Unfortunately, it has been so long since I first composed these thoughts (13 May)that I have forgotten the blog post which sparked them. It's been sitting as a draft for a long time, so I thought I'd just post it to promote it to full-fledged blog entry. It may seem out-of-the-blue and incomplete, but it's relevant, I think, to some recent thoughts of mine, so without explaining how it relates (I'm lazy tonight), here it is:
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What of the prohibition against coffee and tea? The very revelation in Doctrine and Covenants says it's given not by way of commandment but as counsel. Now, I think it was Brigham Young who said that as far as he is concerned, the Lord's counsel is as good as commandment, and the church decided to adopt abstinence from coffee and tea (among other things which are, in my opinion, more pernicious and damaging) as a prerequisite to entering the temple. Was this a Pharisaical move? I sometimes wonder. I comply because for now, there are things more important than a nice cappuccino.
And maybe those proscriptions simply serve as examples among many other things we might try to minimize or eliminate? Is it possible that we just needed a reminder that there are more subtle things to pay attention to, and SOMETHING had to be used as an example? Is the person who constantly and exclusively eats body-insulting junk food more righteous or worthy than someone who drinks a cup of coffee in the morning simply because there's no specific mention of junk food in a temple recommend interview?
It does seem strange that I even consider coffee consumption in analyzing my worthiness. I don't think I would have a problem with the removal of the proscription against coffee and tea from our requirements. My healthful habits would remain. I try to generally keep myself free from addictive and harmful substances and foods.
Good thing our doctrine also includes a time to sort things out before judgement. Those who didn't have "the law" may be given it in its purest form. Those who lacked covenants through ordinances may be given the opportunity. And I believe those who missed the beauty behind the laws--the true spirit of the gospel--may discover the love and charity they should have felt through it all, to discover the true spirit of the gospel behind the law, from which they may have allowed their checklists to tragically distract them, as I think I may have and may still.
There's a danger in justifying disobedience. There's another danger in replacing love with rules. And I believe, as C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, the frailties of the flesh will fall from us, along with temporal contexts, and we will be left with the naked soul, as God sees us, and there will be surprises.
2 comments:
I've heard it said that there will be no preaching of the Word of Wisdom in Spirit Prison.
If this is so then the spirits there have no prohibition of coffee!
Do you suppose it is because...
A) it can't be acquired or consumed?
B) coffee means nothing in the Grand Scheme?
or
C) it's only disallowed in our current dispensation?
> I believe those who missed the beauty behind the laws--the
> true spirit of the gospel--may discover the love and charity
> they should have felt through it all, to discover the true
> spirit of the gospel behind the law, from which they may have
> allowed their checklists to tragically distract them, as
> I think I may have and may still.
>
> There's a danger in justifying disobedience. There's another
> danger in replacing love with rules. And I believe, as
> C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, the frailties of the
> flesh will fall from us, along with temporal contexts, and
> we will be left with the naked soul, as God sees us, and
> there will be surprises.
I too enjoy reading C. S. Lewis. I'm not a Christian, and I don't
think the world works the way he imagined it does, but though I'm
never likely to be converted by him, I'm neverthless not immune
to his attraction as "apostle to the skeptics".
Lewis held that formalized
ethical rules -- the Ten Commandments, the Torah, the Talmud,
and so on, are stopgap measures for a fallen world.
He suggested that the essence of harmony with the Tao,
or with God, or the social fabric, or whatever, is a much more
fluid, evanescent phenomenon than could ultimately be captured
in a net of words.
From Marcia Tanner,
The Image of Dance in the Works of C. S. Lewis
(quoted in http://www.lomcc.org/2003%20sermons/02-16-03.pdf )
"The dance is a particularly interesting expression of important
issues in that it connotes an intensity which avoids the
burdensome. . .
Lewis summarized it well:
'For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in
itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete
reconciliation of boundless freedom with order -- with the most delicately
adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?' (Letters to Malcolm, p. 94).
It is in the dance that the reconciliation of freedom and order can
perhaps be most vividly imagined.
'The pattern deep hidden n the dance, hidden so deep that
shallow spectators cannot see it, alone gives beauty to the wild,
free gestures that fill it, just as the decasyllabic norm gives
beauty to all the licences and variation of the poet’s verse,'
Lewis writes when talking about Milton’s world view."
Lewis often used this metaphor of "The Great Dance" for
the kind of non-legalistic, seemingly effortless
cooperation that he imagined redeemed man
as capable of.
E.g. _Miracles_, Chapter 14, "The Grand Miracle"
p. 201:
"Where a God who is totally purposive and totally
foreseeing acts upon a Nature which is totally
interlocked, there can be no accidents or loose ends...
What is subservient from one point of view is the
main purpose from another. No thing or event is
first or highest in a sense which forbids it
to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows
to Man in one movement of the dance receives
Man's reverences in another. To be high or central
means to abdicate continually: to be low means
to be raised: all good masters are servants:
God washes the feet of men. The concepts we usually
bring to the consideration of such matters are
miserably political and prosaic. We think of flat
repetitive equality and arbitrary privilege as
the only two alternatives -- thus missing all the
overtones, the counterpoint, the vibrant sensitiveness,
the inter-inanimations of reality..."
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