WoW - Abiding wisdom

You might think that getting some dietary guidelines from God would be a pretty big deal and that believers would readily conform to those guidelines out of their simple love of righteousness, and yet in the years following the revelation now called the Word of Wisdom few, if any, dietary changes took place in Mormonism. Even Joseph regularly ignored the wisdom of the revelation he himself received. Isn't that strange?

It took the LDS Church until 1921 to more or less figure out how it wanted to interpret the Word of Wisdom and make adherence to it a requirement to enter the temple. That means it took 90 years to figure this shit out, nearly a century before Mormons decided God might really be on to something. Isn't that incredible? It seems to me that God really could have cleared things up at any time, like anytime during the eleven years of Joseph's life following the initial revelation.

Why didn't people take this divine counsel more seriously? Why didn't the Church leaders understand it sooner? Were all of the prophets up to Heber Grant leading us astray? Are we being led astray now?

WoW - divine origins

It's pretty much clear to every Mormon that the Word of Wisdom is a inspired counsel straight from God for the benefit of all who wisely decide to heed its words. Don't use tobacco? Nailed it! Don't abuse alcohol? Nailed it! Eat your veggies? Nailed it! Eat your grains (and drink others)? Nailed it! Don't kill animals unless you have to? Nailed it!

Who cares if God's law of health missed the boat on coffee, tea, sugar, recreational drugs, prescription drug abuse, mental health, social health, physical exercise, and diligent study? And anyone who tries to argue that God's instruction on alcohol is confusing or contradictory can just shut the heck up! All that bad, confusing, or absent information can easily be rationalized away.

The bottom line is that the Word of Wisdom obviously came from a divine source. There's no way in hell Joseph Smith was simply parroting the popular tenants of the temperance movement of the 1820s and '30s! Or is there?

Maybe Joseph didn't need God for this one after all.

WoW - meat eating

It's time to address the explicitly clear part of the Word of Wisdom that everyone hates. 

"Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine." (D&C 89:12-13)

In other words, God's cool with us eating a little meat if it's either (1) the cold season or (2) a time of famine.

If I had to guess, the justification for eating a little meat in the winter is that you can't grow crops when it's too cold and you're completely reliant on your most recent harvest; the justification for eating a little meat in times of famine is probably the same: you don't have crops growing.

Did God not foresee our day of global trade? We're no longer a bunch of do-it-yourselfer farming types. Did he not see the advent of industrialize agriculture? Did he somehow miss that science labs would produce super-hardy varieties of fruits and vegetables? We have fresh produce year round, brothers and sisters! The cold doesn't stop us! There are no more famines in the rich developed world! Who even needs meat anymore? Eat meat sparingly? Don't you worry, Lord, we no longer have to eat any at all!

The only problems is that we have all been seduced by the $1 hamburger menus across America. That's probably what God saw coming down the pipe. He probably saw the "evils and designs" of the "conspiring men in the last days" (D&C 89:4) running the vast majority of meat produced in the United States. God's just trying to protect us from extremely powerful men who want to cash us out, right? It's so clear!

And yet that's not what you'll hear in church. Ask any member about the "meat sparingly" bit in the Word of Wisdom and chances are you'll be informed that that advice is out of date and has been since the invention of the freezer/fridge combo. You see, back in the day they would never harvest an animal when it was warm because the meat would go bad so fast. Besides, the warm months are when grass grows and livestock can feed and fatten up. You want to get to butchering after the animals are fat, not before.

But what about the whole "sparingly" thing even when it was winter? It sounds an awful lot like God's trying to minimize the killing of animals. It sounds like God might be one of those PETA assholes. Let's not be ridiculous, we all know God's Kingdom invests in ranching.