Why do most Christians find tobacco use sinful?

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Seekingthetruth

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Outside of the health hazards, why do most Christians find it sinful? It’s widely known that ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Greece all smoked tobacco, so it would have been around for both the Old and New Testament, wouldn’t the Biblical authors have been more explicit about it?
 
As @FiveLinden noted, tobacco consumption was unknown amongst those in the ancient Mediterranean (South Europe, Near East, North Africa, etc.). The plant Nicotianus tabacum - which smoke of us smoke and chew - is native only in the Americas.
 
Because doing drugs and drinking is bad, not only in health, to me, probably my bias being raised in Churches that forbade it (a bias I am not changing) it betrays a low moral character to take pleasure in something like that. It shows that you aren’t fully a lover of Jesus, and it provides a bad example.
 
FrostArcana said:
Because doing drugs and drinking is bad, not only in health, to me, probably my bias being raised in Churches that forbade it (a bias I am not changing) it betrays a low moral character to take pleasure in something like that. It shows that you aren’t fully a lover of Jesus, and it provides a bad example.
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You mean Jesus was a bad example by drinking wine??
 
No, I mean Christians do so when they drink wine (or other drinks, outside of Eucharist) that’s what my sentence meant, sorry for any confusion ❤️
 
Seekingthetruth said:
Outside of the health hazards, why do most Christians find it sinful?
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In the US, the Christian Right and the Tobacco Industry are intimately linked together as staunch supporters of the Republican party. This was especially visible in the 80s and 90s, when the Tobacco industry spent lavish amounts of money to foster good relations with Far Right religious leaders, primarily of the Evangelical variety, but Conservative Catholics, too.
 
FrostArcana said:
No, I mean Christians do so when they drink wine
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Stop, and turn back. Drunkenness is a sin, but the use of pleasure is not. To say otherwise quickly approaches capital H Heresy.
 
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Smoking does not pervert a faculty - though some would try to say the contrary, simply because it’s “not normal breathing” and there’s a “bad thing” that happens from it. In reality, there is an undesired effect and a desired effect from a normal muscular contraction of the diaphragm that pulls gaseous substances into the lungs which then move those substances into the bloodstream. Anyone who would make an argument to the contrary needs to say also that no medicines with any bad side effects can ever be taken by breathing, which seems intuitively absurd.

It would actually be quite difficult to pervert the faculty of breathing… you would have to get the lungs to move gasses into something other than your bloodstream. Not easy.
 
MacArthur is notoriously anti-Catholic.

Look, @FrostArcana - take the example of the saints to heart… If Vianney, Borromeo, DeSales, Philip Neri, etc. would drink wine, then maybe it is not so bad of a thing.
 
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FrostArcana said:
No, I mean Christians do so when they drink wine (or other drinks, outside of Eucharist) that’s what my sentence meant, sorry for any confusion
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So then Jesus would be a bad example. He literally turned water into wine so people could keep partying at a wedding.

Since Jesus is obviously not a bad example, but rather the perfect example, it makes more sense to believe that drinking (in moderation, not to the point of being in a stupor) is fine.
 
That’s my policy. I’ll enjoy a pipe or cigar sometimes on the weekend.
 
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Seekingthetruth said:
Outside of the health hazards, why do most Christians find it sinful?
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Huh? This is news to me.
“Most Christians” don’t find tobacco use sinful. When I was growing up, almost everyone smoked, including all the Catholics and other Christians. It was cultural at that time.
As you note, they may be concerned about health hazards and limit their use based on that. Or not.
 
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FrostArcana said:
Because doing drugs and drinking is bad, not only in health, to me, probably my bias being raised in Churches that forbade it (a bias I am not changing) it betrays a low moral character to take pleasure in something like that. It shows that you aren’t fully a lover of Jesus, and it provides a bad example.
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Yeah, you’re biased all right with respect to drinking. Catholics aren’t going to be agreeing with your silly non-Catholic bias any time soon. Thank God for that.

“Doing drugs” is generally illegal and is therefore forbidden because it is illegal. If drinking was not legal in a certain place or for a certain group (like under 21) then a Catholic would be expected to follow the law. In addition, Catholics recognize that those who do drugs may suffer from the disease of addiction and need treatment. It is not necessarily a sign of “low moral character” especially given the many cases where someone might get inadvertently addicted to a substance that was prescribed for them, which is very common.
 
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