Today I watched a YouTube video by someone who is investigating the LDS Church. He talked about his experience being challenged to abstain from tea and coffee. The missionaries promised him that doing so would help him get an answer as to whether the LDS Church was true or not.
Their challenge actually should help give him an answer as to whether the LDS Church is true or not. In fact, it should conclusively demonstrate to him that it is false. Anyone who tells you that your worthiness or standing before God depends on abstaining from tea or coffee is not speaking for God.
Jesus taught that “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” (Matt 15:11). Jesus elaborated on this teaching to his disciples: “Are you so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.” (This means all foods are clean.)” (Mark 7:18-19). The things that we eat or drink therefore do not and cannot make us unclean before God.
(That last parenthetical may be new to Latter-day Saint readers who have only studied the King James Version. The King James translation translates Mark 7:19 a bit differently as “Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?” This is not a situation where we are dealing with conflicting manuscripts, but one where different translators have interpreted the same text slightly differently. Modern translators uniformly favor seeing what the KJV translates as “purging all meats” as an aside from Mark elaborating on what Jesus taught)
Jesus’s teaching regarding food and drink is elaborated upon by Paul. It is worth considering how significant this is. Paul was a pharisee taught in the strictest and most observant school of pharisaical judaism. The fact that Paul taught that in Jesus all food and drink is clean was therefore a radical and unexpected development. Indeed, it was much more radical and unexpected than a former Latter-day Saint writing about how tea and coffee and alcohol are permitted. But this is exactly the stance that Paul takes.
I’ve already written about Paul’s confrontation with Peter in Galatians where Paul publicly rebuked Peter for beginning to backslide and reimpose food and drink requirements on non-Jewish converts.
But this as far from the only time that Paul addressed this controversy. In Romans 14, Paul addresses controversies in the Church over dietary practices. He notes that in the early Church some, that he identifies as “weak,” chose to abstain from certain foods, while others, the “strong,” did not abstain. As a matter of what is permissible, Paul clearly sides with the “strong” emphasizing that “All food is clean.” (Romans 14:20). Paul however urges members on both sides to avoid imposing on each other and creating disharmony over matters of food and drink.
One additional teaching of Paul stands out to me in particular. In Colossians he wrote to Christians who appeared to have been beguiled by teachers who told them to abstain from various foods or drinks to achieve ritual purity. Paul warned “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” (Col 2:16). When we submit to such rules we are acting “as though [we] still belonged to the world” because Christ died to free us from them (Col 2:20). Paul goes on to explain that “these rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings.” (Col 2:22). Indeed, while these rules “have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship” and “their false humility,” they ultimately “lack any value.” (Col 2:23). .
Paul’s warning should ring in our ears when Latter-day Saints tell us that our worthiness and standing before God is dependent on abstaining from certain drinks. When the Church requires members to stand before a bishop and be judged worthy or not worthy based on what they consume, it is acting contrary to the Bible. By using food and drink as gate to block someone from accessing so called “saving ordinances,” Church leaders show that they do not speak for Christ. By claiming that someone who drinks a cup of coffee might not make it to heaven, LDS leaders have identified themselves as false teachers who are focused on “a shadow of things to come” rather than Christ.
In fact, I’d be so bold as to say that all that we need to know to reject the LDS Church’s truth claims is the fact that the Church elevates food and drink laws to the status of a requirement for eternal life.