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<\/p>\nI gave up smoking in 1978 when I became a Christian. Or, rather, God gave it up on my behalf. Before that, I smoked cigarettes \u2013 Gauloises were my favourite \u2013 a pipe and cigars. All inhaled. On numerous occasions I tried to give them up, to no avail.<\/p>\n
I started smoking in university in my existentialist phase: life is meaningless, I decided. Smoking was something to do and trying to give it up gave one a purpose, so why not start. I was right to some extent: trying to give it up did give me a purpose; nevertheless, it was an exercise in futility because I couldn\u2019t manage it.<\/p>\n
When I became a Christian, one of my first prayers was to give up smoking. The day after, I woke up a non-smoker: I didn\u2019t want to smoke and still don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
That preamble is a longwinded way of saying that I think smoking as a pastime is a bad idea. Still, the following is especially silly:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is the opening screen to the latest Indiana Jones film.<\/p>\n
In most films today we are subjected, without notice, to smooching lesbians, actors and actresses frolicking unclothed in bed, blood, gore, random violence, and the imbibing of unspecified drugs though needles, fumes and inhalation. Almost no film is released without a token homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or sadomasochist. But we simply have <\/em>to be warned about smoking \u2013 tobacco, of course, because marijuana smoking, now legal to buy, sell and use in Canada, is completely harmless.<\/p>\n I think I saw just one lit cigarette in the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I gave up smoking in 1978 when I became a Christian. Or, rather, God gave it up on my behalf. Before that, I smoked cigarettes \u2013 Gauloises were my favourite \u2013 a pipe and cigars. All inhaled. On numerous occasions … Continue reading