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 - drugs

One amazing fact about the Word of Wisdom, the revelation given to Joseph Smith about healthy living, is that totally foresaw the problems of our day and gave us sound guidance on how to avoid those health dangers. Take drugs for example. Drugs come in many shapes and sizes, but they will all destroy you. They'll take over your life, ruin it, invade your family's life, ruin that, ruin your friends' lives, and basically making dying more horrible and painful both physically and emotionally. Haven't you read Requiem for a Dream? (Well don't, just watch the movie. No, don't do that either. It sucks.)

Scene from that shitty movie that everyone loved.

Let's turn to the revealed word of God on the matter.

This is what it says about drugs:

Then there's this:

This:

And finally this:

Obviously there's a lot to learn here.

Remember, this advice on drugs from the Lord is meant to protect us from the danger of substances aimed at us "[i]n consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days" (D&C 89:4). Clearly this is in reference to the drug lords who push horrible substances violently across the globe and pushers who pray upon small children, which is why the following verses address the consumption of wine.

God totally nails Big Tobacco. That's another score for God!

But he does fail to mention the use of psychedelic mushrooms

and he doesn't mention the growing popularity of opium either.

It might feel like a couple of missed opportunities to some doubters (you'd think God would at least throw in a verse about addiction, right?), but, for those of us who have mastered doubting our doubts, we don't actually need God to say something or have what he's thinking put in writing for us to know exactly what's on his mind.

Keeping on the sunny side

Mormons desperately want everyone else to see how happy they are with the True Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the One True Church, covet that boundless happiness, look into Mormonism, decide it's true, and join the fold of the most intensely happy religious practitioners in the world. There are, however, reasons to doubt Mormon happiness. The two biggest in my mind have to do with Utah's extremely high consumption of antidepressants. Naturally Mormons will deny there's any connection of the state's depression to Mormonism stating that Mormon women claim to be happy (so they must be), or that it's probably the Mormons struggling to live the lifestyle who are depressed, or maybe Mormons are more responsible about getting help than people in other states. The counter is that Utah is not the only state to boast both high religious fervor and high antidepressant use.

Utah's new state song.

We might also want to ask just why it is that Utahns are number one for porn subscriptions when the LDS Church specifically prohibits pornography and why it is that Salt Lake City is one of the top U.S. cities for cosmetic surgeries and Utah is 8th for plastic surgeons per capita.

Why wait until the Resurrection to have a perfect body?

Do these look like statistics of a happy people? How might Mormonism be contributing to the pain and rejection people feel? To their secret habits? The desires to be more perfect? Isn't it possible that Mormonism has some seriously ugly side effects on one's mental health?

And what about the kind of self-interrogation designed to make believers feel like utter shit? I couldn't help but wonder.