A couple of emails have come in asking whether or not it's wrong for a Christian to smoke marijuana, and assuming that for them it's legal either for medical use or because of legislation in the state that they live in, how would you answer them, Pastor John? Well, I don't know a lot about marijuana.

I'm not an expert on it. I've read a little, listened to some comments about it in the news and so on. So here's the way I approach it as a novice, and yet I think we can have some solid biblical guidance here. Marijuana is ordinarily thought of, and I think ordinarily used, as a mood-altering, mind-altering drug that creates a kind of a pleasant euphoria.

It's not generally thought of as making one more attentive to reality, but more oblivious of reality. And in that sense, if you try to compare it with caffeine, say, and I can imagine somebody saying, "Well, what's wrong? They're both mood-altering drugs. You drink your coffee and they're going to alter your mood, and I do my marijuana to alter my mood, and so they're the same." Well, not exactly, because one of the effects of coffee is that it makes you more alert to reality, and if it didn't, I think we should run away from it.

In fact, I think it is possible to sin with caffeine, but there's a really significant difference here in that the mind is being sharpened, hopefully, not made more blunt or more out of touch with reality. So I don't think marijuana is generally thought of as an empowering drug that enables you to be a more competent dad, a more competent mother, a more competent employee, a more competent citizen.

It's rather a recreational escape, and from the little I've read, over time becomes a destructive force in the brain. It has lasting negative effects on the mind's ability to do what God created it to do. And so if all that's true, then the principles from the Bible that I think would lead a Christian away from the recreational use of marijuana would be, one, that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

That simple teaching had a huge effect on me as a kid. If I was raising kids again today, I'd say that about smoking, I'd say it about excessive use of alcohol, I'd say it about marijuana, or lots of other things. I'd say, "Your body is sacred. God is for your body.

Your body is for the Lord." 1 Corinthians 6, 13. Keep your mind clear and able to think, because Paul said, "Be babes in evil, but in your thinking be mature," that is, be sharp, be on top of it. And the root of that is that God gave us minds to know Him, and He gave us hearts to love Him.

And so anything we do that would numb our mind or dull our mind or distract our mind away from the growing capacities to know Him better and love Him more, a Christian is going to want to want to turn away from. And that is the way the Bible talks about drunkenness.

And I think marijuana is in that same category. It says, "In the end it bites like a serpent, it stings like an adder, your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things." In other words, it leads away from the kind of sober self-control and use of the mind for the glory of God.

But, you know, having said that, namely that I think a Christian is going to turn away from these kinds of destructive mood-altering drugs and move toward lucid, clear thinking for the glory of God, I would not oppose a kind of medical use of marijuana that is controlled by appropriate physician oversight and prescriptions.

We have lots of drugs, it seems to me, that are sold by prescription, which if they were abused would be as destructive or even more destructive than marijuana. And I had a friend who shared with me very soberly one time that he had a son who had a long-standing old ankle injury, and he said, "I know from his experience that the only relief he can get is with a slight use of marijuana." So if there were a way to use marijuana the way we use aspirin or the way we use an antibiotic with careful oversight, in principle I wouldn't oppose that.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (Thanks for watching)