🔊 The Christian & Marijuana

Welcome to AnchorCast, a weekly podcast of homilies and sermons from Christ our Anchor Anglican Mission in Nashville, Tennessee.

The question before us today is what is the Christian to think about marijuana?

Before I dive in, I’ll give a few disclosures about where my starting point was before I really dug into this topic and gave it much thought.

First, I was raised Mormon.

I have a deep aversion to dietary purity codes and anything that gives a hint of works-based righteousness.

Colossians says, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or sabbath.

These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

This was a pivotal passage in my conversion to Christianity and remains a guiding star to my theology.

Second, my ministry among the imprisoned and homeless has put me face-to-face with drugs and the dark places substances can take a man.

I’m convinced by experience and by the research of the last several years that very little, if any, good can come from recreational drug use, be that marijuana, its derivatives, or harder substances.

Third, I approach this question as a Catholic Christian who drinks alcohol weekly, has coffee daily, sometimes consumes ultra-processed foods, doesn’t exercise enough, and who has smoked the occasional pipe.

Even from the onset, I recognize that an engagement with marijuana cannot be cleanly separated from other ingestible substances.

From the start, I stand ready to be corrected and constrained in all areas of my life by what scripture with tradition teach me in this area.

To my mind, to talk of marijuana is actually to talk about ingestible, body-altering substances used recreationally and or medicinally.

The church has a long tradition of being open to the practice of medicine.

The church supports medicines and procedures that heal the body and reduce suffering within the bounds of respecting natural death and the sanctity of life.

Therefore, I feel that we can set medicinal use directed by physicians aside.

We can agree that the Christian shouldn’t worry, morally at least, about marijuana or any other substance when used as a medicine.

This brings us to focus on the main issue—recreational use.

For the purpose of this lecture, within recreational use, I’ll include light, self-directed, quasi-medicinal use as well—the it’s-been-a-hard-day, it-helps-me-relax, and it-helps-me-in-social-situations.

That is, ingestion of a substance to dull or enhance bodily functions to make a path for recreation, relaxation, or joy.

So before we’ve really even gotten started here, I’m already not just talking about marijuana.

Marijuana is an easy shorthand to place an entire category of substances upon—caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and sugar, just to name a few—though they all differ in how they affect the body, they are all substances readily available for self-directed use to bring joy, merriness, relaxation, and generally to enhance various positive experiences, or to dull the negative.

Given now the broad nature of what we’re talking about, to my mind a Christian conversation on marijuana doesn’t take us to a definitive substance code—that is, this is good, that is bad, this is good once a week, etc.

Instead, any conversation of marijuana and substances in the same category direct us towards the virtue of temperance.

Virtue, at its core, is the right-ordering of a man’s passions and actions towards the capital-G Good, the true reality of God’s created universe, made manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The virtuous man doesn’t see himself as a mere bag of cells and chemical systems.

He doesn’t make himself God over his body, freely manipulating the body chemically and otherwise to his own ends.

The virtuous man sees himself as part of a greater whole.

He sees himself as part of God’s created order.

He knows his true humanity is in relation to and cardinality towards God.

Anything that moves away from this true reality—the true good of God’s universe—deforms man and decreases his humanity.

This deformation ultimately leads to destruction.

Let us then look to see what God’s word has to say about wine, the common alcoholic beverage of biblical times, and a similar-enough analog for recreational, ingestible, body-altering substances.

Ecclesiastes said, A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry.

In Isaiah we read, Everyone who thirsts come to the waters, and he who has no money come buy and eat.

Some buy wine and milk without money and without price.

In Zechariah we hear, Their hearts shall be glad as with wine.

In Judges we read, Shall I leave my wine, which cheers gods and men, and go sway over the trees?

And then finally in Amos we read, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowmen shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes, him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

Scripture tells us that God made wine for our enjoyment.

Chocolate, coffee, and sugar, too, are made by God for man to enjoy.

The leaves of the tobacco plant and the budding flowers of the marijuana plant, too, are part of God’s creation.

But God’s word does not give us an unlimited license.

In Isaiah again we read, Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim! They also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way.

The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine.

They are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.

For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.

Ephesians says, And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be full with the Spirit.

Titus says, Be not given too much wine.

Too much wine makes a man drunk.

He ceases to be merry and moves to the place where he loses the human capacity to engage in the good, the reality of the created order.

He cannot stand, he cannot speak, he cannot focus and see.

Temperance, keeping the various parts of ourselves as a unified and ordered whole, is the key virtue here.

Wine makes man merry and is to be enjoyed.

So too the sun on a warm day is to be enjoyed.

Too much wine makes one drunk and brings disorder to the man.

Too much sun burns the skin and brings injury, pain, and decreased physical capacity.

But temperance is not just, too much of a good thing is bad.

Temperance is not simply moderation.

Temperance, per the Roman Catholic German philosopher Josef Pieper, is a selfless self-love which seeks not itself blindly, but with open eyes endeavors to correspond to the true reality of God, the self, and the world.

That is to say that temperance is not just about how much, but to what end.

It’s not just about moderating negatives, but also questioning motives to begin with.

Temperance allows us to see wine as a creative and celebratory use of God’s gift of grapes.

Temperance allows us to see the beauty of man’s God-given ingenuity in the varieties of techniques applied to water, barley, and hops to make different flavors, colors, and mouthfeels of beer.

Temperance smells the variety of God’s earth and tastes the skill of the tobacco farmer and cigar maker.

Temperance also drives us to see when the ends of something are out of sync with the reality of God.

When a substance dulls the senses such that we cannot exercise our God-given faculties.

When a substance tries to replace the good through addiction.

When the use of a thing begins to supplant that in a man’s life that rightly belongs to God.

Within this world of temperance, the man who came across the marijuana plant and discovered the medicinal and recreational properties of its buds did no wrong.

He discovered uses placed into the plant by God.

He enjoyed God’s creation.

The right, balanced use of natural marijuana in this way, no different from chocolate, wine, coffee, tobacco, or beer.

Now I would love to end the lecture here, but you might have noticed that I just modified marijuana with natural.

In truth, though I didn’t say it, caffeine, nicotine, sugar, and alcohol were also modified with this word.

To me, natural makes all the difference here.

In Genesis chapter 1 we read, Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant, yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.

You shall have them for food.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, and everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.

And it was so.

God created man, then, to creatively use the natural elements of the earth, mineral, animal, and plant.

God rejoices at human creativity, and is thrilled when we use the good gifts he’s given us to make new things.

It is in the act of creativity, making and loving, that we mirror his image.

In the created world of God, the elements of the earth, the creatures, and the things made from them, start neutral.

That is, they are neither good nor bad, they just are.

As we discussed earlier, temperance isn’t just the moderated use of a thing, it is also inspecting its ends.

It is a man’s use of a thing that they are directed towards evil or good, whether the intent of the thing is deforming or draws man closer to God.

When I look at the contemporary marijuana landscape, I don’t see a lot of natural marijuana sitting around.

Instead, I see chemically concentrated edibles, oils, and other processed derivatives.

I see genetically modified plants.

All of these purport to be created not for complexity of flavor, texture, or color, but are all created for one single purpose, a stronger, longer, and quicker high.

This, to me, is where marijuana diverges from caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, and traditional tobacco.

In all except marijuana, I see a history of temperant uses.

I see chocolate varieties bred to be sweeter, tangier, or more buttery.

I see coffee bred, grown, roasted, and brewed in various different places using interesting techniques all to creatively change flavor profiles.

Beer and wine follow the same pattern, too.

You don’t really see some sort of special grape being bred to expressly make wine get you drunk quicker or to stay drunk longer.

Above the traditional vices, we see a clear history of temperant use where growers and artisans work creatively with open eyes to correspond to a true reality of God, the self, and the world.

The Christian, of course, must always discern.

There is a history of alcohol abuse.

There are chocolates artificially laced with extreme levels of synthetic caffeine.

There are alcoholic beverages devised with the sole purpose of hiding the extreme levels of alcohol with artificial flavoring to facilitate the sole purpose of getting drunk quickly.

Our ultra-processed world leaves much opportunity for intemperant variations of coffee, beer, and wine.

But our starting position is one of openness because we know of a history of virtuous Christian use.

Modern marijuana, and modern tobacco is included here as well, start from an unnatural origin.

They are formulated, not created, in the laboratory and factory.

They start with the intent to maximize the positives and lessen any negatives.

They are formulated to addict, to dull, and to hide.

Vape pens and edibles artificially extract the drug, concentrate it to unnatural levels, and put it in a form to facilitate unnaturally quick delivery methods.

These processes and transformations, rather than recognizing and trying to correspond to a true reality of God, are living in a false dream world.

The purpose of these products is not to celebrate the creativity of farmers or artisans.

It is not to creatively enjoy the fruits of God’s creation.

It is only for the High and the Prophet.

From what I see around me, then, there are very few temperant uses of marijuana.

Very few opportunities to enjoy the complex natural beauty of God’s creation and man’s ingenuity combined.

That which is not temperant is an affront to the reality of God’s good creation.

That which is not virtuous should be avoided by the Christian.

So, in closing, I’ve established that Christians are okay with the recreational use of natural substances that alter the body to elevate the positive or dull the negative.

I’ve established that nothing is to be enjoyed without consideration or constraint.

The virtue of temperance demands that we conform ourselves to God’s reality and selflessly enjoy His creation only to His glory.

Therefore, when asked the question of what a Christian is to think of marijuana, if a Christian should or can use marijuana, I give the following points for your consideration.

First, the default position of a Christian towards recreational marijuana should be suspicion.

Two, when thinking of using marijuana, we should consider the ends of its use and if it glorifies God and conforms to reality.

Temperance is the reigning virtue.

Three, if marijuana is to be used, the form following the established pattern of other substances historically used by Christians is its natural plant form, not its modern, heavily processed form.

And fourth, given other established, well-known substances such as beer, wine, and tobacco, we must consider if there is even a need to tread a new path with marijuana.

Thank you.

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