Christian Hypocrisy on Smoking and Drinking


Like Jesus, the world says that life is worth more than food and pleasure. If the Christians really believe that life should not be put at risk by pleasure then they should forbid smoking. Smokers reason, “If I or anybody else gets lung cancer over smoking then so be it and I am putting this moment of pleasure first”. That is not a very caring attitude is it? They don’t care about those who care about them. But in the double standards of the Church this is okay!

The Bible says that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which seems to be against things like smoking.

But smoking very few cigarettes would seem to be harmless except that it does give bad example. Nobody after all started smoking wanting to smoke more than 5 or so a day!
 
The Catholic Church forbids contraception because it is treating God’s gift of fertility like there is something wrong. It is forbidden under all circumstances so the Church slanders people who know they have no choice but to use contraception for a pregnancy could kill the wife by saying they are sinning. Yet the unnatural use of the lungs which God made to breathe air to live is accepted! The popes have smoked and their cardinals.

Laughter is said by some to be irrational “for it is finding pleasure in what is irrational and in coincidences. There are many coincidences that we don’t laugh at. We laugh at the mistakes of others which is taking pleasure in their weakness and sin. To laugh when a man finds his wife in bed with another man is taking enjoyment out of sin. Irrational means wrong so laughter is finding pleasure in evil. It is being glad that evil has happened. The person who is not offended by laughter is letting you degrade her or him. It is a sin to laugh at yourself. When you laugh at a comedy on television you have to feel that what you see on the screen is true before you can really enjoy it so you are still laughing at and celebrating evil”. If there is a God then this is true. God says we are all sinners and we must hate sin above all evil. Jesus said that if your eye makes you sin gouge it out – this was to tell us that we must hate sin totally. If you love God with all your heart as he commanded then you must hate sin with all your heart for it is the opposite of God. If there is no God then it is more important for us to gain pleasure from irrationality than for us to hate it when it can be found amusing. If you think only of God who is so unlike a person that it is amazing he has any fans you will not be able to laugh. But don’t Humanists say that what is irrational is forbidden? But life is a matter of deciding between what is most rational and least irrational. Laughing is rational for we are made to laugh. Would it be rational not to let yourself laugh when nature wants you to?

When you laugh at a comedy it is because you temporarily suspend disbelief and think that it is really happening in front of you. If laughing at others is a sin so is this.

Laughter is good for you and that is the strongest reason for permitting it – God would disagree for he says you must give your whole self to faith in him meaning you should be ready to die for him if necessary. If there is a God he will see to it that you can do without it so it would be a sin if there were a God. He does not allow lies though they are often good for you so he will not like anybody who does not walk around with a face like a lost eternity.
 
Laughter is a sin.
 
ON DRINK

The Bible teaches that drunkenness is a sin that terminates your friendship with God. It is not a sin because it leads to violence or may start off alcoholism for it does not have to. Precautions can be taken. It is a sin just because it takes away freedom and makes you less of a person or perhaps because you enjoy it. It makes you into a puppet of a drug not a real person if one has too much. One does not need to drink a lot for that to happen so being tipsy must be a sin as much as full drunkenness. It would be worse for the person who is totally out of it on drink does not know what they are doing and that they should not be drinking any more unlike the tipsy person.
 
If you believe that human life and human existence matter more than pleasure then drinking must be always wrong except for medicinal reasons for it is trying to artificially change your personality. It reflects that you are not entirely happy with yourself. If you are not happy with yourself then you should change by effort and doing good works.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that drunkenness is a mortal sin that results in everlasting torment. If the person who commits this sin dies without repenting it that person will be thrust down into the flames of Hell to suffer forever and ever. The person who causes another to commit this sin is willing a mortal sin to happen which is, in justice, a mortal sin. It is a sin for anyone to buy a drunk person a drink or for the bartender to serve them drink for that is helping a person to commit a serious sin.
 
Jesus however miraculously provided good wine for guests at a wedding in Cana when it was time for giving them the bad wine for they were too drunk to notice. Christians sometimes surmise that the good wine was alcohol free or contained too little to make any impact. But we are told it was good wine and real wine has alcohol in it. Even if it had no alcohol, the guests thought it had alcohol and so Jesus led them into sin by providing the wine. This shows that Satan must have been helping Jesus do miracles if he really did miracles! Yet Jesus in the gospels had the gall to imply that publicans were bad.
 
Proverbs says that God made wine to gladden the heart of man. This certainly permits being slightly drunk. Would you say that God made grape juice to gladden the heart of man? No but some tee-total Christians say that the verse is not referring to fermented wine but to unfermented.
 
Bible or not withstanding, drinking must be a sin if there is a God. Are you putting God first as Christ demanded if you change your feelings and personality with a drink and not by prayer? Prayer would be your delight and your pick me up if you really cherished God enough.
 
Should Christians stand against the door of the pub like human walls to keep the customers out? They could let them in if they could trust them not to drink heavily or much or at all.

Would it be a sin to fail to stand again the door? No. It would be a sin to stand at the door only when it would lead to violence and there is no need to be provocative. Otherwise, if the human walls are hit it is not their fault. Some might say the drinkers have already decided to sin mortally by wanting to enter the pub so letting them in makes no difference. But to let them in would be encouraging them to prolong and worse, promote, the sinning attitudes. And bad example has to be stopped. Even Christians who are not drinkers or publicans are as bad as they are unless they prevent people from going to the pub. They could force the state to shut them down or at least try and keep trying.

To buy any drink in a pub even a lemonade is to support a business that spreads wickedness and suffering. It is assisting in the promotion of mortal sin. It is a sin to buy anything from a company that supplies or brews alcoholic drink. Yet Churches use venues with bars to run Church functions and so on.

The Catholic Church teaches that those who are guilty of mortal sin cannot partake of the Holy Communion. It is the mortal sin of sacrilege to take it. Yet all who are the cause of the sin of drunkenness are welcome to it. The New Testament speaks badly of publicans and yet the Church accepts them as good standing members and communicants. The Catholic Church is too much interested in getting fans so that it neglects the honour due to the bread and wine that it calls the body and blood of Christ. God rejects worship like that.

The Church won’t even tell drunks and publicans not to come. If the Church would not let a man take the Eucharist to defile it physically then it should not let anyone take it to commit the spiritual version of sacrilege against it. Physical defilement of the Eucharist is not as bad as spiritually defiling it. To receive Jesus’ body into a heart that is full of sin and selfishness mocks and defiles it. The Eucharist in Catholicism is the body of Christ in the form of bread and wine. But to burn or defile communion cannot touch Christ, it only affects the appearances of bread and wine. But spiritual defilement attacks the body of Christ directly. It really gets to him which physical defilement cannot do. Such is the hypocrisy of the Church that physical defilement is considered to be the most serious and only the Pope can forgive this sin.

It is the same with other religions which praise the prayers and good works of the sinners or let them come to the communion table.  A person who refuses to repent a sin cannot sincerely want to please God. Accordingly their good works cannot be praised. To praise them is to encourage them to stray from God and prefer shoddy goodness to the pure goodness of serving God for his own sake in pureness of heart. You do not please your family when you let a big stain stay on the tablecloth.

The Catholic Church and any other religion that treats publicans as members in good standing is a religion to be avoided.

Drink is fine in moderation. The law should be sterner against excessive drinking so the damage that drink does is not a justification for refusing to support pubs and breweries. Don’t condemn anything because it is misused. If most of us stop buying vodka that won’t stop its production. We should try to stop the abuse but it is stupid to think the only way to do that is by banning drink altogether. The Bible does seem to ban drinking for entertainment. Paul condemned drunkenness but did not say how drunk you had to be to sin so going by the rule to interpret things the safe way we see that he must have thought that tipsiness was wrong as well (Ephesians 5:18). Proverbs tells us all not to look at wine at all (23:31). When all of us are to go that far it must be a sin to drink for entertainment. Israelite priests had to totally abstain from drink to be allowed to officiate at religious ceremonies.

Some would say that our rationality is the most important thing we have so to change the way our minds work by using drugs or taking strong drink is therefore degrading. We should be training ourselves to be happy without their assistance which is a better idea. But there is no harm in giving up rationality within reason. We like to daydream and lose rationality. Some argue that we cannot ban knives for some people kill with them for knives are needed but drink is not needed and so should be banned. It is like religion, something that there is no need for and accordingly is something extra to be abused and to cause hurt over only religion is worse for it is far less necessary than drink. But we can allow drink and still take legal steps to scare anybody off taking too much. It is only people who get violent with drink or who drive that we should be worried about.



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