Old Smoking Ad Breathes New Life Into Relationships, Religion, Health

“Like Father, Like Son” PSA cut smoking: Now it’s explaining family, faith, and the Bible

“Like Father, Like Son,” first aired when I was a toddler. The ad returns in conversations about families, parenting, and faith.

The public service announcement shows a boy imitating his dad as they paint, drive, wash a car, and walk. The dad then smokes, so the curious boy grabs the cigarettes.

The message was powerful: kids copy parents and will imitate bad habits as well as good ones. A half-century later, that memory hit me again.

The anti-smoking message explains the Garden of Eden, the story that explains all others, centering on a father and children, history’s first broken relationship.

Both stories show children who love, admire, and want to be like their father: they imitate him — even when it involves doing something they know they shouldn’t. Like the prodigal son, we want it all, our full inheritance now.

We are the image of our Father, so it’s natural to want it all — to want to be like him. When a dark voice whispers, “you too can be like” the one you admire, we feel ready: like kids who want Christmas gifts before December 25.

“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.’’ (1 John 2:6, ESV).

Honor your mother and father, worship your God. He is perfect, and we are His children, so why aren’t we?

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,’’ (Matthew 5:48, NIV).

Few realize the original Greek meaning of “perfect” means becoming “mature” or “complete.”

We may feel complete sometimes, but we are here to grow and ready ourselves for eternity. We often don’t realize how much we still need to learn until after we’ve gone through a painful, life-changing experience.

Personal messages are the most powerful, enduring ones: “Like Father, Like Son,” debuted when I was 2-years-old, and it played for years. It moved me because it was universal and easy to relate to:

• The little blond boy reminded me of myself, and his father looked like my father.
• Their car, the beloved original Mustang convertible, is a classic everyone wanted, and it reminded me of the convertible my dad drove when I was born. Boys had “toy steering wheels,” and squirt guns just like the boy in the ad did.
• My dad never smoked, so we never smoked, and that ad made it clear to me why I would never want to either. The boy’s mere touch of the cigarette package made it seem unappealing. Like the forbidden fruit in the garden.
• How influential were those ads? Forty percent of Americans smoked in the 1960s and into the 1970s. By the 1980s, the percentage of U.S. smokers dropped to 32 percent. Today it’s less than 15 percent.
• Anti-smoking efforts were intense in those years. Smoking foes harnessed the Fairness Doctrine demanding they counter pro-smoking ads from the tobacco companies with PSAs. In 1970, Congress voted to ban cigarette ads from the TV airwaves, so the anti-smoking TV ads also went away.

The fall in the garden begins when the serpent twists the noble goal of wanting to be like God, to know what He knows, by urging our first mother to reject God’s one rule about not eating from the Tree of Knowlege:

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5, NIV).

Children aren’t ready: They need to grow and learn.

The early Church fathers often said God became man so men could be like God. As the ad shows, children very naturally imitate parents, trying to “be like” them.

But children aren’t yet ready to “be like” adults. They need to imitate, follow, learn, and love them before they can become mature and complete. You don’t want to know some things too soon.

History is His Story: Our stories are part of the bigger, greatest one?

We are part of something so much bigger than ourselves: history. History is part of the Greatest Story Ever Told, His Story, the maker of the Universe, and His creations.

We enter history and His Story playing minor roles, starting as babies unable to hold our heads up, growing, and learning every day of our lives.

But why would God allow us to suffer? Father Larry Richards describes a small child, terrified of the needles at the doctor’s office, begging to be spared from that scary pain. The parent knows and understands why that moment of pain is necessary to prevent later and greater suffering. But the child doesn’t yet understand.

Why are some prayers unanswered? Why so much waiting? Again, the child wants to know more but can’t quite understand. He is the painter; we are the paint. He writes our story. We are a pencil in His hands.

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:6, NIV).