I understand the warm sin emphasis side and how that plays out, but it’s not clear to me that the opposite is true — that non-orthodox religions are any better at helping their flocks avoid ‘cold’ sins. After all, discourse about diversity and tolerance can in practice lead to intolerance and judgemental behavior as well as a certain smugness that doesn’t seem to me to be in line at all with true feelings of charity and humility.

In other words, it’s not at all clear to me that orthodox or liberal groups are any better than the other when it comes to ‘cold’ sins. The self-righteous problem flows through all streets.

Also: isn’t the whole point of avoiding the ‘warm’ sins is that to engage in them damages our standing and relationship with God, and it’s only through that relationship and our closeness to the spirit that we can truly actively ‘commit’ [to] the actions and attitudes we are supposed to, that we shouldin’t ‘omit’?

Or is the line drawn there because, as I mentioned earlier, warm sins are typically the product of willful disobedience which may render an individual unprepared to make even more covenants.

With regard to the comments on the temple recommend interview, I agree that these are largely warm-sin oriented. However, the temple ceremony itself, which I think we consider to be the most important teaching instrument, seems to be completely cold-sin oriented. Temple worship itself seems to be more of the focus than merely holding a temple recommend.

And what cold sins do you have in mind when you mention the needs of humanity? That seems to be more of a political question.

This key element is, in my opinion, why warm sins may generally be regarded by Church members as more grave than cold sins. And this, in conjunction with the measurability and obviousness of the sin, is probably why warm sins are more likely to become gossip fodder.

Good enough for me. I like the warm/cold insight as well. As for Christina’s chicken-egg analysis, I see it more of a practical matter — it is easier to give commandments with relation to warm sins.

I don’t think I was making an assumption, I was simply reading your characterizations:
…Iron Rod Mormons. They see life in black and white terms, right and wrong and value obedience over many other things.
and
…Liahona Mormons, who, although they value obedience to the commandments and precepts of the gospel, feel that spiritual development comes from finding their way on this more amorphous path of feeling and thinking and listening

Here you give Liahona Mormons much more credit than the iron rod type. I could go on about the poor choice of symbols (and yes I know their origin and that you didn’t invent them) making conversation on the issue difficult, but that is off topic here. I also think there was some miscommunication, which is my fault. I was speaking to your comment above on Liahona vs Iron Rod Mormons, not on the warm/cold issue where it doesn’t apply as well. However this confusion bolsters my contention that the two categorizations do not overlap much.

While I still think that warm/cold corresponds neatly to the comission/omission categorization I agree that a fundamental change of character is needed to have true charity. Perhaps once that happens much of this categorizing and list making of sins that we tend to do falls by the wayside. Christ certainly made things simple by summing things up in two commandments, yet we all struggle with both of them.

The flip side of the age thing is, if we never try to approach others with charity and love, then the extra years of experience can leave us inured to the suffering around us. So I don’t think “getting older” is the answer to how we avoid the cold sins, but I think that maybe the closest I can come to an answer is to become empathetic through our experience (i.e., it doesn’t require much experience to abstain from drinking alcohol, while it may take a lifetime of experience to begin to understand where our neighbor is coming from).

Rueben, the word “love” is used in the ceremony.

Your post seems to say that we should avoid being too hot or to cold with regards to our preaching and our conduct. This sounds like the Golden Mean all over again, but Of course, if we were neither hot nor cold, the Lord would spew us out…. (Rev 3:16) :)