Schools run educational programmes, with the help of excellent film material and personal witnesses, to inform youngsters about the risks involved. As a result, the vast majority of people in western society know that smoking presents the highly increased likelihood of contracting cancer or heart disease. However, although the level of smoking has been reduced through these informational services, a very large proportion of people still continue to smoke. They know it is dangerous, yet they do not give up the habit. The reason is instructive.
Smoking is addictive.
It fulfils certain psychological needs. 12 Liberating people from the negative habit of smoking requires not only good intellectual information, but also a tackling of their psychological needs. In the past we may not have sufficiently clarified the liberating aspect of our own Christian beliefs. For a number of reasons, theologians have been reluctant to develop a new language regarding death, regarding our absorption into God and our utter self-realisation in God's love in a language which would speak to our own contemporaries. As we have seen before, death poses a special problem in western society.