When told "Everyone else is doing it," my wife’s mother would say, "We aren’t everyone else."

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the question "How do you catch a unique rabbit?"

Answer: Unique up on him.

Second question: How do you tame a unique rabbit?

Answer: The tame way.

OK, I won’t give up my day job.

But here’s the point: We are encouraged in not being conformed to the world, but rather being transformed by our mind’s renewal (Rom. 12:1-2).

That can certainly have its benefits.

Let’s look at some things the world does, that generally speaking, those of the Word typically avoid.

Smoking cigarettes

I saw a bank sign once that read, “If you smoke on these premises, we will assume you are on fire, and you will be treated accordingly.”

Since that time, it’s difficult for me to not think of someone lighting up in a bank being doused by the overhead sprinkler, concurrently approached by an axe-wielding teller who knocks the cigarette out of the patron’s hand, all the while being rolled across the floor safely ensconced in the institution’s logo-adorned carpet runner. In that case, smoking truly could be hazardous to your health.

On a more civil note, my late wife (and her oldest sister) came to this country from Hong Kong as high school foreign exchange students.

From what I understand, they loved their peers and it was mutual. In their vanity, however, the girls were concerned about one thing in particular. They noticed when their friends smoked, it turned their teeth a silver color (Granted, clear “Invisalign” braces are available now. If they were at the time, the siblings may have actually taken up the habit).

Some of us about as old as those two remember the early anti-smoking campaign posters with the caption “Smoking is very glamorous” perched beneath the portrait of someone who looked like the living dead.

Apparently, among other things, cigarette smoking clogs arteries and blood vessels and causes more facial lines to develop than otherwise would. I have enough to deal with. My face already looks like a Rand McNally road map. Am I ready to take up the habit? No, my vanity is at stake.

And then there’s romance

I know there are those this does not affect (especially if your mate smokes, too). Please just bear with the rest of us for a moment.

When one of my sisters was much younger and in love, her boyfriend popped the question, and she answered with a resounding “Yes.” But there was a condition attached. She needed to give up smoking because he wasn’t going to be kissing somebody who tasted like an ashtray for years to come.

She quit, and they’ve been married for nearly four decades now. Trying to stop smoking? Get engaged to someone with habits different than yours.

Smokers have a choice

And the one they have is usually affected by the routine.

There are some whose vocal quality seems to improve with smoking. I don’t know what Bonnie Tyler or Lauren Daigle sounded like before, just saying.

As for me, I sing in the shower, and if I enjoyed smoking there (as I’m told some do), with my luck, the water would snuff out the cigarette.

According to my understanding, singers who allegedly never lit up include Ted Nugent, Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Paice. Ritchie was to have said, “Everyone else did (smoke in their youth), who thought they were cool," so to be “uncool,” as he wanted, he didn’t. As for Ian, he supposedly had just one lung, so taking up the habit seemed foolish to him.

And apparently, when the singers were out and about, people didn’t roll their noses at them as though their clothing had spent all night hanging in the Philip Morris company breakroom.

I am not condemning smokers, just pointing out potential differences between those who do and don’t smoke. If you want to quit and haven’t yet tried any of the smoking cessation options available to you here in Jackson County, give them a try. There are more possibilities for help on that here than there are cigarettes in a pack, including Schneck Medical Center and Centerstone, just to name a couple.

Sex

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets and exclaimed, “OK, guys, I got him down to just 10, but he won’t budge on adultery.”

Young people think they invented sex, but God has them beat on that one. It has been around for centuries. Just ask Adam and Eve.

Solomon wrote a marriage manual about it, found in Song of Solomon, and he should know what he’s talking about. He had 700 wives.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews said the marriage bed was undefiled (Heb. 13:4), which in the Greek says in essence, “It’s a good thing to be having marital relations, but keep it between you and your spouse inside of the house, lest you wind up ‘prostituting’ yourself and find you’re filled with a loathsome disease (or more than one, these days)."

The ’60s were great for telling us how to mess up our lives and the lives of those we cared about by being more selfish than selfless. We took notes and haven’t looked back.

Acquiring a sexually transmitted disease resulting from unfaithfulness can unfortunately be a gift that keeps on giving, even to the innocent party, not to mention the pain (physical and otherwise) it causes the instigators of the same and the monumental determination it takes to bring trust back into the marriage, a laudable goal.

Following the biblical mandate on relationships will keep you from trouble and increase your joy exponentially. Remember what the Apostle Paul admonishes about the holy spirit living within believers, and since we were bought by another with a price, we should be enslaved to him, rather than the world’s immorality (I Cor. 6:19-20).

Beverage

Playwright George Bernard Shaw was quoted as saying, “College is a fountain of knowledge … where many come to drink.” Now that’s the kind of wisdom that gives even Solomon a run for his money.

Though it is true that within religious circles, there is opinion difference on the amount of alcohol (if any) that one should consume.

Here’s a point: Unless the merriment is at a wedding celebration (and a sober person drives home), drinking to excess will get you into the trouble you would rather have stayed out of to begin with.

To conclude

So then, should we have smoky relations after a night on the town with our spouse? Sounds good. Just make sure there’s no sign that tells you what happens if you’re too hot.

Les Linz of Seymour writes the “Humor: More or Les” column. For information about Linz, visit his amazon.com author page. Send comments to [email protected].