Posted July 16, 2026
I hate cigarettes. I hate everything about them—their smell, the way secondhand smoke imposes itself on everyone in the room, and especially their threat to physical health and life.
My hatred is personal: my mother was a smoker who died of lung cancer as a result. I have also dealt with degenerative disc disease for many years, which is directly related to secondhand smoke.
My hatred is collective as well: according to the Cleveland Clinic, cigarette smoking causes or increases our risk for macular degeneration, cataracts, vision loss, tooth staining and decay, gum disease, frequent infections, COPD, infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, developmental delays in children, anxiety, depression, blood clots, heart attack, stroke, bone fractures, osteoporosis, premature aging, yellow nails, wrinkles, and especially raises our risk for lung, oral, laryngeal, and other cancers.
It is estimated that across the twentieth century, around one hundred million people died prematurely because of smoking. The World Health Organization reports that smoking is responsible for about eight million premature deaths each year—more than seven million from direct tobacco use, and about 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke.
I hope that today’s article seems irrelevant to you thus far because you do not smoke and you are aware of the threats of smoking. Why, then, would I go to these lengths to condemn cigarette smoking? Because of this headline: “Cigarettes are back in vogue. How did this happen?”
The answer reveals a facet of our culture that is both relevant and urgent for us all.
Jessica M. Goldstein is a Washington, DC-based novelist, reporter, and cultural commentator. Her article this week in the Washington Post is a deep dive into a phenomenon I have been seeing as well: “cigarettes seem to be creeping back to the aspirational center, among both civilians and celebrities.”
She cites Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Gracie Adams, and Dua Lipa among models and celebrities pictured recently on magazine covers and elsewhere while smoking. Cigarettes are now ubiquitous on TikTok, Reels, and Instagram accounts.
According to Goldstein, cigarettes are nostalgic, pointing back to an Old Hollywood era that “belongs to a more elegant, less hideous time.” Smoking also channels an “apocalypse-is-now energy” in a day when cynicism and nihilism are more predominant. And they are a “conduit to certain bygone behaviors that are, actually, good for you: Taking a break, going outside, talking to other people.”
Of course, they are also the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the US. But no one who smokes a cigarette thinks it will kill them today. Whereas the social appeal, not to mention the addiction, of smoking is a present-tense allure.
Therein lies my point today.
Our “post-truth” culture has long abandoned deontological ethics, which argues for right and wrong based on objective rules and duties. We are now steadfastly teleological, basing right and wrong on personal outcomes. If it works for me, it is right for me, or so we think. (For more, see my latest website article, “Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home lists for $17 million.”)
But now we’re at a point where even morality based on consequences has been narrowed to choosing what we want today over what we will want tomorrow. Those who smoke know that they will likely face cancer and other horrific outcomes eventually. But they want what they want now and don’t care if they will one day regret what they choose this day.
I am no different. While I would never smoke for the reasons I’ve documented, I am just as susceptible to other temptations that prize a present benefit over a future cost.
In fact, it seems to me that nearly all temptation works this way. I suppose I could impoverish my family by saving so much for the future that we suffer in the present, but this is implausible at best. The thief who goes to jail rather than give up the location of his loot, knowing that his prison time will be worth it when he gets out, is more of a movie script than a common reality.
And it goes against the grain of our fallen humanity. We want to be our own god now (Genesis 3:5), to do what we want to do when we want to do it. Christians will prefer “private” sins over public transgressions in the belief that we can commit them without consequence to our public image, but the same calculus is at work.
In this sense, we are all addicts to self if to nothing else. And like addicts, we need to admit that we are “powerless” over ourselves, believe that “a Power greater than ourselves” can “restore us to sanity,” and “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.”
The good news is that the living Lord Jesus is ready to liberate us from ourselves into his abundant life and make us “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). We can dethrone ourselves and enthrone him with the simple prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
When we pray these words, according to theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner,
We are asking God to be God. We are asking God to do not what we want, but what God wants. We are asking God to make manifest the holiness that is now mostly hidden, to set free in all its terrible splendor the devastating power that is now mostly under restraint…
To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.
Then, when we let Jesus “out of the cage,” he lets us out of ours.
What cage is imprisoning you today?
“He that would be little in temptation, let him be much in prayer.” —John Owen (1616–83)
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