Tobacco is the ultimate sin. At least that is what I was taught when I was little bigger than an overgrown zygote. Yet, for the past several years I have sat at my computer, books of theology and biblical commentaries strewn about, preparing sermons and lessons-all the while cradling in my mouth a fine Savinelli. Most recently, while filling my study with plumes of luscious smoke from an outstanding black cavendish, I have been preparing for Lent. Lent is the time of the church year-40 days leading up to Good Friday-when one is to examine oneself, particularly in the area of sin.
Tobacco was just about the utmost evil in the Appalachian culture in which I was raised. Not that other heinous sins were out of the running. Gambling and everybody's favorite-demon rum-gave a strong challenge to Lady Nicotine. Card playing and dancing could be counted on for at least one sermon a month from the Baptist preacher. So adamant were Baptists against the latter that it was said that Baptists would not make love standing up, fearful that it would lead to dancing.
Ah, but smoking took the brunt of kicks and venom spewed from pulpits and Sunday School rooms everywhere. It was the one sin just about everyone could condemn. It caused cancer. It was a horrible waste of precious money. It made one's clothes foul smelling. It begat yellow teeth, not that too many people in West Virginia had a full set of teeth.
Smoking was the perfect sin for adolescent boys, a rite of initiation into puberty and away from mother's apron strings. It was almost the perfect entrance into teenage rebelliousness. Just about everyone's dad (and sometimes, mother) had packs of Larks and Luckys and Winstons laying around the house in cartons. It was relatively easy to swipe an individual Marlboro from the pack- if not the entire pack- from the carton. Abundant woods provided an invincible safe haven in which to lose one's innocence. And, after the first full cigarette, also provided a safe depository for the puking which inevitably followed the first ciggy.
The thing about smoking is that it was a sin that every young teenager could engage in, feel giddy about indulging in, and experience firsthand the pleasures of forbidden fruit without too much of a risk. Drunkenness was harder because you had to find an eighteen year old- the legal drinking age at the time- to buy the stuff for you. No kid had enough money to gamble. School systems, never one to turn the other cheek to an easy source of revenue with proms and sock hops, condoned dancing. And sex? Well, sex was the thing every kid back then bragged about doing, but everyone knew in their heart of hearts that all the chatter was merely wishful thinking.
My dad was among the many adults who smoked. For years he fluctuated back and forth between Chesterfields and Pall Malls. Never a sissy, Dad liked full-flavored, non-filtered smokes. When the Surgeon General made his famous pronouncement, the climate went up in smoke. Health Department types came to the chemical plant where Dad worked with an ultra slick dog-and-pony show. Accountants were swayed by the ledger sheets showing how smoking was like tossing moolah down the drain. Engineers were wowed by scientific data flowing lava-like from mountains of data charts and diagrams. But grunts like Dad were probably moved by actual cancer ridden lungs extracted from the cadavers of cancer victims. In my heart of hearts, though, I think the main reason Dad quit was to escape the perpetual nagging from my mother. Who knows?
Anyway, one day Dad abandoned his beloved ciggys, stopped by the drug store, and came home with a Dr. Grabow pipe and a can of Half and Half. For the next 20 years Dad and his pipe were inseparable. The living room was perpetually filled with plumes of aromatic ecstasy. I grew up adoring the smell of white and dark burley curling up in clouds on ceilings and lamp shades. To me it was the epitome of cool sophistication and wit, though Dad was anything but sophisticated.
When the time was ripe, I snuck out with some friends near the railroad underpass and was initiated into the Fellowship of Fumes. In no time at all I was smoking a half pack of Camel Filters every day. I was in the Seventh Grade.
I became the epitome of the prepubescent hypocrite, attending Sunday School at the Grace Baptist Church and enjoying a smoke to and from church. My sensibilities were pummeled by the parson, who could preach against every sin, real and imagined, with the best of them. Adding fuel to the fire was the fundamentalist, holiness background of my maternal family. I got wacked from both sides, waves of condemnation heaping guilt upon guilt with every cigarette I smoked.
I could drone on and on about my smoking history, but the details would bore you more than one of my sermons. Following in the footsteps of my father, I abandoned cigarettes eventually. Not, I might add, because I was under conviction by the Holy Ghost that such a thing was the worst offense anyone could commit against God. Nay, more so because I was an asthmatic and coughed myself senseless morning, noon, and night. I traded in my Camels for a Peterson full bent system pipe and a can of Borkum Riff. But I was still torn and guilt ridden.
Among the more fundamentalist groups, it is not uncommon for adherents to experience what I now call fundy purges. Riding a wave of revivalist type warm fuzzies, kids will declare themselves free of Satan's grip. They will gather around a bonfire and toss their implements of evil into the flames- cigarettes mostly. I have seen vast record collections complete with first edition pressings of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Janis Joplin cast into the flames. Not one person who did so did not NOT regret it afterward. Nor did I ever see anyone toss their girlie magazines into the purgatorial fires. Apparently, Playboys were too attached to the life of imagination we all seemed to possess.
I too went through such a purge, though I did not toss my beloved Peterson into the fire. It was lost or stolen. I went off the weed for ten years, convinced in my heart of hearts that puffing tobacco was the ultimate affront against God. That all changed during my first year of seminary. Sensing the genuine call of God on my life, I had moved my wife and two young daughters to Pittsburgh. For the first time in my life I was making my lodging in a place other than the Bible Belt.
After the very first chapel service mine eyes were exposed to a sight that shook me down to my socks. I felt dazed and confused. Lightheaded. I felt for a moment that I was in Oz. It was as if I had been hurled by a tornado into another realm and I felt like saying, "Dorothy, I don't think we're in the Bible Belt anymore." What was this apparition, this shocking display, this vision akin to an LSD trip? It was the sight of half the seminary faculty with pipes in their mouths, puffing away and actually talking about GOD and THEOLOGY in a dense cloud of Captain Black. I experienced vertigo when discovering that the most godly professor at that institution, a man who radiated the presence of God in his life, was a ten bowl a day guy with a priceless Dunhill.
"How can this be?" I asked myself. "Don't these esteemed theologians and professors and academics know that they are bringing their souls to the precipice of a dark hole?" "Don't they know what a heinous sin they are partaking in?"
That sight was the first of what caused me to change my mind about God- His nature and character. It got me thinking about the whole notion of sin, and what is important to God and what should be important to us.
I would lying if I were to state that smoking is no big thing health-wise. I have buried too many parishioners who croaked of lung cancer to be that naive. That, to me, is like the dodos who deny that there was an actual Holocaust. Nor would I be totally honest in stating that smoking won't be a drain on ones finances if one chooses Salems over a Stanwell. But I can unequivocally state that, to me anyway, smoking is pretty far down the totem pole on God's warpath against sin. Alcoholism notwithstanding, I would say the same thing could be said of drinking in moderation.
I have scoured the scriptures for references about smoking. Given that it was not a popular thing to do until after Sir Walter Raleigh returned to England bearing some very good Virginian from Virginia, one cannot find a single reference to it from Genesis to Revelation. It was not included in the Ten Commandments. It cannot be found in the ten thousand prohibitions in the torah (Law). Paul did not insert smoking in his numerous lists of sin, nor did Jesus incorporate it into His list of woes against the Pharisees.
I remember making the mistake once, not long after my conversion, of lighting up around a Christian friend. He lit into me like I was a drug dealer, "Don't you know what Paul says about smoking?" I confessed my ignorance. "He tells us, 'Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? How can you treat the Holy Spirit with such disdain by willfully sucking down all that tar and nicotine and all those carcinogens?'" He had a point. And it IS a good principle to live as healthfully as possible. It was only many years later, however, that I learned that St. Paul's instructions, when read in context, have more to do with engaging in pagan ritual than it does in enjoying a nice bowl of Balkan Sobranie.
As one reads the scriptures, it becomes pretty clear that God gets peeved at some things more than others. He is angered by the mistreatment of the poor, the widow and the orphan. He is incensed when business owners fail to pay their employees fair and just wages. He is irate at judges who take bribes, at those in the legal system who thwart justice for those outside the loop. And, lest the rest of us get cocky, He gets REALLY ticked off at hypocrisy of any form, particularly those whose public faith is little more than a show.
Not long after getting over the shock of my professors' puffing, I went to a fine tobacconist in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, bought myself a decent Barling knock-off and a couple ounces of fine house blend, returned to the smoking room of the seminary library, lit up, and was transported into realms of esoteria I had not experienced in years. And I haven't let up nigh these sixteen years later.
Some people have difficulty believing me, that puffing a pipe makes me feel closer to God. They are aghast when I tell them that I like to smoke while having my devotions. That I do my best thinking when clutching an ancient WDC Churchwarden in my teeth whilst taking drags of McClelland Red Cake. Yet those who have experienced the clarity of thought that can come with pipe smoking, who have had their senses and sensibilities elevated by the taste of a fine Latakia blend, and who know firsthand the therapeutic value of the fellowship of the briar will probably know of what I speak.
So as we enter Lent, be aware of those times you act like a jerk to your wife and family. Be sensitive to the discrepancies between your talk and your walk. You might experience a tug at the heart sitting in a sanctuary some Sunday morning. But my guess is that you are just as likely to find it while sitting- meditating, contemplating- and enjoying your pipe.
Rev. Brown is currently pastoring The Longville Community Church of Longville, Minnesota. Please check out his church's web site at: http://geocities.com/lngvillemn/
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