Here is what I said in my August 25 sermon:
Here’s another one: “I will not give money to someone who spends money on cigarettes, and we should post no smoking signs outside the church.” That may seem judgmental to some folks, especially to those who are spending the money on cigarettes and smoking near church entrances, but it’s really discerning. The no smoking signs are actually the law of the state of Ohio. We as a church are violating state law as well as the rights of every person who walks in and out of our doors, especially the rights of our employees and volunteers who work here all day. We are subject to fines if we do not begin to comply with state law. Also, cigarettes are expensive to buy which spends money that could be used for food and bills, cigarettes cost the tax payers billions of dollars a year to treat smoking related illnesses for those on Medicaid, and cigarette butts account for more litter in the United States than any other category of garbage. Personally, I have discerned that I’m done giving money to anyone who smokes because of those reasons. But what about this statement: “Smokers are bad people.” That is judgmental and it is categorically untrue. Some of the absolute best people I know in the world are smokers. Some of the people I love the most and who have been the kindest to me over the years are smokers. I’m just not going to help them pay their bills or buy groceries until they quit spending money on cigarettes, money that should be spent on bills and groceries. Why should they get to spend money on cigarettes and then expect me to spend my money on their bills?
To tell you the truth, I have never lived in a place where smoking is as visually prevalent as it is in Washington Court House, Ohio. As soon as we moved here one of the first things that Danielle and I noticed was how many people smoke here. We are from Oklahoma, the land of the tribal tax-free tobacco shops and one of the states with the highest numbers of smokers in the nation, but still we’d never seen anything like the prevalence of smoking that we noticed immediately in our new home. As Wyatt has gotten older he has begun to ask that tough question, “If smoking is bad then why does everyone seem to be doing it? Are they bad people?” Our answer to Wyatt is, “They are not bad people, but they are making a bad choice. Those parents love their kids but they are setting a bad example for their kids.” Then we tell him about how smoking causes cancer (he knows what cancer is from all the funerals I’ve done), heart disease, and COPD. We tell him about how it makes you smell bad and about how much money people waste on cigarettes. He always follows that up with another question: “Then why do so many people do it?” I’m not sure he’s old enough to understand all the reasons and I’m not sure that I do, so I usually just shrug my shoulders.
The reason smoking has come up at all around here is that almost everyone who asks me for money is either smoking a cigarette or smells like cigarettes and because a large number of our neighbors in need who stand and sit in front of the church building or in the alley waiting for the food pantry or produce distribution to open are smoking cigarettes. A couple of weeks ago, Larry picked up over sixty cigarette butts in our church flower beds, most of which had been thrown into the flowers that had been planted for us by the Girl Scouts and Brownies. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when I leave the church building to go home for lunch I have to walk through the gauntlet of cigarette smoke and the alley and even the manse flowerbeds have been littered with cigarette butts. As we started to look into posting “No Smoking” signs, we found out that there is actually a state law that prohibits smoking anywhere near the doors or windows of buildings utilized by the public, and that protects the rights of property owners to ban smoking anywhere on their property, whether it is by a door or not. We were actually breaking the law by not having no smoking signs. So we posted signs and most folks respected the signs, but someone who came by on Friday during produce distribution (I was out of town) said that the smokers all congregated in front of the manse. We will now have to post no smoking signs at the manse as well.
I really don’t like smoking. I grew up in a smoking household. Although a couple of decades later my dad quit, he smoked two packs a day during my childhood, and my mom smoked too. They smoked in the house and we had full ashtrays around the house. I think I remember one of my sisters making an ashtray for my dad as a craft in school. We were the kind of kids who showed up at school with clothes that smell like an ashtray. They smoked in the car too. I remember my dad’s smoke breath, the empty cartons around the house, and my embarrassment when I’d come out of Sunday school and he’d be standing outside the church smoking. I also remember stealing some of those cigarettes and smoking them myself when I was ten or so. But thankfully my mom quit, and after my parents got divorced and my dad remarried my stepmom eventually nipped it in the bud and forced him outside to smoke because she was tired of our house smelling like a back alley bar. Then eventually the tobacco taxes got through to my dad what the Surgeon General and his family couldn’t—smoking costs too much to be worth it. I am so proud of my dad for quitting smoking after thirty years or more of doing it. He hasn't had a cigarette in probably fifteen years or so. I also don't like smoking because my grandpa died of lung cancer that spread up to his brain. This was caused by smoking.
When I was in college, my friends and I often smoked when we went out to bars or were at parties. It always seemed like a good idea at 1 am in the morning, but we’d wake up stinking and hacking up gross stuff out of our lungs. This continued on for a little while after college and after I got married. Danielle wouldn’t let me sleep in bed if I’d been smoking, though. Eventually, most of my friends and I quit. Those of us who quit were not addicted; it was just a habit. One friend was addicted and I think he still smokes over a decade later. Most of the time when I smell cigarette smoke now it makes me nauseous. Occasionally it gives me a bit of what recovering alcoholics call “euphoric recall,” which means it takes me back to the fun times that involved a cigarette but it doesn’t bring to mind all the negatives. All of that is to say that I know what it’s like to be the child of smokers and I know what it is like to smoke, but I do not know what it is like to be addicted to nicotine.
At this point I could bring up 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, where the Apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” Granted, Paul is not writing about cigarette smoking; he is writing about sex outside of marriage. However, the principle certainly carries over—we are to honor God with our bodies. Here is where the own log in my eye shows up. Do I honor God whenever I eat a Whopper with cheese and fries? Do I honor God when I occasionally stop off at Tony’s Coneys on Highway 62 for a small chocolate malt? Does it honor God that I’m carrying 25 extra pounds around that are completely the result of my diet? Does it honor God that I ate so much refined flour and refined sugar over the years that I ended up in the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack only to find out that I have reactive hypoglycemia, which was caused not by some terrible stroke of bad genetic luck but by too much macaroni & cheese and brownies? Probably not.
My enjoyment of saturated fats and refined sugars are probably not glorifying to God. However, it should also be noted that I don’t throw my wrappers in people’s flower gardens and my drinking a malt doesn’t fill up everyone else’s body around me with saturated fat and refined sugars. People don’t have to walk through a cloud of my cheeseburger grease. Also, I’m not asking for assistance and my health insurance is not publically funded. However, my diet is the log in my eye; smoking is the speck in others. Therefore I cannot condemn people for it, and I should be merciful in my judgments until I have dealt with the fatty, sugary log in my own eye. But that doesn’t mean that I cannot use someone’s smoking addiction/habit as a factor in my discernment of whether or not I should give them money.
When it comes to smoking, I am a libertarian. If you want to smoke and that smoking in no way infringes upon the rights of anyone else, then go for it. Whether or not this is a glorification of God with your body is between you and God. But how often does smoking not affect someone else? If you smoke all by yourself, have more than enough money for cigarettes, pay for your own health insurance through your job, pay all your bills and take care of everyone within your spheres of responsibility, and no one will miss you if you die of lung or throat cancer or heart disease, then by all means smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. But I’m still not going to give you money if you approach me and tell me you can’t pay your bills. If you feel this is judgmental and unbecoming of a Christian, especially a Christian pastor, then you and I have a very different view of what being judgmental means. You can tell me that the money you spend on your cigarettes would not even scratch the surface of your financial needs. You can tell me that smoking is the one luxury you can afford (which isn’t true. Cable TV is cheaper than smoking, as is ice cream, joining the YMCA, reading, hiking, vacations to nearby attractions), that it doesn’t affect others (it almost certainly does, especially if you are on Medicaid or Medicare), and that I don’t understand your addiction (which I don’t, but I know folks who have quit who do), but I’m still not going to give you money.
Someone who smokes is my neighbor. If a Samaritan could be a Jew’s neighbor, then a smoker can most certainly be my neighbor. I am to love my neighbor, which I strive to do (although sometimes I fail and fall into sin). As a smoker’s loving neighbor I will help him in a life threatening situation like the Good Samaritan did for the beaten man on the road to Jericho. Mercy in that kind of situation knows no divisions. But I’m not paying his bills for him. If his kids are hungry, send them over and I’ll feed them dinner. If he wants to quit, tell me and I’ll help him figure out the most effective way to do that (which would be a marvelous mission for our church). But I’m not going to accept from him this load of dung that smoking is some part of an oppressive injustice against the poor and uneducated. Granted, those with no high school diploma and no college degree smoke at much higher rates than those who have been to college and tobacco companies certainly target the poor and uneducated because they know that is where they make their money, but while cigarettes may be holding you down, it isn’t from the weight of someone else’s boot on your neck. No one is sticking cigarettes in anyone else’s mouth, just as no one is stuffing cheeseburgers in mine.
Again, I used to feel that this kind of talk was judgmental. But now I have a family to take care of, now I’m getting more than 200 requests a year for money, now I am tired of walking through clouds of smoke on the church stairs, now I am tired of seeing the Girl Scouts’ flowers covered with cigarette butts, now I am tired of seeing people smoke in their cars with their kids in there with them, and now I am going to start being discerning even if other people feel it is judgmental. All the while I will pray to God to guard my heart from judgmentalism. Mercy is truly greater than condemnation. That’s why I need to avoid condemnation while I am practicing discernment. This is true for all of us.
May you have a blessed week. Please remember to pray for the people of Syria, and for our national and international leaders. May peace break out in our world for a change!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett
