I myself was a three pack-a-day smoker and can say from personal experience that quitting is not easy. If you are a smoker, you have already been told a thousand times that it is bad for you. You already are aware of the cancer risk. You already know it is a waste of money. You have plenty of reasons to feel guilty about the habit.
The question at this point however, is what if you are a follower of Jesus and still smoke or chew tobacco; are you sinning? Are you a ‘Real’ Christian? If you died with a cigarette in your hand or a chew in your face, would you go to hell?
I once was in a place where I was asking the exact same questions. A Pastor friend told me, “Follow the Lord. If you are a Christian it is far better for you that you don’t smoke. But if you have not been able to stop smoking, I would rather you keep coming to church and praying as a smoker than to stay home.” He didn’t condemn me but directed me toward the solution. The solution was in the phrase- ‘Follow the Lord’. I kept getting a picture of the Lord in my head with him walking down the road smoking a cigarette. Every time I saw this mental image, I knew it was not Jesus at all. I realized that the Lord was showing me this picture so that I could see how absurd it was. The reality was that I COULDN’T picture the Lord smoking and I knew that I should stop too.
I tried several times. I would take out a cigarette and say, “This is the last one” and throw the pack away. I ended up throwing several ‘last packs’ away over the course of a few weeks. I was struggling with it. But I still kept going to church. I still kept on praying for God to help me quit. I asked a couple of people at church to pray with me as well. One day, I just left them and have never had one since. That was 25 years ago.
The basic scriptural reason for not smoking is that for the Christian, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies are tools for us to use in the service of the Lord. We need to take care of them as much as possible. Smoking is an activity that is known to be harmful to one’s health and has no real up side.
Some Christians tend to over focus on outward things like smoking and use these things as their primary criteria for deciding if a person is ‘really’ a Christian or not. They may look down on smoking and eat like a pig- stuffing themselves with every kind of fattening thing that comes into view without the slightest twinge of guilt because, after all, they are not SMOKING! They may be engaging in something equally dangerous to their health and equally a waste of money that could be given to the Lord’s work- but they excuse themselves because it is not smoking.
There are places in the world where they have no surgeon general warning that smoking is bad. The people smoke all the time. I have been to churches in foreign countries where cigarettes are offered after church to all the men as they hang around and talk. It has simply never occurred to them that it might not be appropriate to smoke as a Christian. It was just never brought up.
Some may say that I should not mention these things because it may encourage people to keep on smoking. I don’t think so. You are too smart for that! Some people live in areas where they have not had the benefit of so much scientific research on the subject and are left to their own to wonder why they are coughing their lungs out in small chunks. YOU on the other hand are NOT in that boat.
Follow the Lord. If you can picture Him hanging on the cross with a cigarette stuck between His fingers even with His hand nailed down to the wood, then join Him in a smoke. But if you can’t see Him that way, then say, “Lord, I don’t see you smoking so I don’t want to either. I have been doing it a long time and I am chemically addicted to it. Please give me the strength to stop and help me have victory over it.” Amen
This should be the real issue for us that goes even above the health aspects. Christians should not be addicted to anything. We should not let anything have power to control us other than the Lord Himself.
It would be really interesting right here if I wrote that something that would include things like caffeine or chocolate or potato chips or energy drinks. That however, would be a major shock to the rest of us ‘non-smoking’ ‘Real’ Christians- so I won’t. I won’t write anything like that. I don’t want to cause any offense or ruffle and feathers. Could you imagine if all the people in our churches who are addicted to things less visible than cigarettes were to be kicked out or made to feel unwelcome; we would certainly have smaller congregations!
Here is the bottom line. It is not good to smoke. I don’t want you to smoke. Jesus doesn’t want you to smoke. We love you and want you to be healthy and doing great things in the Lord’s service for a long time. If you are in church and love God but still struggle with this habit, keep going to church. Keep loving God and keep working on quitting. You will get the victory over it but in the mean time, we still want you with us. I’ll pray for you and your struggle with smokes if you pray for me and my struggle with coffee, coke and cheeseburgers.
