How to quit smoking responsibly

While reading Jonathan Franzen’s  How To Be Alone: Essays, I was struck by a particular quote in an essay involving the cigarette industry and Franzen’s own smoking habit. Franzen comments on what is really going on when he as a smoker says he wants to quit but can’t.  ”I want to quit but I want even more not to suffer the agony of withdrawal. To argue otherwise is to jettison any lingering notion of personal responsibility.”  I think Franzen just nailed some truth, the kind of truth we don’t want to see in our own lives when it comes to anything we “want” to do but don’t. Cost vs benefit, pleasure vs pain, the scales weigh the options according to our perspective.  Truth be told it is not that I don’t want to quit, it is just that I don’t want to pay the price.  I don’t want to accept responsibility.  Refreshingly honest.  In the end we are all responsible in God’s eyes.  We just don’t want to go through the agony of sin withdrawal.  The best answer for not coming to Jesus for forgiveness is that I don’t want to change my life.  Funny thing is we don’t have to change anything when coming to Jesus for forgiveness, its just that after we do, we end up wanting to.  Our agonies have a different object.  Same responsibility, different wants.

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