accepting and integrating the darkest parts of yourself. As part of the lesson we did meditations about meeting and embracing your shadow self. People thought it was weird and uncomfortable, but they also really liked it.
I think what you shared is a really helpful and healing idea – and I think people really long for helpful and healing ideas (but we don’t often hear them at church), so when we do hear it at church it catches us off guard a little bit, but we like it.
@Jack, I think your reasoning that the Word of Wisdom’s proscription on coffee and tea exists to protect the “weakest saints” is seriously flawed:
1. Some people are terrible drivers who cause accidents. Should the Church ban all members from driving to protect the “weakest saints”?
2. Many marriages end in divorce, resulting in broken families and broken temple covenants. Should the Church ban all members from marrying to protect the “weakest saints”?
You might argue that God hasn’t banned driving and marriage because the benefits outweigh the risks. Fine. Let’s keep going:
3. Consuming too much sugar, fat, or salt causes serious health problems for many people. Should the Church ban these substances to protect the “weakest saints”? Church members would be a whole lot healthier right now if they consumed less of these substances than they are by abstaining from coffee and tea.
4. The Word of Wisdom explicitly commands limiting meat consumption, yet leaders and members almost universally ignore this. Again, Church members would be a whole lot healthier right now if they consumed less meat than they are by abstaining from coffee and tea. Is the Church’s silence on meat a failure to protect the “weakest saints”?
5. Church leaders have explicitly stated that caffeinated soft drinks don’t violate the Word of Wisdom. People become addicted to caffeinated soft drinks just as easily as to coffee and tea—the addictive substance is identical: caffeine. Why doesn’t God protect the “weakest saints” from caffeine in Coke but does protect them from caffeine in coffee?
6. Television, video games, and social media are “addictive”—millions of people waste enormous amounts of time on them. Leaders warn about these things but don’t ban them. I think Church members would be a whole lot healthier if they consumed less television, video games, and social media than they are by abstaining from coffee and tea. Why no outright prohibition to protect the “weakest saints” as with tea and coffee?
The reason Church manuals don’t explain why the Word of Wisdom bans tea and coffee is because there is no coherent reason. The best reason the Church can muster for the ban on coffee and tea is simply that God wants things that way for some reason that He has chosen not to reveal. The “weakest saints” argument for the ban on coffee and tea doesn’t make much sense to me.
Thanks for the great discussion here. I’ve been gone the past 4 days at a trade show, but looking forward to responding to comments here.
I love the part that says:
“The first path tries to achieve belonging through purity. The second finds purity through belonging.”
I think we want to “control” our own salvation through our own purity and righteousness. No wonder perfectionism culture is so persistent.
@Jack
The most christlike person I’ve every known, was a disabled Catholic man in Europe named Jean-Luc who spent every day giving all he could to others. He had attended Catholic seminary and dreamed of becoming a priest when he suddenly became disabled. Instead of becoming bitter, he gave away everything he had left to give.
He spent every morning bringing food to lonely widows in his building and spending time visiting with them. He would then search the town for a homeless teenager he’d met, so the kid wouldn’t feel alone or get into trouble. He lived in a small studio apartment on a meager fixed income, but still happily shared all he could with others.
He also smoked, drank wine, loved coffee, and would never pass a temple recommend interview.
I can imagine it now…
This goes against everything Jesus ever taught.
I agree that maybe it’s inconsequential to give up something like coffee, but by that logic it’s just as inconsequential if someone doesn’t give it up.
Coffee isn’t the issue here. It’s that these types of things become substitutes for true Christlike living. It’s much easier to soothe our salvation anxiety with some concrete proxy than to wrestle with the unknowns of the afterlife. Those proxies can be temple recommends, the prosperity gospel, high-status callings, or counting steps on the Sabbath…relying on them to gauge worthiness is the path of the Pharisees.
All I know, is that if Jean-Luc is not at the front of the line for the celestial kingdom, then there’s very little hope for a wretch like me (temple recommend or not).
mountainclimber479,
Maybe I’m overstating my case–and you may be right that the ban on some of the drinks seems arbitrary. Even so, I think we have to consider the cultural aspects of the argument as well. Coffee and tea tend to be embedded in various cultures in ways that make them regular staples. And when we’re brought up on those staples and drink them over a lifetime they can be quite difficult to let go of. Of course that’s not to say that soda and other caffeinated drinks are not as addictive. My guess is–if one were to drink them at the same frequency and over the same amount of time as folks drink their coffee and tea (as regular staples) they’d probably be just as difficult to let go of. That said, I don’t think we’re quite there yet as a culture. Even so, I certainly agree that we should be careful with how much sugar we take in–because that can cause some serious problems if we overdo it.
The Pirate Priest,
I’m not the judge–but according to what you’ve shared about your friend I believe that all will be well with him in the next life.
That said, I think we need to remember that we’re not merely talking about mild drinks. The Word of Wisdom–as it’s understood today–is in place to keep the saints from getting caught by the deluge of addictive substances that has ruined untold numbers of lives and families. The toll that alcohol, nicotine, and hard drugs has taken on the West is almost immeasurable. Truly Section 89 is profoundly prophetic in it’s message about conspiring men in the last days.
That said, while I do agree that we can get overly concerned about the little things–let’s remember that some little things are strategically placed next to big things for good reason.
@Jack, you said, “Coffee and tea tend to be embedded in various cultures in ways that make them regular staples. And when we’re brought up on those staples and drink them over a lifetime they can be quite difficult to let go of.”
I’ve spent over three years living in a country where tea consumption is extremely important to the culture. I’ve also spent months in multiple countries that have some of the highest per-capita coffee consumption rates in the world. There simply aren’t health problems of any significance caused by drinking coffee and tea in these countries. Since there’s really no problem, why on earth would people there ever wish to “let go of” them? If you raised this issue with medical professionals in these countries, they’d probably just laugh at you.
You’re also wrong about soda. Consumption of sugary (and often caffeinated) soft drinks in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa has spiked over the last few decades. The negative effects of these drinks in these countries have alarmed health professionals there. It’s mostly the sugar that’s the concern, though, rather than the caffeine. If the Word of Wisdom is so prophetic, then why doesn’t it contain warnings about sugar?
There were health “experts” in Joseph’s day who were spreading the idea that coffee and tea were bad for humans. Joseph was almost certainly parroting these experts rather than declaring the will of God when he narrated the Word of Wisdom. That is by far the simplest explanation for the origin of the arbitrary ban on tea and coffee, which are now understood to promote good health (especially tea) or to be neutral with regard to health at worst. If it really was prophetic, then we’d expect the Word of Wisdom to ban—or at least encourage moderation in—things that we know are actually bad for people: sugar, fat, salt, cocaine, opium, etc. (Yes, cocaine and opium use was happening in parts of the world in Joseph’s time.) If you want to choose to believe that the Word of Wisdom came from God, that’s fine. If you do, though, then your best explanation is simply to say that we don’t know why God has banned coffee and tea.
You said, “That said, I think we need to remember that we’re not merely talking about mild drinks.” No, we really are mostly talking about mild drinks in this discussion, since the ban on coffee and tea is the part of the Word of Wisdom that seems the most ridiculous.
You said, “The toll that alcohol, nicotine, and hard drugs has taken on the West is almost immeasurable. Truly Section 89 is profoundly prophetic in its message about conspiring men in the last days.” Again, we’re really talking about the mild drinks here—coffee, tea (and Pirate Priest also mentioned wine). That said, the Word of Wisdom is silent on hard drugs, even though such drugs existed in Joseph’s time. If it’s so prophetic, why aren’t hard drugs, which have proven so destructive, even mentioned?
You said, “That said, while I do agree that we can get overly concerned about the little things—let’s remember that some little things are strategically placed next to big things for good reason.” I really have no idea what this statement means. My best guess is that you’re saying small, seemingly arbitrary commandments about insignificant minutiae are important. If that’s what you’re getting at, then I disagree.
The Church is supposed to be a “restoration” of Christ’s Church. Well, Christ came and called out the Jews for their careful observance of what you seem to be calling “the little things.”, which He didn’t seem to care much about, while neglecting the Two Great Commandments. Gentiles who converted to Christianity were not expected to follow most of the Jewish dietary guidelines that feel an awful lot like the Word of Wisdom and your “little things.” In other words, when Joseph decided to narrate the Word of Wisdom, it seems to me like he was causing the Church to devolve to something similar to Old Testament Jewish guidelines rather than restoring the gospel that Christ proclaimed.
I think we’re talking past each other a bit. I do agree that coffee and tea aren’t really that harmful–comparatively speaking, that is (there have been some warnings put out there on the problems they can cause if we use them in excess). That said, I think we need to remember that coffee and tea are not mentioned specifically in Section 89. The WoW has changed over time as present conditions demand. While Section 89 does mention alcohol and tobacco–two of the biggest destroyers of our time–it fails to mention any of the current illicit hard drugs. But the way the WoW is currently understood–it practically goes without saying that the hard substances are prohibited. As President Hinckley famously said: “There is likewise no mention of the hazards of diving into an empty swimming pool.”
And so, while you may be right that the best argument for the banning of coffee and tea may be a directive that the Lord hasn’t fit to explain yet, I think the mere fact that the church has continued to promote the WoW — revising it at times when necessary — is truly wise–especially when we consider how powerful the party culture can be in the West. Really, truly, just a quick look at the statistics involved vis-a-vis the damage done by alcohol, tobacco, and hard drugs should cause us to give three cheers to Section 89 regardless of how we feel about its provenance.
@Jack, my original objection to your comments was your attempt to provide explanations for the ban on tea and coffee. It kind of sounds like you are backing off of those explanations to match the Church’s official position which is basically that Church leaders don’t know why God doesn’t want us to drink them. I don’t think God had anything to do with the ban on coffee and tea, but I have a lot less problems if members just stick to the “we don’t know why” explanation.
I do, however, also object to you saying that the WoW is incredibly prophetic. First, once again, it appears highly likely to me that Joseph just threw in the “hot drinks” provision because he was influenced by some health trends of his time rather than revelation from God. Second, there were already a lot of people in Joseph’s time who believed both alcohol and tobacco were unhealthy, so those bans don’t seem very prophetic. either. Finally, the only other thing that I can think of that 99.9% of Church members actually follow in the WoW are Church leaders’ claims that hard drugs are also covered by the WoW (even though they’ve chosen not to official add this to the text). Can you please point me to which other major Christian denominations don’t also strongly discourage its members from using hard drugs? It’s not like Church leaders gave members early warnings about hard drugs. They simply reacted to them when they started to become widespread in the West–just like pretty much all other Christian denominations. If you get excited about this type of prophesy, then I’m really not impressed. It’s just common sense. Do you really need a prophet to tell you this?
mountainclimber479,
These two verses from Section 89 are what my comments are based on–for the most part:
3 Given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints.
4 Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation.
Verse three speaks of how the WoW is adapted to the weakest. And even though coffee and tea are not mentioned in the section they are added latter as specific drinks that are to be avoided. I agree that coffee and tea are a very low bar–but the question remains (for some folks) whether or not that particular addition is inspired. I, personally, believe that it is inspired and that there are good reasons for it–as I’ve mentioned above.
Verse four speaks of the prophetic aspect of the WoW. You’ll notice that it doesn’t mention any substances here–not specifically–only that evil designs will exist in the hearts of conspiring men. That’s what the prophecy is really about–and boy do we see that fulfilled in the present. Now some folks might believe that Joseph was just forecasting the outcome of an obvious trend. OK–but that doesn’t make the WoW–as it is currently understood–any less salient.
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Sorry for the threadjack toddsmithson–but mountainclimber is such a good sparring partner that I can’t help myself.
Jack,
No doubt, there are *some* parts of the WoW that are prophetic/inspired. Here is how I would describe your exactitude approach to the WoW: thought-stopping.
I think that when we get too tied down on exactly what is and isn’t called out in the WoW, we lose sight of its ultimate purpose which is to be cognizant of what we put into our bodies. That has an effect on our ability to function and hear God. At the time the WoW was given, there was just nothing else pushing for this kind of stuff I think, so it was novel. Consider that levels of drinking were 3x what it is today. It’s also important to understand that water was not safe to drink so alcohol was the only recourse. Hunting animals was soooo exceptionally wasteful in the first few decades of the colonies that historians have found accounts of people noticing whole species disappearing. There is an interesting podcast episode on the historical context of the WoW by the BYU professor that I found fascinating.
That all being said, I think we’ve taken it in a direction it was never meant to be taken. We now use it as a worthiness measure, we now treat it as some item on an obedience check list. It’s become this Rameumptum from which we proclaim our personal righteousness. We talk about it in a completely thought-stopping manner (i.e. “it’s prophetic therefore I no longer have to think about it”). And because it has become thought-stopping, we cut ourselves off from all of the wonderful scientific discovery on this subject which is infinitely more detailed and useful for further exploration and decision making than the WoW. I remember reading a Marvelous Work and a Wonder years ago watching that book contort science into the conclusions that agreed with current LDS WoW understanding. That is just not how we progress as a people–it frankly shuts us completely off to further light and knowledge when we adopt a position of certitude on anything be believe. The science on coffee and tea are clear–they are actually beneficial to health. Obviously too much of anything will kill–even water. Hence the advise elsewhere to be moderate. They are not gateway drugs (as you seem to think they might be). The science is clear on illicit drugs–they are bad. The science on alcohol consumption is also clear–no level of alcohol consumption is healthy. Yet, on that last point, the WoW has an exception in that it allows mild barley drinks, aka beer, but we tend to read over that. There is a whole section on consuming meat in there which isn’t really relevant now (most likely in light of the wasteful hunting practices of the time, but regulated now much better) and/or is completely ignored. The WoW also says wheat is the staff of life–it is deadly to both my sisters and my mother. And frankly, having breads as the base of nutrition is proven to not be the best choice. So here one could argue the WoW is also a bit off. I’m really surprised that the Lord didn’t include a the most simple of directives in there–wash your hands with soap and water before eating food or treating others. That single change nugget discovered by Florence Nightingale ended up having the a massive impact on infant and maternal mortality rates. I grew up with one of Bruce R’s sons as a stake president and he would just skip 89 completely. He said it was pointless to pick apart and summarized the overall message of it being: “if it’s good eat it, if it’s not, don’t”.
“only that evil designs will exist in the hearts of conspiring men. That’s what the prophecy is really about–and boy do we see that fulfilled in the present.”
What does this even mean? Not everything is a conspiracy Jack. This is entrenched Christian thinking that has just got to stop. Not everything bad that happens is driven by some evil force looking to destroy us. Not everyone is out to get us. If this is how you’re approaching the WoW, I think you’re missing the message entirely. It’s thinking like that, that frankly is the gateway drug that is the rage and hate we see today. Sure, I can name a few bad actors in the food industry and some not so great decisions along the way, but little of those were from “evil and conspiring” men–instead mostly stupid human bumbling and/or greed. But, this conspiratorial thinking has led to RFK Jr and anti-vaxxers getting put into power, to the resurgence of measles and other decidedly stupid things that are tremendously harmful to actual human health. Stop it!
The WoW is not a panacea by any stretch, but what it is awesome at is getting us to think about how the things we put into our bodies affect us. Maybe we’d actually see some improvement in behavior if we’d stop treating it like a worthiness gate and instead pointed people towards the wealth of knowledge we possess on living a healthy life and tell them to have at it.
Dear Chris,
Re: conspiracies: I was implying the illicit drug industry.
Re: worthiness: It’s a must. We can’t open the door to the problems cause by addiction to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs. These are life wreckers and home wreckers.
Sorry I’m not able to engage with you more. I think I’ve said all can on this subject.
Actually the licit drug industry is as powerful and corrupt as the illicit drug industry. I’m looking at you Sacklers, Astors, and Delanos.
chrisdrobison,
There is one more thing I wanted to say: I can see how attributing something to prophecy might be “thought stopping.” Certainly there’s something to be said for keeping the door open for explanations that can help resolve our immediate concerns. Even so, the spirit of prophecy can open up a whole new world of understanding. It’s the spirit by which the prophets have beheld the entire history of the earth–now that’s a lot to think about.
Beautiful thoughts that have the ring of goodness and truth in them.
“What do you think would be the response from a general LDS audience?
Are both plot lines necessary or inevitable, are we maturing through stories, from fear based to grace motivated?
What practices / doctrines in the church seem hopelessly trapped in the first path?”
[Discussion devolves into a debate about coffee and tee]
I think you have your answers.
Andrew, sorry for the very long delay.
I appreciate your analysis here and your ability to challenge ideas without attacking the person. So, let’s think through this a bit, have a little fun, and probably leave with even more questions.
Your premise: “If someone offers you a gift, is *your* acceptance of that gift a condition?”
Short answer: Yes, your acceptance is a condition for the transfer of the gift, but not a condition for the offer of the gift.
Does this subtly matter? I think so, at least in terms of a theological position, how we talk about “gifts”, “grace”, and what the purpose of life is.
—- “I keep going back to the analogy of jumping from a cliff. This isn’t a small minor oopsy whoopsy. Jumping off a cliff is not “a necessary descent into complexity and growth”. It actually is a cosmic mistake. But the mistake is solely on humans. It was humans who did not trust God. It was humans who rejected God’s free gift.”
This perspective aligns with reading the garden story not as a simple mistake or act of rebellion, but as part of the ongoing story of creation. Traditional Christian interpretation assumes that Adam and Eve were meant to remain in the Garden forever, as though the true “gift” God offered was perpetual innocence, bliss, and a perfect sanctuary. But what if the real gift was never the Garden at all, but choice—the very capacity that leads God to say, “They have become as one of Us”? In that light, humans are not merely recipients of life but active participants in helping God complete creation.
We often tell the story as if God gave the Garden, Adam and Eve rejected it, and humanity has been trying to get back ever since. I no longer read Genesis this way. God created the whole earth and deliberately left much of it unfinished. The story invites us to decide whether we will participate in that ongoing work. Seen this way, the “lone and dreary world” is not punishment but partnership.
In my view, Christian theology has distorted this by treating salvation as a project of returning to the Garden and persuading God to let us back in, rather than expanding Eden outward into the world. Creation becomes far messier when it is framed as competition instead of cooperation. As Richard Rohr puts it, much of religion functions like a cosmic evacuation plan rather than a path of relational development.
In this light, I can’t make sense of a concept of “redemption” that has any real depth without acknowledging genuine peril. It’s easy enough to account for the small “oopsy whoopsie’s,” but the act of creation itself is profoundly messy—filled with harms born from other harms, poor choices, self-interest, survival instincts, genetics, biases, preferences, and deliberate blindness. The real question, then, is whether all of creation can be redeemed, and by that I don’t mean saved from the mess but created through it. Perhaps the story of God and Jesus is not primarily about offering an escape from reality but about helping humans face reality honestly and find meaning within the mess rather than a path out of it.
I generally like the piano analogy, but in practice it doesn’t really work the way it’s often presented. We start by saying the parent (standing in for God) pays for the lessons and offers them as a genuine gift. The child then chooses to receive or reject that gift, with practice serving as the evidence of acceptance.
But the analogy usually devolves into something quite different: the parent pays the teacher directly and then pressures the child to practice by warning that the funding will stop if they don’t. At that point, the focus shifts from learning to create music to complying with the parent’s expectations.
If the parent truly gave the gift freely—including the money—the child might well squander it at first, much like the prodigal son who wasted his inheritance on “riotous living.” But even in that wastefulness, he eventually “comes to himself,” realizing that creating something meaningful is better than banging pots for noise.
So does a lack of practice deserve judgment? Yes—but it’s a judgment built into the consequences themselves. Neglecting the practice of becoming a musician naturally yields the result of not becoming one. The judgment is not imposed from outside; it unfolds organically from the nature of the gift.
In the end, what we call the Gospel seems to be humanity’s ongoing attempt to answer one of its oldest questions: What makes a good life? We search, stumble, harm, repair, try, fail, adjust, and fail again. “Redemption,” in this sense, is an antidote to nihilism—it takes both our mistakes and our dangers, our “oopsie whoopsies” and our genuine perils, and gives them a purpose when we ourselves cannot find one.
Chris
I always thoroughly enjoy your thoughtful responses. I love Adam Miller’s work, and my thoughts are heavily influenced and shaped by reading his work.
toddsmithson,
Re: the piano analogy: I take the fact that we want to become a musician as a given — for the analogy’s sake, that is — and that we’ve come to Savior (the Teacher) in response to his invitation to learn from him–and perhaps to even become as great a musician as he is someday. And so, in this particular scenario, what we have is the Savior as a mentor of sorts. And the “gift” involves his working with us one on one–a master musician sitting down with us at the piano and patiently helping us along.
In thinking about the Garden Story–I see the Fall as an inevitable event. It wasn’t necessarily something that *had* to happen as it was something that *would* happen–eventually. And the reason it happened was because of who and what we are. It is the nature of human beings to push certain boundaries. And that’s what we did in our deep past–just like we’re doing here in one way or another.
That said, I see our redemption as the restoration of our relationship with Deity. But as I’ve mentioned elsewhere–redemption is both restorative and progressive. That is–it restores our previous relationship(s) and at the same time enables us to become more than what we were before.
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Again my apologies for the tea and coffee threadjack. I really do love the themes your OP addresses.