Why smoking is a sin. Orthodox Church about smoking: attitude and opinion. Priests about tobacco addiction

Any person has information that smoking is a bad attachment that adversely affects a person's health and his life.

The fact that smoking tobacco is unsafe for well-being is understood by everyone without exception. However, there is another nuance to the problem - a moral one.

Is tobacco smoking considered a sin, since neither the Gospel nor the Immaculate Founders tell anything about it? Is it necessary to fight this harmful habit, or is it still possible to allow yourself a small weakness? Does it hinder the existence of the church?

Thus, whether tobacco smoking is considered a sin in Christianity, this article will tell.

Church against smoking

Addressing to religion in certain everyday situations, the individual must be aware that he will need to understand and change his own usual style of existence, and, therefore, first of all, in general, get rid of those habits and inclinations that the temple considers sinful.

According to the main canons, tobacco smoking is considered a sin. Since this habit is an unwholesome attraction, as well as every other one that prevents one from following the path of salvation and pardon. God created man according to the type and similarity of his own, so that he possesses perfection and achieves the main - endless existence.

It is necessary not to forget that each attraction is a “disease” of the soul and comes into contact with other, no less terrible diseases.

And if this disease is firmly established in the soul of a person, then it will contribute to the development of other flaws and sins, and directly:

Expression of selfishness (smoking father and mother, in particular girls-mothers);

The appearance of a continuous feeling of sadness about individual independence, and in Christianity oppression is a serious offense;

The expression of the misdemeanor of self-justification;

Dulling the feeling of chastity;

Forgiving yourself of other weaknesses.

Based on the data and other rather significant factors, it is possible to clearly note one of them - this is an unwholesome weakness, which is considered evil. It destroys the state of health as well as physiological and spiritual. The theory of the immaculate testifies that life activity is given to people by the Lord as well as a great gift.

And to reduce life by destructive actions is a terrible sin. If you think about it, you can understand that a smoking individual harms not only his own well-being, but also the well-being of the people around him. And there is no excuse for this.

Priests on smoking

Priests constantly go against tobacco smoking and report the following about it:

Any unwholesome attraction is considered the result of a combination of human sinful freedom and diabolical influences, the contribution of which in the fall of mankind is very difficult to justify, since their effect is imperceptible;

This weakness makes mankind slaves in most situations up to the very death, which can happen quite quickly due to poor health;

The misdeed of smoking tobacco can be overcome if the will of man and the influence of the Almighty unite into one;

A person will rise above this attraction only when he decisively understands what complications such weakness will bring. Since, it is well known that cigarettes lead to relaxation of the soul and body, spoils the mind and destroys the state of health;

The results of the morbidity of the state of pressure from the effects of tobacco smoking are nervousness and despondency;

Before you get rid of the offense of smoking, you need to confess, do the ritual of the sacrament of the Immaculate Mysteries and read the Gospel and prayer daily, and this will help to give up cigarettes.

Devil's Gift

The gift of the devil - this is how addiction to cigarettes is called. Saying goodbye to smoking is very difficult, but the one who was able to do this has a strong inner determination.

Consequently, a person will follow the moral road to the Lord, where he can acquire endless happiness.

To follow the right path, you need to try to eliminate a pernicious offense, since it will not lead to good in any way, but will only worsen your whole future life. If you endure, you will overcome the beast. However, do it with the smile and ease of a powerful person. Don't let your own mood get worse because of tobacco.

Do not forget, a cigarette is not worth the waste of your nerves and quarrels with people. In order to approach the Lord, accept his power and focus on his endless belief, you will need to cleanse your soul of addictions.

May the Almighty God always protect and protect you!

Nothing is really said about the dangers of smoking right in the Holy Scriptures. Tobacco appeared in our world many centuries after the creation of the Bible. However indirectly the sin of smoking is still spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. God created the first people healthy and took care of their physical and spiritual perfection. Everything that is given to man by God should be used for good. Bodily health is a priceless gift, and every action of ours that causes harm to health is a real sin before the Creator.

The date of "discovery" of smoking is known very accurately. " On October 12, 1492, the expedition of Christopher Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador.- wrote Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev). - The sailors were amazed by an unprecedented sight: the red-skinned inhabitants of the island released clouds of smoke from their mouths and noses! The Indians celebrated their sacred holiday, where they smoked a special herb. Her dried and rolled leaf, like today's cigar, they called "tobacco", from which the current name of tobacco came from.

The natives smoked "tobacco" to the point of complete stupefaction. In this state, they entered into communication with certain "demons", and then they told about what the "Great Spirit" had told them. Smoking was part of the rituals of worship of the pagan gods of the Aztecs, who were brought, among others, and human sacrifices.

The sailors of Columbus took the mysterious herb with them to Europe. And very quickly, the new "pleasure" became widespread. As Bishop Barnabas wrote: And so, with the benevolent participation and secret prompting from demons, a literally general fever of tobacco smoking began throughout Europe and even Asia. Whatever the government and the clergy did to stop this evil, nothing helped!»

Not only Christians, but also Muslims tried to actively fight against smoking. In 1625, in Turkey, Amurat IV executed smokers, and flaunted severed heads with pipes in their mouths. In Persia, Shah Abbas the Great ordered to cut off lips and noses as a punishment for smoking, and burn tobacco dealers along with their goods. Even in always free Switzerland in 1661, the Appenzel magistrate considered the tobacco trade as a sin, tantamount to murder!

In Russia, smoking has become a custom since Peter I, who himself smoked and even dared to stack smoking pipes in the manner of the bishops' dikiriya (two candlesticks) and trikiriya (three candlesticks) and "blessed" the people with them during his drunken "assemblies". But this is Peter, and before him, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1634 ordered "smokers to be executed by death." Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649 ordered smokers to “smack their nostrils and cut their noses”, and then “exile them to distant cities”.

We will talk about the assessment of the patristic spiritual thought of the sin of smoking later, but for now we note that in fact, indirectly, the sin of smoking is still spoken of in Holy Scripture. God created the first people healthy and took care of their physical and spiritual perfection. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” says one of the commandments of Christ. From this it follows that before you love your neighbor, you must "love yourself." To love and take care of the gift of life, which is given to all of us from God. And what kind of “careful attitude” is there to a smoker’s health, if everyone knows that tobacco contains more than 30 harmful substances. The most dangerous of them is the nicotine alkaloid.. There are especially many patients with bronchopulmonary diseases among smokers. And the most formidable consequence of smoking is cancer of the larynx and lungs. The fact is that tobacco smoke contains carcinogens that cause cancer. it benzopyrene and its derivatives.

... It is no coincidence, as experts have calculated, that every minute in Russia three (!) People die from diseases caused by smoking ...

Everything that is given to man by God should be used for good. Bodily health is a priceless gift, and every action of ours that causes harm to health is a real sin before the Creator. Many holy teachers of the Church point to this. Here are the words of St. Nektarios of Aegina: In order for a person to be blissful and worthy of his calling, it is necessary that he be healthy both in body and soul, because without the well-being of both, neither bliss nor capacity to fulfill the appointment can be acquired. A person should take care of strengthening both the body and the soul so that they are strong and strong.».

« Don't you know that you are the temple of God, - said the Apostle Paul, - and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you". For a smoker, this temple is smoky and smoky, and Christ cannot move into this temple. It is not human nature to smoke. Breathe air, eat, drink, sleep - yes. But smoking, poisoning your body with poison, breathing fetid smoke is a requirement of sin, and not a requirement of nature.

Medicine says a lot about the dangers of smoking for bodily health. But nothing mentions that the fetid smell of tobacco covers up the smell of spiritual decay. It has been established that negative mental states lead to a change in the hormonal background of a person. Chemicals formed during stress and other internal conflicts are excreted from the body, and these secretions have a very heavy smell. Tobacco use makes it impossible to recognize the spiritual state of others at the deepest biological level. Smoking is licentiousness not only of the body, but also of the soul. This is a false calming of your nerves. Many smokers refer to the calming of the nerves after smoking a cigarette, not realizing that nerves are the carnal mirror of the soul. Such reassurance is self-deception, a mirage. This narcotic sedation will be the source of soul torment. Now, as long as there is a body, this “calming” must be regularly renewed. And then it will become a source of hellish torment. It must be remembered that after death, after the separation of the soul from the body, the passions that manifested themselves in bodily life do not leave the human soul. Not freed from this or that passion, the soul will transfer it to another world, where in the absence of the body it will be impossible to satisfy this passion. The soul will languish and burn with an unceasing thirst for sin and lust. He who is insatiable in food will suffer after his death with the inability to fill his belly. The drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can only be soothed by alcohol. The fornicator will experience the same feeling. Selfish too, and a smoker too. If a smoker does not smoke for several days during his lifetime, what will he experience? Terrible torment, but torment softened by other aspects of life. But that is two days, and the deceased has eternity ahead. And eternal torment...

Meanwhile, the army of smokers is rapidly getting younger. The age of initiation to smoking in Russia has decreased to 10 years for boys and 12 for girls. Smoking has a particularly detrimental effect on children's bodies. Among other things, smoking adolescents form a complex of neuropsychic abnormalities. As a result, attention, memory, sleep suffer, mood “jumps”. Teen smoking has a devastating effect on reproductive function. It is no coincidence that today more than 70 percent of boys and girls by the age of 15 have serious problems in this “part”.

If we return to the "spiritual component" of the harm from smoking, then we should dwell on the lack of freedom of the smoker. Many of the smokers (especially in adulthood) would like to quit smoking. According to sociologists, 100 (!) percent of smokers after 30 would like to give up a harmful and sinful habit. Alas ... Smokers develop nicotine syndrome. This is the same dependence as on alcohol and drugs, only less damaging to health. Although, how to say: lung cancer, cancer of the larynx - the argument is not at all in favor of the harmlessness of such a harmful addiction as smoking.

Lungs of a smoker and a non-smoker

It would be useful to mention that in the new classification of diseases that came into force in 1999, tobacco dependence is officially recognized as an illness. And we will add - a sinful disease. Smoking is self-indulgence, a form of self-indulgence. It is no coincidence that in Russia there has long been a saying: "Smoking - demons incense".

When a person smokes, Orthodox priests say, his soul is captured by demonic forces. And he adds another heavy link to the chain of slavish attachments; his will is weakened, and behind all the excuses for smoking, the voice of a weak-willed person is heard. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov: I ask you: is such a person free? I knew one “fighter for the idea” who himself told me that when they deprived him of tobacco in prison, he was so exhausted by the deprivation of strength that he almost went and betrayed his “idea” just to give him tobacco. But this one says: "I'm going to fight for humanity." Well, where will he go and what is he capable of?»

Do you smoke? Realize your sin

Medical statistics have calculated that Every cigarette smoked shortens a person's life by at least seven minutes.. In general, smokers in Russia live five years less than non-smokers. Most smokers know this. Nevertheless, he cannot leave the sinful habit. Here is what the famous Orthodox writer S. A. Nilus wrote about the state of a smoker in the first part of the book “On the Bank of God's River”.

«… 7 July 1909 I had a severe attack of choking cough last night. Serves right! - this is all from smoking, which I cannot quit, and I have been smoking since the third grade of the gymnasium and now it is so thoroughly saturated with nicotine that it has probably already become an integral part of my blood. It takes a miracle to pull me out of the clutches of this vice, and I don't have the will to do it. I tried to quit smoking, I didn’t smoke for two days, but the result was that such melancholy and bitterness came over me that this new sin became bitterer than the old one. Father Barsanuphiy forbade me even to make such attempts, limiting my daily portion of smoking to fifteen cigarettes. I used to smoke without a bill…»

« Your hour will come- said Father Barsanuphius, - and smoking will end». « Hope, do not despair: in due time, God willing, you will quit”, - about the same smoking, from which I could not fall behind in any way, Father Joseph told me. And a miracle, according to the word of both elders, happened to me. And it was so.

We live with my friend, my God-given wife, as they say, soul to soul, in the full sense of the Gospel word, so that we are not two, but one flesh. This great mercy of God, bestowed on us from above, is due to our deep and convinced faith in the Sacrament of Marriage, which we both at one time approached with fear and trembling. And so, in June 1910, my wife fell ill with some strange illness, which neither the Optina paramedic nor the invited doctor could determine: in the morning she was almost healthy, but in the evening she had a temperature of up to 40. And so the week, and another, and the third! I see my joy melting before my eyes, like a wax candle, and is about to flare up for the last time and go out. And then my orphaned heart was filled with great, immeasurable great sorrow and grief, and I prostrated myself before the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria of Smolensk, which stood in the corner of my office, and I wept before Her, and was horrified, and yearned, and spoke to Her as if she were alive. : “Mother Queen, my Most Blessed Mother of God! You, I believe, gave my angel's wife, You save her for me, and for that I give you a vow never to smoke again. I make a vow, but I know that I won’t be able to fulfill it on my own, and not to fulfill it is a great sin, so You Yourself help me!” So it was about ten o'clock in the evening. After praying and somewhat calming down, he approached his wife's bed. Sleeping, breathing is quiet, even. He touched his forehead: his forehead was moist, but not hot - my sweet dove was fast asleep. Glory to God, glory to the Most Pure! The next morning the temperature was 36.5, in the evening - 36.4, and a day later she got up, as she did not hurt. And I forgot that I smoked, as I never smoked, and I smoked for exactly thirty years and three years, and my whole body was so saturated with damned tobacco that I could not live without it not only a day, but even a minute».

In this whole story, I would like to focus not so much on the miracle that happened, but on the hero's awareness of sin itself. Without such awareness, a miracle would not be possible. And hence it follows the first rule for those who want to quit addiction: you need to realize the sinfulness of smoking. Actually, the overcoming of any sin begins with such a step ...

"Before you smoke, pray"

Now let's stop at the place in the reader's letter where he says that the church fathers did not say anything about the dangers of smoking. It's not like that at all. Another thing that you should know is that in the Russian Orthodox Church there are no boundaries of patristic instructions. Say, until some relatively old time - these are patristic instructions, and the instructions of those who, say, are ranked among the host of saints in recent years - this is something not authoritative enough. There are no such borders in the Russian Orthodox Church. Today's ascetics often absorb and develop the teachings of their predecessors, and every word of every holy ascetic is valuable in itself. Here are just some of the sayings of the Holy Fathers about the sin of smoking.

« Man has perverted the very pleasures of the senses. For smell and taste, and partly for breathing itself, he invented and burns almost incessantly pungent and odorous smoke, bringing this, as it were, a constant censer to a demon living in the flesh, infects the air of his dwelling and the external air with this smoke, and first of all is saturated with this stench himself, - and here you are, the constant coarsening of your feelings and your heart by the constantly absorbed smoke cannot but affect the subtlety of the heart's feelings, it imparts to it carnality, rudeness, insensitivity».

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt: Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from smoking».

Saint Ambrose of Optina: In 1905, Elder Silouan of Athos spent several months in Russia, frequently visiting monasteries. On one of these train journeys, he took a seat opposite the merchant, who, with a friendly gesture, opened his silver cigarette case and offered him a cigarette.

Father Siluan thanked for the offer, refusing to take a cigarette. Then the merchant began to say: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider it a sin? But smoking often helps in an active life; it is good to break the tension in work and rest for a few minutes. It is convenient when smoking to conduct a business or friendly conversation and in general in the course of life…” And further, trying to convince Father Siluan to take a cigarette, he continued to speak in favor of smoking.

Then, nevertheless, Father Silouan decided to say: “Sir, before you light a cigarette, pray, say one thing: “Our Father.” To this the merchant replied: Pray before you smoke, somehow does not go". Father Siluan remarked in response: “ So, it is better not to do any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer.».

Now about the Bible quote from the book of Solomon's Proverbs, "Smoking makes the heart happy." Of course, we are not talking about smoking tobacco. Smoking in ancient times was called the burning of aromatic substances and fragrant oil. People in all ages have loved incense, and in ancient times fragrant incense was added to the sacrifices. Fragrant plants and exotic incense were highly valued in religious ceremonies. They were worth their weight in gold and silver. So, the Queen of Sheba brought aromatic substances to Solomon as a gift. Incense was kept in the royal treasury. This is the kind of “smoking” that the Bible talks about. Smoking pleases the heart, and a friend's heartfelt advice is sweet - this is how this quote from the book of Proverbs looks like. Today, "smoking" in the temple can be called censing - when the priest passes through the temple with a censer, from which incense is burned. " Incense is incense burned at Divine services, how can the slaves of sin not invent a kind of incense?- said Saint Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer. - The first is pleasing to God, the second should be pleasing to the enemy of God - the devil».

Today, many experts say that in recent years the world center for sales of cigarettes is increasingly shifting to Russia. In the United States and Western Europe, thanks to the measures taken, the number of smokers is reduced by tens of millions every year.

What are these measures? Smoking bans in public places - in restaurants, airplanes, on the street, in clubs, offices, etc. No less effective is the promotion of the dangers of smoking. Posters about the dangers of tobacco are placed literally everywhere. Plus, the tobacco companies literally overwhelmed with lawsuits those who fell ill due to smoking. The claims amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the courts very often satisfy such claims. Perhaps even more important in the West is the high price of cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes in Europe costs at least five euros, that is, 160-180 rubles in terms of the Russian ruble. If such a pricing policy were in Russia, many people would think about whether it is worth putting such money into the smoke.

In Russia, it's a completely different matter. Due to the extremely low excise taxes, our cigarettes are quite inexpensive. They are accessible to everyone and, unfortunately, even to children. In Russia, global tobacco companies feel like a businessman. At the same time, foreign tobacco companies are trying in every possible way to create for themselves in Russia the image of companies that are extremely concerned about the negative impact of smoking on health. Abroad, this is impossible according to the laws. There, tobacco companies are legally prohibited from participating in charity events, sponsoring sports and all kinds of other events.

... In Los Angeles, on Santa Monica Boulevard, there is a scoreboard counting the number of deaths from addiction to cigarettes. In Russia, there is no such scoreboard in any city yet ...

It is not surprising that such a situation has caused serious criticism from both Russian public organizations and government officials. In particular, they propose to bring the inscriptions on cigarette packs warning about the dangers of smoking into line with Western standards. First of all, it is proposed to make this inscription (as well as abroad!) not in some inconspicuous size, but in half a tobacco pack. And here it makes sense to return to where we started, to the fact that smoking is not only harmful to health, but is a serious sin.

Warning labels on cigarette packs can be of very different content. Abroad, such inscriptions warn potential buyers that smoking is fraught with cancer. That smoking is extremely harmful to pregnant women. The fact that for young people smoking often turns into impotence. It seems that the Russian Orthodox Church will in every possible way support the proposal of the newspaper "Honest Word" that one of the inscriptions read: "The Russian Orthodox Church warns: smoking is a sin." The wording of such a warning can be specified, but there is no doubt that it is appropriate (and necessary!).

On the one hand, the voice of the Church today is very significant for many, on the other hand, very few (especially among young people) are aware of how (and why) the Orthodox Church treats tobacco smoking. And such a warning, no doubt, will bring positive results.

Alexander Okonishnikov
Orthodox View

Prayer from the passion of smoking to the Monk Ambrose of Optina

Reverend Father Ambrose, you, having boldness before the Lord, begged the Greatly Gifted Vladyka to give me an ambulance in the fight against impure passion.

God! Through the prayers of your saint, Saint Ambrose, cleanse my lips, make my heart chaste and saturate it with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit, so that the evil tobacco passion will flee from me far away, to where it came from, into the womb of hell.

Everyone knows how dangerous smoking is for physical health. Is there a spiritual danger? Why is this addiction considered a sin? Look, in Orthodox Greece, even priests smoke. For clarification, we turned to the pastors of the Russian Church.

Nicotine smoke takes the place of God's grace in the soul

Undoubtedly, smoking is a sin. I will share my priestly experience: I communed the dying, attended funerals and saw that the death of many people was directly related to smoking. And it is very difficult to get rid of this evil. Once I gave unction and communion before her death to a woman who was dying of cancer of the larynx, and in this state she could not quit smoking. Even before Communion, I took a few puffs! But since she was dying, I could not help but give communion to her. And how many people die from lung cancer caused by smoking! But not only the respiratory organs are destructively affected by tobacco - others too.

If you get up at night to smoke, if you take a drag in the morning, then how will you go to Communion later?

The perniciousness of this habit, which causes serious addiction, is also in the fact that many smokers cannot take communion because of smoking. If you get up at night to smoke, if you take a drag in the morning, then how will you go to Communion later? Or even you endured, took communion, and then what? When you leave the temple, do you greedily inhale? So this sinful pleasure deprives the smoker of the Sacrament.

The inability to quit smoking is a myth. I personally know several people who, being smokers with serious experience - 30-40 years, managed to quit smoking. With God's help, everything is possible. If a person turns to God, He helps him to quit this infection.

Elder Siluan: “It’s better not to do any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer”

Even on the packaging of cigarettes they officially write: "Smoking kills." How is it not a sin that kills, that torments, deprives of health, causes suffering to the smoker himself and upsets people close to him?

All our sins are divided into three types: sins against God, against neighbors and against ourselves. So smoking is, of course, a sin against oneself, a conscious shortening of one's life, that is, the destruction of the priceless gift of God given to us for the salvation of our souls. But in a sense, it is also a sin against neighbors who are forced to inhale cigarette smoke in public places.

Smoking is an addiction. It enslaves the will of a person, makes him again and again seek his satisfaction. In general, it has all the signs of sinful passion. And passion, as you know, delivers only new torments to the soul of a person, deprives it of its already small freedom.

Sometimes smokers say that a cigarette helps them calm down and focus internally. However, it is known that nicotine acts destructively on the brain and nervous system. And the illusion of calm arises because nicotine also has an inhibitory effect on brain receptors. Not a single person has ever benefited from smoking even a minimal amount, and I am sure that there is no such smoker in the world who, at least once in his life, has not regretted that he was so addicted to nicotine.

To justify smoking, they often refer to Orthodox Greece, where even priests smoke. Indeed, Greece has the highest per capita consumption of cigarettes in the world. But there is nothing good in this. Perhaps smoking spread there under the influence of Islamic traditions that allow smoking. But if we look at Athos, this example of a strictly spiritual life both for Greece and for the entire Orthodox world, we will see that there is no smoking there. The Monk Paisios the Holy Mountaineer was unambiguously negative about smoking. And the venerable elder Silouan of Athos, too.

The Apostle Paul says: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible to me, but nothing should possess me” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Smoking is contrary to God's plan for man, like any nonsense

Of course, smoking is a sin. Like all meaningless things. What's the point of smoking? What good does a person get from him? No sense and nothing good. And the Lord created everything wisely and meaningfully. “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). This means that smoking is contrary to God's plan for a person, like everything that is senseless and unnecessary.

Let's not forget that smoking brings many different harms to a person. And everything that harms a person, torments him, is also displeasing to the Lord. What harm it is, we all know very well. This is the destruction of health, given by God for the work of saving our souls, and material damage when we spend money on nonsense, but we could spend it on good things, for example, give alms.

But the main harm of smoking, of course, is spiritual. “Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys bodily health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from smoking,” St. Ambrose of Optina teaches us. And yet we become slaves of this sin. “Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). And we are called to freedom in Christ: “And you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Gift of Love can only be accepted by a free person in Christ.

Therefore, help us, Lord, to get rid of everything harmful and unnecessary, so that we can be in joy and love, and not in torment here and in eternity. And they depended only on the Holy God, and not on cigarettes, sinful pleasures and, ultimately, on the devil, who is behind all this.

Who are you if you deliberately destroy the gift of God?

Each of us roughly knows what a pack of cigarettes looks like. It says in large letters: "Smoking kills." From this we can already conclude whether it is a sin to use something that kills us. Of course it is.

Often people turn to the Lord with a request for health. And most of our prayers are also about health to some extent. And we wish each other good health. And do we keep the health that the Lord has given us? How many of us go in for sports, do exercises in the morning? I think few. We eat before bed, although we know that this should not be done. We consume food in excess, realizing that this will lead to excess weight and health problems. And we must keep what the Lord has given. The health that is. Smoking will not improve your health.

If a smoker turns to the Lord with a request: “Lord, give me health!” Who will he look like in the eyes of God?

We all understand perfectly well what risks accompany a person who smokes: these are oncological diseases, and diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, and impaired brain activity ... Previously, smokers did not know about how tobacco undermines health. And if you know that smoking harms you, but you smoke, you are committing a sin: you are deliberately destroying your health. And if a smoker turns to the Lord with a request: “Lord, give me health!” Who will he look like in the eyes of God? And how to ask God for health with the same lips with which you just smoked a cigarette? This is some kind of nonsense. A glaring contradiction. And the Lord calls us to integrity, integrity of thinking above all. Why do we read the Gospel? So that our mind thinks according to the gospel, so that we are in Christ.

So smoking is a sin. Moreover, a terrible sin, causing damage to God-given health.

Why is smoking a sin? Does this activity bring harm to the soul?

Priest Athanasius Gumerov answers:

The holy fathers define various diseases of the soul by the concept passion. There are various classifications of passions. Man combines the carnal and spiritual principles. Therefore, in accordance with this, passions are divided into bodily and spiritual. The former have their ground in bodily needs, the latter in spiritual ones. It is difficult to draw a clear line between them, since the "epicenter" of all passions is in the soul. The most common bodily passions: “gluttony, gluttony, luxury, drunkenness, eating in secret, various kinds of voluptuousness, fornication, adultery, debauchery, impurity, incest, child corruption, bestiality, bad desires and all sorts of unnatural and shameful passions ...” (Philokalia. T .2, Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1993, p. 371). Smoking belongs to an unnatural passion, for chronic self-poisoning is not rooted in the realm of the natural needs of the body.

All passions are stumbling blocks on our path to salvation. By its origin, human nature as a creation of the All-Wise God, as His image and likeness, has perfection. The goal of our entire Christian life is to unite with God and only in Him alone to find the bliss of eternal life. Performing the work of salvation, we must restore in ourselves the image of God, distorted by various sins, and acquire the likeness of our Heavenly Parent. While a person is in captivity of passion, his soul cannot restore the distorted image and return the original god-likeness. If a person is overcome by passions, then his soul becomes defiled, his mind becomes dead, and his will becomes powerless. The Holy Fathers call this state the second idolatry. Man worships his passions like idols. An idolater cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven (Eph. 5:5). “Without purity from passions, the soul does not heal from sinful ailments, and does not acquire the glory lost by crime” (St. Isaac the Syrian).

Any passion, being a disease of the soul, is linked by invisible links with other ailments. There are no impenetrable walls in the soul. Rooted passion contributes to the formation of other vices. Egoism is grossly manifested. A mother who smokes while walking over a stroller in which a baby sleeps puts the satisfaction of passion above the health of her child. Parents who smoke tend to teach it to their children. Children are not their property. When they infect them for the rest of their lives with this destructive habit, they act not only against the Christian conscience, but also contrary to universal morality.

If a person has realized the perniciousness of smoking, he often loses heart, seeing that he has become a prisoner of this habit and does not have freedom. The sin of self-justification, the dulling of the moral sense, is also closely connected with smoking. Having come to terms with this passion, a person forgives himself and other weaknesses, for the power of precedent is great.

Smoking is also a sin because it destroys health. According to the general teaching of the Holy Fathers, life and health are given to us by God as a gift. To shorten one's life by bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles is a serious sin. A smoker harms his health and the health of those present. There is probably not a single vice and perversion that they would not try to justify. Attempts to talk about the "positive" aspects of smoking look pitiful in comparison with the data available in medicine. Tobacco contains nicotine (up to 2%) - a strong poison. Sulfate of nicotine is applied to destruction of wreckers of page - x. plants. When smoking tobacco, nicotine is absorbed into the body and soon enters the brain. A person smokes every day for many years. The average smoker takes about 200 puffs a day. This is approximately 6,000 per month, 72,000 per year and over 2 million puffs in a 45-year-old smoker who started smoking at the age of 15. Such a protracted nicotine attack leads to the fact that the poison eventually finds a weak link in the body and causes a serious illness. For 30 years, a smoker smokes about 20,000 cigarettes, or about 160 kg of tobacco, ingesting an average of 800 g of nicotine. One cigarette contains approximately 6-8 mg of nicotine, of which 3-4 mg enter the bloodstream. For humans, the lethal dose of nicotine ranges from 50-100 mg (2-3 drops). A number of cancer-causing carcinogens have been found in tobacco smoke. A huge amount of tobacco and radioactive substances. When smoking one pack of cigarettes a day, a person receives a dose of radiation that is 7 times higher than the dose recognized as the maximum allowable by the International Agreement on Radiation Protection. It has been proven that radiation from tobacco origin is the main cause of cancer.

Passion is the result of the addition of human sinful will and the activity of demonic forces, although invisible, but very real. The demonic forces carefully try to hide their complicity in the fall of people. However, there are types of destructive vice in which the special role of the devil is obvious. The most impressive illustration is provided by the history of tobacco smoking. Spaniard Roman Pano in 1496 after the second voyage of H. Columbus brought tobacco seeds from America to Spain. From there, tobacco enters Portugal. The French ambassador in Lisbon Jean Nicot (from his surname got the name nicotine) in 1560 presented tobacco plants as a medicine to Queen Catherine de Medici (1519 - 1589), who suffered from migraines. The passion for tobacco quickly began to spread, first in Paris, and then throughout France. Then began the victorious march of tobacco throughout Europe. The devil strives to impose everything destructive for a person on people under the guise of “beneficial”. Among physicians in the 16th century, tobacco was considered by many to be medicinal. When evidence of the harmful effects of smoking appeared, the hobby went so far that it was no longer possible to stop the infection. At first, smoking was persecuted, and smokers were severely punished. In England, smokers were led through the streets with a noose around their necks, and stubborn ones were even executed. The English king James I in 1604 wrote the work “On the dangers of tobacco”, in which he wrote: “Smoking is disgusting for the eyesight, disgusting for the sense of smell, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs.” Pope Urban VII excommunicated believers from the church. Other measures were also taken. However, each time the winners were smokers, tobacco manufacturers, tobacco dealers - all those who made the spread of destructive vice their profession. Knut, executions were powerless in the face of this destructive passion, the rapid spread of which strongly resembles an epidemic (more precisely, a pandemic). Some kind of power, superior to human, makes people slaves of the most harmful habit, from which the vast majority do not part until death.

In Russia, smoking appeared at the beginning of the 17th century during the Time of Troubles. It was brought by Poles and Lithuanians. Tsar Mikhail Romanov severely persecuted lovers of the devil's potion. In 1634, a decree was issued according to which smokers received sixty stick blows on the soles. The second time the nose was cut off. According to the Code of 1649, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich provided for punishment for those who had tobacco found: to beat with a whip until it was recognized where the tobacco came from. Severe measures were envisaged against traders: cut their noses and exile them to distant cities. The import of tobacco into the country was prohibited. Efforts to stop were futile. Tsar Peter I was a smoking lover. AT In 1697 all prohibitions were lifted. Peter I gave the British a monopoly on the tobacco trade in Russia. The swiftness with which this destructive vice began to spread among the people leads to the saddest thoughts. Now e Every year about 250 billion cigarettes are produced in Russia and another 50 billion pieces are imported. Thus, the country consumes 300 billion. Russia currently ranks first in the world in terms of the growth of tobacco smoking. A significant number of smokers are teenagers. And one more bleak feature of our country is the feminization of smoking. According to the World Health Organization, 70% of men and 30% of women in Russia smoke. Smoking has a particularly devastating effect on the female body. According to the materials of the annual conference of the Radiological Society of North America, women who smoke, all other things being equal (the researchers took into account the age of patients, the length of smoking, the type of tobacco products used, and other factors), develop lung cancer about twice as often as men. Canadian doctors, based on statistics collected in Vancouver and Quebec, claim that women who start smoking before the age of 25 have a 70% increased chance of developing breast cancer. Specialists in the field of social psychology are well aware of the power of influence on a person's environment. Now a significant part of our urban environment is made up of huge billboards advertising a poison that destroys health. At least for a second, at least for a moment, do people involved in the mass poisoning of people think that at the Last Judgment they will have to answer for everything.

Is it possible to quit smoking? Can. In England, about 10 million people have stopped smoking over the past 10-15 years. Almost 2,000 people quit smoking every day! According to the general teaching of the holy fathers, a person with the help of God can overcome any passion. The great elder Ambrose of Optina gives advice in the fight against the disease of smoking: “You write that you cannot stop smoking tobacco. What is impossible from a person is possible with God’s help; you just have to firmly decide to leave it, realizing the harm to soul and body from it, since tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys the bodily health by slow death.—Irritability and longing are the consequences of the sickness of the soul from tobacco smoking.I advise you to use spiritual medicine against this passion: confess all sins in detail, from the age of seven and throughout your life, and partake of the Holy Mysteries, and read daily, standing, Gospel for a chapter or more; and when melancholy attacks, then read again until the melancholy passes; again it attacks and read the Gospel again. - Or instead, put, alone, 33 big bows, in memory of the earthly life of the Savior and in honor of the Holy Trinity ".

Why are so few people parting with the "gift of the devil"? Because most smokers don't want to quit this habit. And those who desire it and take steps towards it do not really have the inner determination. Despite impulsive efforts, people who repeatedly quit smoking, deep down, are related to this passion. God is always ready to help a person in this saving work, but he expects a feat from him. “When, out of love for God, you desire to do something, put death as the limit of your desire; and thus, in fact, you will be able to ascend to the level of martyrdom in the struggle with every passion, and you will not suffer any harm from meeting you inside this limit, if you endure to the end and do not relax. The thought of a weak mind makes the strength of patience weak; and a firm mind to the one who follows his thoughts even imparts strength that nature does not have” (St. Isaac the Syrian).

Many holy fathers of the Church wrote about smoking, and, in particular, Nectarios of Aegina and Silouan of Athos. From them we learn that man must conquer his passions. Love and striving for God are the most effective cure for bad and sinful habits.

St. Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer speaks of smoking in his Spiritual Exercises and Exhortation Guide, calling this habit "the incense of the devil." In both of his works, Saint Nicodemus emphasizes how serious the topic of smoking is, which he considers guilty not only of a person’s bodily and spiritual ill health, but also of his irresponsibility in relation to Christian duty.

In addition, the author insists that all clergy, without exception, should not smoke, since the use of tobacco smoke is contrary to good manners - a great virtue - and also does not correspond to the greatness of the holy dignity and is harmful to the health of the body.

Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis calls smoking bodily fornication. Abba Pitirion in the Geronticon writes that if a person wants to exorcise demons, he should first defeat his passions, after which the demons will leave on their own. However, demons, as the Lord says, depart from a person only through prayer and fasting. In the same way, a person is freed from passions - by fervent prayer and fasting, which bring prudence and cultivate mercy. Thus, the evil that subjugates men and women is expelled.

Elder Sophrony Sakharov, in his work on St. Silouan of Athos, mentions one incident that we want to tell about here. In 1905, Father Siluan traveled around Russia, visiting various monasteries. On one of these trips on a railroad train, he took a seat opposite a merchant. The latter opened his silver cigarette case with a friendly gesture and offered him a cigarette. Father Siluan thanked for the offer, refusing to take a cigarette. Then the merchant began to say: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider smoking a sin? But smoking often helps in an active life, because it's good to take a break from hard work and relax for a few minutes. It is convenient when smoking to conduct a business or friendly conversation, and in general, in the course of life ... ". And then, trying to convince Father Siluan to take a cigarette, he continued to speak in favor of smoking. Then, nevertheless, Father Silouan decided to say: “Sir, before you light a cigarette, pray, say one “Our Father”. To which the merchant replied: “Praying before smoking seems not very correct.” Silvanus remarked in response: “So, it’s better not to do any business before which it’s not very correct to pray without embarrassment.”

The mind and heart of a person should always be free for prayer. Any human action that cannot coexist with prayer should not be performed. We may notice that St. Silouan does not resort to harsh expressions and does not show disgust towards his smoking interlocutor. He also doesn't justify quitting based on hygiene rules that weren't against smoking in those days. His position on this bad habit is deeply theological. His point of view is based on practical and prayerful theology in the spirit of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church.

Everything that is incompatible with pure prayer, let it not be done at all. The craving for sinful pleasures is conquered not by prohibitions and harsh struggles, but by the communion between God and man, expressed in prayer. The essence of the words of St. Silouan is that the love and desire of the soul for God is the most effective cure for bad and sinful habits.

The Holy Scripture does not speak directly about smoking, but indirectly, through some principles that we are able to apply to modern realities, we can say something about smoking. Scripture gives us a commandment not to let anything "conquer" our body. First Corinthians says: “Everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible for me, but nothing should possess me ”(). Smoking is undoubtedly a severe addiction. The apostle Paul continues: “Don't you know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God's. Of course, smoking is very harmful to health. It is scientifically proven that it destroys the lungs, and sometimes the heart.

Translation from modern Greek: the editors of the online publication "Pemptusia"