A Smoking Treasure

My father is a used car salesman, and sometimes he gets cars from unusual sources.  When I was 15 a man on the eastern edge of the United States stole a car and had a crazy joy ride.  He ended up getting caught in Cedar City, and rather than deal with the expense of bringing a trashed car across the nation he sold what was left of the car to my father.  It was in sorry shape.

It looked as though the thief had lived in the car for weeks.  It reeked, it was filthy, and it was packed with junk.  Empty fast food wrappers, magazines, paper, socks, and a mountain of junk buried under a layer of cigarette smoke.  My father was worried about whether he could make a profit on the vehicle, and unfortunately there wasn't anything of value in the car.  Until we opened the trunk.

A pack is 20 cigarettes.  A carton is 10 packs.  His trunk has stacks of cartons, all unopened an still in the original cellophane.  We estimated it was over 500 dollars in cigarettes.  We joked that it was worth more than the car.  Because my father bought the car and everything in it, we owned those cigarettes.  Which left us with an obvious and perplexing question:  What do you do with them?

It wasn't really a question of whether cigarettes are good or bad.  The Lord revealed in D&C 89:8 " tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill."  No one thought we should smoke it, but now that we already owned it, what should we do?  Everyone in our family seemed to have a different opinion:

"We should sell it.  It's worth 500 dollars and there's not reason to lose good money.  Whoever buys them would have bought the cigarettes anyway.  We're just making sure the money goes to us instead of to some evil company."

"We should burn it.  Cigarettes are evil, a plague on society, and must be destroyed."

"Burn it?  Do we remember these are cigarettes?  Don't release the stuff in the air, just crush it up and then throw them away."

"But you don't want it on your hands, don't mess with it, don't give anyone a chance to see us with it.  Just toss it perfectly wrapped in the dumpster."

"You might as well toss it where someone could use it.  Even if it isn't something we believe in there are other people who would love to be able to save the money.  It would be like service to them."

"Serving them by giving them cigarettes?  That's not what we believe in."

"We also help build other churches, and we help bar owners recover from fires.  It is a principle of being kind.  We should tell them we are giving them the cigarettes because we thought they could use them"

"They would like that, and if we offered the cigarettes at a discount that would show kindness and prudence.  We could donate the money to a charity, then their addicition would have some good come from it."

"True prudence would be to use the money to help improve the profit from the car.  Since it was not our fault that we aquired cigarettes it is not a sin to use them for money."

"We should sell it. It's worth 500 dollars and there's not reason to lose good money. Whoever buys them would have bought the cigarettes anyway. We're just making sure the money goes to us instead of to some evil company."

"Didn't you just say that?  We keep going in circles."

And so it was.  We held a family council and tried to decide what would be the right thing to do.  I was amazed that I couldn't figure out who was "right" and who was "wrong".  Was it because we didn't know what was right?  Was it a situation where there was no right or wrong?  Were all the solutions equally right?

I still think about that conversation from time to time.  I never did figure out what the correct decision should have been.  I'll tell you what we did, but only because I'm sure you're as terribly curious as I was that day.  The real lesson here isn't about cigarettes or money, it's about what to do when you have several paths and you.

One thing I have decided is that it would have been wrong to not make a decision.  After the family counsel with the children my parents talked about it alone because they were called by God to lead the family.  As early as Deuteronomy 32:46 the Lord said "Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law." After they had discussed their decision my father acted on a decision.  I do not know whether the final decision was what my father or mother wanted, because that was a personal thing between them.  I assume sometimes my dad gets his way, and sometimes my mom gets her way.

It was my dad that carried out the final decision because he is the head of the home.  It does not mean he always gets what he wants, it means it is his responsibility to make sure the decision is carried out.  In other words, the leader of the home makes sure stuff gets done - and often that may not be what he wanted to have happen.  The Lord said his house was "a house of order" (D&C 88:119), and the father's job is to keep that order in the spirit of the Lord.

My father told us that he and Mom had made a decision.  He hesitated, as if he wasn't sure it was the right choice, but he would go to the mechanics who owned a shop next door and give it to them.  They were avid smokers.  He would tell them he didn't want any reciprocation, and he didn't want to know what happened to them.

At first I thought our treasure was gone, but as I ponder the story I have realized the real treasure was my family having an opportunity to face a very challenging problem, and work together to find a solution.  Everyone in the family felt heard, we all agreed it was a tricky problem.  We liked that our parents were united in coming to a decision.  My father was man enough to execute the final judgement and handle the end of the story.  That pattern has helped me and my wife manage difficult decisions we have faced as the parents of our own family.