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Media Awareness Project

US: Web: Editorial: One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus?

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1018/a04.html
Newshawk: Amanda
Pubdate: Thu, 20 Jul 2000
Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)
Copyright: 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Contact: letters@worldnetdaily.com
Address: PO Box 409, Cave Junction, OR 97523-0409
Fax: (541) 597-1700
Website: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
Author: Joel Miller, Managing Editor of WorldNetDaily

ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE ,SWEET JESUS?

Christians aren't stoked on the idea of drug use. Don't believe
me? Try waving a joint under a preacher's nose someday; you'd
better be prepared to hear about how warm your eternal lodgings in
the great hereafter will be. On the sin scale of most Christians,
doing drugs is pretty close to doing sheep. WWJD? Not dope.

The problem is that, for most, the position is kneejerk, based
upon as much critical thinking as bumping into a wall. And, like
face-planting the plaster, the results are less than desirable.

Uncritical thinking leads to muddling issues and slipping into
sloppy conclusions. For the Christian and the question of drugs,
this typically involves making no distinction between immoral and
illegal - -- going all gung-ho for escalating the war on drugs,
leading the choir in "Onward, Christian Soldiers" as we rush to
jail the junkies, desolate the dealers and spray defoliant on half
of South America to ruin the coca crop.

This uncritical jiggle of the brain flab is, however, not good
enough. True Christians don't operate on gut feelings, societal
impulse, cultural conditioning or whether Aunt Margaret boxed your
ears as a teen-ager for saying smoking crack was cool. As "People
of the Book," the overriding question for Christians should be, is
smack scriptural? What, after all, does the Bible say about dope?

The moral question: Is gumming a bong bad? Holy Writ is riddled
with condemnation for drunkenness. Harsh words against getting
sloshed are so plentiful and obvious that even a one-eyed
inebriant should be able to spot a few references on a drunken
thumb-through. And prohibitive and condemnatory statements
against elbow tipping and booze bibbing are just as severe as they
are plentiful. A few verses in no particular order:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation
(Ephesians
5:18)

Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and
drunkenness (Romans 13:13)

Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the
fading flower of its glorious beauty, which is at the head of the
fertile valley of those who are overcome with wine! (Isaiah 28:1)

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality,
impurity, sensuality ... envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and
things like these ... those who practice such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:19, 21)

Some may object that these passages condemn alcohol, not drugs.
Forget about it. Two principles in Scripture blow a slobbery, wet
razzberry in the direction of this objection. For starters,
notice that word "dissipation" in Ephesians? This falls in the
same category of taking things to excess, about which Christians
are continually warned in Scripture. Dissipative behavior is
pursuing indulgences -- like doping or drinking -- to the point of
harm. Many drugs, without doubt, bring harm upon the user.
LSD-induced flashbacks, for instance, are evidence of lasting
mental harm -- not a brain upgrade. Those that don't bugger your
gray matter usually run afoul of the second point: sobriety.

Drugs do funny things to your mind -- why else do you think folks
drop acid, snort lines and tap veins? It sure isn't to feel
normal. If so, it's an extremely expensive way to feel as lame as
you did five minutes before toking that bong. The whole point of
drugs is tweak your perceptions -- and they do.

Drugs can make you feel euphoric (pot), jazzed (meth), invincible
(PCP), mellow (heroin). Much like Dumbo's visions of dancing pink
elephants, drugs can make you hallucinate. Someone I know who
suffers the odd LSD flashback sees walls bend around her. Another
woman I know, sitting doped on morphine, saw large ants the size
of 1950s B-movie horror flick monsters marching around her room.

Likewise, a friend's dad tells the story of when he was big into
drugs during the '60s. Once, while stoned like Gibraltar, he
walked into the bathroom and saw what he described as a demon
staring at him from inside the toilet. A definite spooker if you
ask me. The solution was twofold. First, not having George C.
Scott or a suitable exorcist nearby, he did the next best thing
and flushed the john; second, he cleaned up. (Eventually, he also
converted to Christianity and flushed his wife's herbal pot down
the porcelain one, resulting -- as the story goes -- in his first
experience of being persecuted for the faith.)

Perhaps confirming all those stereotypes of being a celestial
party- pooper, God is undeniably concerned with level-headedness.
"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober," writes Peter
in his first epistle. Checking my interlinear New Testament, that
word "sober" is "nepho" in the original Greek, which means
"self-possessed" and "having control of your mental faculties."

The Apostle Paul uses the same word, "nepho," in his first letter
to the church at Thessalonica: "... they that be drunken are
drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober,
putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet,
the hope of salvation."

God doesn't give a hoot how a person gets tweaked -- be it crank,
beer, wine, paint thinner, bourbon, crack, ganja or glue. He
doesn't care if a person is just nursing a gentle buzz or getting
flat-out fit-shaced. For the question of Christian morality, if
two tokes on the bong rob you of your "nepho," that's one toke
over the line.

But here's where the issue of puffing skunk bud gets really
stinky: just because something is immoral, does that mean it
should be illegal?

The legal question: Should junkies be jailed? Adding new meaning
to the expression "holy smoke," Rev. Oliver Daley of the United
Church in Jamaica recently came out in favor of legalizing
marijuana. While receiving cautious support from fellow Jamaican
ministers, if the nations and persons were switched and it was
Billy Graham calling for legalization, doubtless fellow preachers
would be questioning St. Billy's salvation. For American
Christianity, is there any better clue of a wolf in sheep's
clothing?

Because of genuine religious convictions opposing the use of
drugs, Christians fall into the trap of assuming that because dope
is bad, it should therefore be illegal. They get blinded by the
blight, so to speak.

In a discussion of things like prostitution, pornography and
drugs, Christian economist and legal theoretician Gary North (yes,
that Gary North ) argues that there is no such thing as a
victimless crime. He cites fellow economist F.H. Hayek as saying
that laws against victimless crimes are an illegitimate butt-in
into people's private life, "At least where it is not believed
that the whole group many be punished by a supernatural power for
the sins of the individual. ..." Hayek holds to no such being.
North, on the other hand, does.

Objecting to Hayek, he writes, "But that's the whole point: such
a community-threatening God does exist."

While North's position is tied to an elaborate and well-detailed
covenant-oriented theology, the Cliff's Notes version of the idea
is this: Snorting coke is sin, and God will punish the community
collectively for it. Basically, everybody gets hammered, in one
sense of the word, because one guy wants to get hammered, in
another sense of the word. As such, North argues that there is
biblical justification for the state to oppose drug use.

North is, however, exposing an interesting prejudice. He is
writing in an attempt to show the relevancy of Old Testament law
applied to modern life. The problem here? While Scripture has
clear civil injunctions against buggery, adultery, getting to
"know" the livestock and other sorts of debauchery, there is no
civil injunction against drunkenness -- or, for our argument,
dope.

There is a moral injunction against it if, as I've argued,
Scripture's commands against drunkenness apply to getting blitzed
on angel dust. No doubt getting stupid on tequila as opposed to
THC is a distinction over which God does not split hairs. A fried
brain is a fried brain, not matter what kind of oil you cook it
in.

But North takes his moral abhorrence for drug use -- which as a
Christian he should have -- and lumps it, without scriptural
justification, into the same stack of things the state, according
to Christian doctrine, should hate and act against. In short, he
lets his distaste for drugs color his application of what the
Bible actually says about them.

It cannot be said enough that Scripture condemns dope -- to the
extent that it harms the user or inhibits his sobriety. But to
say that it also provides justification for legal sanctions
against popping pills and shooting smack is a stretch. With all
the many warnings about drunkenness scattered throughout the Word,
two things are obvious: 1) that God is concerned with it, and 2)
that Israel and the Church have a real problem with it. But does
God ever command civil punishment for insobriety -- caused by
either alcohol or dope? No.

God treats some sins differently from others, and for Christians
to support a measure that even God does not comes close to saying
we are wiser and even more moral than God.

Given the monumental failure of the drug war, its ever-increasing
violations of individual liberty, egregious injustices, and the
fact that there is no biblical mandate to back it up, Christians
should seriously -- and scripturally -- reconsider their support
of it.