Up in Smoke
I used to love a
good cigar, but I am a diabetic and my only sibling died in 1985, at the
ripe old age of 46.
Let me start with
my brother. He had retired from the Air Force thirteen months before,
where he had been a B-52 pilot, appeared to be in perfect health, ate and
drank very moderately, worked out at the gym three days a week and had no
visible, excess fat. But he dropped dead of a sudden, massive heart attack
on September 18, 1985.
When I got back
from doing his funeral — the hardest thing I ever did — I had a
thorough examination by a cardiologist, who after giving me an EKG on a
treadmill, asked me all about my brother’s life-style.
When he discovered that my brother smoked cigarettes, he told me,
“He shaved seventeen years off his life by smoking.”
How did the
cardiologist know that? What other factors did he not take into
consideration? My brother had been born quite premature back in 1939, a
time when medical science had not developed neo-natal care as it has
today. What were the stresses that he may have faced with his family? He
had taken the lives of many people as he dropped his bombs on North
Vietnam. How much did his conscience haunt him for killing all those
little children in a war that was fought and lost largely because of the
self-interests of politicians? In fact, during the war, he expressed
his disapproval about the war and how it was being fought — I guess that’s
why he stayed the same rank for the last eleven years he was in the Air
Force even though he was an Air Force Academy graduate and had a masters
in economics — perhaps
all of these things may have contributed to his early death.
The cardiologist
had a point — I have no doubt that heavy, long term tobacco use tends to
contribute to a variety of ailments, including cancer and heart disease,
but human beings simply are incapable of considering all the factors in
any situation, and nothing can be known absolutely except by God. We still
see through a glass darkly: “I care very little if I am judged by you or
by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is
clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.
Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord
comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose
the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise
from God.” (1 Corinthians 4:3-5)
We arrogant human
beings, in our quest to reenter Eden, assume that we can ultimately
control our destinies by our knowledge. I remember a statue of two raptors
standing outside Mitchell Hall at my brother’s alma mater, with the
inscription: “Man’s Flight Through Life Is Sustained by the Power of
His Knowledge.” To which, I say with Saint Paul: “Skybalon!”
(Philippians 3:8)
I am a diabetic.
On June 26, 1997, I learned that I was a diabetic. After learning this, I
went back to my office, shut the door and wept. Then I gave it to God,
dried my tears and got on with life. I have had only one small portion of
a refined-sugar-based sweet since that day. For me, sugar and anything
that metabolizes too quickly into sugar is a poison — that means that I
don’t even drink orange juice except in very small quantities. I have to
watch potatoes and too much bread, especially white bread — “The
whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead.” I punctured my finger when
I got up this morning, and my blood sugar was only 105 . . . wonderful,
but I have to take medicine now to keep it that way, whereas I was able to
control it with diet and exercise for the first four years.
Now I have a
strong urge to condemn other people for what they eat, especially during
grazing season, which runs from Thanksgiving until Mardi Gras in Louisiana
— I’ll have to be extra careful until Ash Wednesday. Sometimes I go to
our men’s Saturday morning prayer meeting, and somebody has brought fat
pills (doughnuts). I have to fight saying something about it, so I ask
myself, who am I to judge another man’s servant? Then to conquer the
rising lust, I remind myself that a doughnut is simply made up of a
massive amount of sweetened lard with flour. By the grace of God, at
Thanksgiving and Christmass, my family can feast on all kinds of sugary
stuff after eating the roasted turkey (aren’t they kin to buzzards?),
and I can content myself with an artificially sweetened Eskimo Pie. Okay,
okay, I know that stuff can be bad for you, too, so I try to avoid
Nutrasweet — who really knows about the effects of massive amounts? But
a guy needs a little something sweet once in a while, and I have now
discovered the splendor of Splenda. Real sugar scares me, because I just
can’t stop with one candy bar.
Lastly, I used to love a good cigar. I know that it makes your breath smell like a combination of kitty litter and an ash tray, but I found it wonderfully relaxing slowly to puff away, thinking deep thoughts about God and things. I once enjoyed a lovely Buteras cigar in Houston with Michael Butera himself . . . best cigar I ever had.
Ned Randolph, Bob Vincent, Michael Butera and John Meeks
But the last time
I smoked a cigar, I was sitting down in my boat house on a warm summer
evening, reading Bob Reymond’s New Systematic
Theology of the Christian Faith. I don’t know whether it was his
departure from the Nicene Creed or the cigar, but as I climbed the hill
back up to my house, I tossed my cookies. I still have a humidor
full of fine cigars, including five Romeo Y Julieta Habanas brought
back from Cuba by a good friend, but I’ll probably use them to treat bee
stings on my grandchildren. With my diabetes and everything else, the
pleasure pay off is not a big enough compensation for me to light up. I’ve
got to make sure that my neuropathy doesn’t get worse, which tobacco use
seems to affect, because I don’t want somebody to chop off my feet.
What is my point?
I can already feel the little Pharisee that lives inside me getting bigger
whenever I see somebody light up. Because I have concluded that I can’t
do it anymore, deep down inside, I want to legislate for everybody else,
too, just as I tend to do with candy and cake. But Saint Paul warns me not
to sit in judgment of my brother now that my faith is weak regarding my
smoking cigars. (Romans 14, especially verse 10, “Why do you judge your
brother?” and 1 Corinthians 8-10)
My smoking
friends have to be careful, too, because they may look down on me for my
lack of faith about tobacco and write me off as less than thoroughly
biblical — they may even call me a “fundy” or a pietist behind my
back. Saint Paul has a word for them, too: “Why do you look down on your
brother?” (Romans 14:10) Clair Davis once told me that you used to
be able to tell a person’s
theological stance by what he had in his mouth:
Reformed: Pipe
Neo-Orthodox: Cigar
Liberal: Cigarette
Pietist: Nothing
Saint Paul goes
on to warn all of us: “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your
freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak . . . therefore, if
what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat
again, so that I will not cause him to fall . . . But we did not use this
right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the
gospel of Christ . . . Though I am free and belong to no man, I make
myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible . . . I have become
all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I
do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings
. . . ‘Everything is permissible’ — but not everything is
beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’ — but not everything is
constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others . .
. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory
of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church
of God — even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not
seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” (1
Corinthians 8:9, 13; 9:12, 19-23; 10:23, 24, 31-33)
There are a lot
of things that simply are not sinful in and of themselves. The phonemes
that comprise the old Saxon, monosyllabic, onomatopoeic, physiological
terms, such as s. h. i. t., are not sinful. But I can assure you that such
things in our speech will put up a mighty big barrier between us and most
people — worse than going into the pulpit with a huge piece of snot
(another of those old Saxon words) stuck to the end of your nose or
glistening in your mustache. I did use the “S” word once in a sermon
that I preached from Philippians 3, but it was in prison — I would be a
fool to use it from the pulpit of my church.
Smoking is not unrelated to that. Saint Paul has a word about all these matters: “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. (He doesn’t mean not to teach biblical truth to others, just that we shouldn’t flaunt our freedom in Christ.) Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” (Romans 14:22, 23)
Always teach the
truth. Smoke, if you must, in private, but brush your teeth before
speaking to those who don’t smoke, and especially before kissing your
wife.
“Sive ergo manducatis sive bibitis vel aliud quid facitis omnia in gloriam Dei facite.”