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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Doug Wilson just posted the text from a talk he gave yesterday on the subject of cigarette smoking and sin. It's quite helpful and speaks to all sorts of issues beyond smoking.
Smoking reveals the method of a self-serving ethic. The way others are to view your liberty is not the same way that you should view your liberty. Other Christians should let you do what you want unless the Bible forbids it. That’s how we guard against legalism. But you should use your liberty differently—you should be asking what the reasons are for doing it, and not what the reasons are for prohibiting it. Liberty is intended by God for you to use as an instrument for loving others (Gal. 5:13), and not as an instrument for suiting yourself.

2 comments:

Preson Phillips said...

Smokers:
C.H. Spurgeon
D.L. Moody
C.S. Lewis
J.R. Tolkien
Martin Luther
Jim Elliot

It is a cultural thing, and nothing more. I know many missionaries oversees who socially smoke homegrown tobacco with the tribes who grow them. Most of my professors at, quite conservative, seminaries in the south partake in tobacco. This is an old dead arguement that builds pride, not unity.

Darius said...

I think you miss the point, Preson. Wilson isn't saying smoking is sin for all people. He is saying it MIGHT be sin for some people. And we all should only worry about ourselves because freedom looks differently in different Christians' lives. You actually agree with Wilson's remarks, oddly enough.

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The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Overcoming Sin and Temptation
According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem
When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves
The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Respectable Sins
The Kite Runner
Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak
Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak
A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, ... anabaptist/anglican, metho
Show Them No Mercy
The Lord of the Rings
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
The Chronicles of Narnia
Les Misérables


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