Caring More About How You Die, Than How You Live

"Tobacco is an evil weed and from the devil doth proceed. Stains your fingers, stinks your clothes and makes a chimney of your nose."

Some Christians love to hate tobacco. I don't particularly like it. I wouldn't want any of my family to smoke cigarettes, chew tobacco or have an addiction to it. But lets face it, if it is a sin at all, the sin is in the addiction to it. Christians live their life in a way that is just as unhealthy as smoking but won't demonize their own personal unhealthy preferences. 

Tobacco is enemy number one to Christians because it is so obvious and smelly (but Taco Bell can cause some really offensive odors too.) And dying of emphysema is a lot more gruesome than dying of a heart attack.

The same person that will condemn tobacco will sit down to a huge meal of fried foods and pastries. Some might eat a half a dozen donuts. (Let's admit it, Little Debbie's are Adventist cigarettes. Or maybe I should say Stripples are the SDA smoke.)

Perhaps these same people will eat occasionally at fast foods restaurants. Or sits in front of a computer or television for hours a day without exercise.

Or eat salty or processed food (such as Loma Linda and Worthington vegetarian meats!) Or eat high sodium, processed foods that are microwaved in plastic! Or drinking soda daily or worse yet, fake sugar, chemically infused flavored soda. 

All of that is just cigarettes in a different form. (Thanks Jim Gaffigan and your McDonald's routine.) 

We all do things that are not healthy. For some reason tobacco has become the big, bad unhealthy demon of choice.

Addictions are what we should avoid. 

Tobacco addictions are harder to conceal than coffee or chocolate or cola addictions. Yet as a Christian we really need to ask, when Christ said our bodies are a temple, was He really speaking primarily about eating habits that might hurt our body or something deeper, perhaps, say, addictions that can kill our souls? Our bodies house our souls and since we are looking at eternity--perhaps addictions that kill our spirits are much worse than physical addictions. 

I know of a lot of men who have a tobacco addiction but that does not wreak the horror on his family that a pornography addiction does. 

Christ told us not to worry about what goes into our mouths but what comes out! (And I am certain Christ would rather smoke come out of your lips than a lie or salty language or gossip.) Jesus also warned us not to worry about him who can kill the body but about Him who can kill both body and soul. 

I am not promoting tobacco use, but only a use of our logic and reason. 

• What is worse: smoking cigarettes or being a part of a church that has hospitals that do abortions and honors one of the most notorious child-murderer abortionist in the history of the world? 
• What is worse: having an occasional pipe or cigar or sitting in front of the filth on television each night? 
• What is worse: smoking a cigarette or pride? 
• What is worse: smoking a cigar or not being kind to your neighbor?

When it come right down to it, we demonize the  habits we personally don't like and excuse the habits we have. 

One more word. Yes, smoking isn't good for you. I don't recommend it. Yet, isn't it more important for a man to live with integrity and courage, working hard for his family rather than spending a lot of time obsessed about what unhealthy habit will eventually kill him? When we look over the focus of our choices, isn't it more important to care how you live than how you die?