Christians and Marijuana
00:00:00.000 | A couple of emails have come in asking whether or not it's wrong for a
00:00:08.400 | Christian to smoke marijuana, and assuming that for them it's legal either
00:00:11.880 | for medical use or because of legislation in the state that they live
00:00:14.700 | in, how would you answer them, Pastor John? Well, I don't know a lot about
00:00:21.000 | marijuana. I'm not an expert on it. I've read a little, listened to some comments
00:00:26.040 | about it in the news and so on. So here's the way I approach it as a novice, and
00:00:31.240 | yet I think we can have some solid biblical guidance here. Marijuana is
00:00:36.680 | ordinarily thought of, and I think ordinarily used, as a mood-altering,
00:00:42.840 | mind-altering drug that creates a kind of a pleasant euphoria. It's not
00:00:49.200 | generally thought of as making one more attentive to reality, but more oblivious
00:00:55.800 | of reality. And in that sense, if you try to compare it with caffeine, say, and I
00:01:00.800 | can imagine somebody saying, "Well, what's wrong? They're both mood-altering drugs.
00:01:03.760 | You drink your coffee and they're going to alter your mood, and I do my marijuana
00:01:07.280 | to alter my mood, and so they're the same." Well, not exactly, because one of the
00:01:12.440 | effects of coffee is that it makes you more alert to reality, and if it didn't, I
00:01:18.360 | think we should run away from it. In fact, I think it is possible to sin with
00:01:22.520 | caffeine, but there's a really significant difference here in that the
00:01:27.200 | mind is being sharpened, hopefully, not made more blunt or more out of
00:01:34.000 | touch with reality. So I don't think marijuana is generally thought of as an
00:01:40.880 | empowering drug that enables you to be a more competent dad, a more
00:01:46.640 | competent mother, a more competent employee, a more competent citizen. It's
00:01:51.280 | rather a recreational escape, and from the little I've read, over time becomes a
00:02:00.120 | destructive force in the brain. It has lasting negative effects on the mind's
00:02:06.640 | ability to do what God created it to do. And so if all that's true, then the
00:02:13.400 | principles from the Bible that I think would lead a Christian away from the
00:02:18.920 | recreational use of marijuana would be, one, that the body is the temple of
00:02:24.480 | the Holy Spirit. That simple teaching had a huge effect on me as a kid. If I was
00:02:29.280 | raising kids again today, I'd say that about smoking, I'd say it about
00:02:33.240 | excessive use of alcohol, I'd say it about marijuana, or lots of other things.
00:02:37.440 | I'd say, "Your body is sacred. God is for your body. Your body is for the Lord."
00:02:43.200 | 1 Corinthians 6, 13. Keep your mind clear and able to think, because Paul said, "Be
00:02:50.400 | babes in evil, but in your thinking be mature," that is, be sharp, be on top of it.
00:02:56.280 | And the root of that is that God gave us minds to know Him, and He gave us hearts
00:03:03.800 | to love Him. And so anything we do that would numb our mind or dull our mind or
00:03:10.640 | distract our mind away from the growing capacities to know Him better and love
00:03:17.240 | Him more, a Christian is going to want to want to turn away from. And that is
00:03:21.760 | the way the Bible talks about drunkenness. And I think marijuana is in
00:03:26.660 | that same category. It says, "In the end it bites like a serpent, it stings like an
00:03:31.680 | adder, your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things."
00:03:36.440 | In other words, it leads away from the kind of sober self-control and use of
00:03:42.440 | the mind for the glory of God. But, you know, having said that, namely
00:03:48.200 | that I think a Christian is going to turn away from these kinds of destructive
00:03:52.640 | mood-altering drugs and move toward lucid, clear thinking for the glory of
00:03:58.320 | God, I would not oppose a kind of medical use of marijuana that is controlled by
00:04:06.160 | appropriate physician oversight and prescriptions. We have lots of drugs, it
00:04:13.400 | seems to me, that are sold by prescription, which if they were abused
00:04:19.160 | would be as destructive or even more destructive than marijuana. And I had a
00:04:24.640 | friend who shared with me very soberly one time that he had a son who had a
00:04:29.160 | long-standing old ankle injury, and he said, "I know from his experience that the
00:04:35.840 | only relief he can get is with a slight use of marijuana." So if there were a way
00:04:42.880 | to use marijuana the way we use aspirin or the way we use an antibiotic with
00:04:48.600 | careful oversight, in principle I wouldn't oppose that.
00:04:52.240 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email
00:04:55.720 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org
00:04:59.120 | you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your
00:05:02.800 | host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
00:05:06.240 | (Thanks for watching)