January 11, 2017
US Surgeon General, Luther Terry

“Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:17-24

On this date, January 11, 1964, Surgeon General Luther L. Terry (1961-1965) issues Smoking and Health, the first Surgeon General’s report to receive public attention on the hazards of smoking.

“Meeting at the National Library of Medicine on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, from November 1962 through January 1964, the committee reviewed more than 7,000 scientific articles with the help of over 150 consultants. Terry issued the commission’s report on January 11, 1964, choosing a Saturday to minimize the effect on the stock market and to maximize coverage in the Sunday papers. As Terry remembered the event, two decades later, the report “hit the country like a bombshell. It was front page news and a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad.”

The report highlighted the deleterious health consequences of tobacco use. Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General held cigarette smoking responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality rate of smokers over non-smokers. The report estimated that average smokers had a nine- to ten-fold risk of developing lung cancer compared to non-smokers: heavy smokers had at least a twenty-fold risk. The risk rose with the duration of smoking and diminished with the cessation of smoking.”(US National Library of Medicine online information about Luther Terry’s report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General)

Paul writing to the church in Ephesus is making a point about renewal – clothing ourselves with a “new self”, to the likeness of G-d, our creator. Paul also writes something similar in his letter to the church in Corinth – that “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19) Sometimes our bad habits become so all-consuming that we become slaves to them – just like Paul speaks about not allowing the lusts of the body to enslave us in sin. I believe Paul’s concern is about living lives where we make connections between our spiritual health, and our physical health. When we learn that sin is bad, we are called to the same challenge as Jesus calls the woman caught in adultery – he says “Go and sin no more.” In our personal lives, we need to hear Paul reminding us: he says, “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” All of us can make positive changes this new year — changes in both our spiritual lives, and in our physical lives. All can be possible with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Dave