Cannabis and the Christian

What the Bible Says about Marijuana

Todd Miles

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781087734972
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

What does the Bible say about marijuana? If it doesn't directly address marijuana, how can Christians know what to make of the legalization of recreational cannabis and the advocacy of medical marijuana? In thepast, Christians could easily answer the question of whether or not it was permissible to use cannabisby deferring to state prohibitions. We could simply say, "it's against the law." Today, that answer is no longerpossible. Christians are now forced to do what they should have been doing all along: Think like disciples of the LordJesus Christ and bring to bear the wisdom of the sufficient Word of God. Sincecannabis is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, we must understand what it is andhow it affects the user. We also must understand what the Bible says aboutdiscipleship, healing, suffering, and what it is to be human. Only then can we answerthe critical questions regarding the recreational use and the medical use of cannabis. In Cannabis and the Christian, Todd Miles gives readers:

• Biblical wisdom applied to the question of recreational cannabis
• Biblical wisdom related to the medical use of cannabis
• A grid to think through other ethical questions that aren't directly addressed in the Bible
• Confidence to respond to challenging issues standing on the sufficient Word of God

Chapter 1

What Is Marijuana and How Does It Work?

Just a few blocks from my front door is the entrance to the “Green Mile” of Portland on Sandy Boulevard. Allegedly, this street has the largest concentration of cannabis dispensaries of any thoroughfare in the world. If the outrageous number of marijuana shops does not tip you off, a large billboard atop one dispensary announces that you have entered the portal to pot paradise. There are also plenty of excellent restaurants on the street that will appeal to you even if your hunger is not the product of partaking of the Green Mile’s famous wares. I mean, where else can you enjoy ribs cooked up by Snoop Dog’s uncle?

But you don’t have to live in Portland to notice that marijuana use is on the rise.

According to Monitoring the Future, a long-term epidemiological study that surveys trends in legal and illicit drug use among American adolescents and adults, marijuana use in young adult men and women reached historic levels in 2019.2 The data is summarized in the chart on the next page.

Marijuana Use Among 19–30 Years Olds in 20193
	Men	Women
Daily Use	11.5%	7.6%
Monthly Use	29.5%	24.1%
Annual Use	42.7%	39.9%

Those numbers are shockingly high. More than one in ten young adult men use marijuana daily. Teenage use is also high with 6.6 percent of eighth graders, 18.4 percent of tenth graders, and 22.3 percent of twelfth graders using marijuana over any thirty-day period.4

With numbers that high, the church cannot pretend its people are unaffected or do not have questions.

If you were asked what the Bible says about a topic like lying, the path to finding an answer would be straightforward. After all, the Bible has a lot to say about lying, deception, and truth. The Scriptures teach us much about God’s holy character and what is found in the sinful hearts of humans. You would go to your Bible and find the places where those teachings occur. Of course, you would want to pay close attention to all the different levels of context, being careful to understand each biblical reference according to its literary, canonical, historical, and cultural contexts. Your study would certainly take time, but the process is not terribly complicated.

When we are looking to the Scriptures for wisdom and guidance on a topic that is not explicitly in the Bible, the process changes. It is not a matter of going to the concordance in the back of the Bible, making a list, then taking notes on what you find when you look up each reference. Instead, you have to know something about the topic to apply the revealed wisdom we find in the Bible. Again, my conviction is that the Bible is sufficient: we have all the divine words we need to live faithfully before God in our current day (2 Tim. 3:15–16; Ps. 119:1, 9–11). That means there is sufficient wisdom and teaching in the Bible to navigate marijuana issues as well as a host of other difficult questions that require answering.

Of course, many of the decisions we make each day have no moral implications whatsoever. Such things are adiaphora—indifferent matters. For the most part, I do not stress over what color socks to wear in the morning or confess my poor sock choice to the Lord, even when my wife points out that my clothes do not match. Choosing between marionberry pie and German chocolate cake is really just a matter of personal preference (though why anybody would refuse to enter the after-dinner paradise of marionberry pie is beyond me).

The Bible does not come with an exhaustive account of all the things that make the “indifferent matters” list. Again, we should be grateful. Imagine trying to lug such a book full of exhaustive lists to church every Sunday. Or even worse, imagine having all 128 GB of your phone’s memory filled with that data! So obviously, one of the first steps in figuring out what the Bible teaches on a specific topic is to determine whether there is any moral weight to it. And to do that, you have to know something about the thing you are investigating.

In order to understand what the Bible has to say about something that is not explicitly in the Bible, we must understand what that something is.

For example, many weighty ethical issues are not explicitly mentioned in the Scriptures—things like cloning, for example. It would be ridiculous to suggest that because cloning is not in the Bible, the Lord is indifferent to it. The Bible was written from about 1400 BC to AD 100. It was written by real people, in real languages, in a real land, in real and specific contexts. Though inspired by the Holy Spirit, the biblical authors wrote about what they knew; they addressed the issues of their day and only occasionally spoke of the future. The Bible does not mention cloning because its authors had no concept of cloning.

But the Bible does have plenty to say about such things as children, procreation, human responsibility, life, and God’s sovereignty. We have to understand something about what cloning is in order to bring to bear Scripture’s teaching on that difficult ethical issue.

When it comes to marijuana, many believe that we can take the Bible’s teaching on alcohol and drunkenness and apply it directly to marijuana and getting high. Substitute marijuana for every biblical reference to wine; then replace drunkenness with the words getting high, and the Christian is good to go, right?

But is it actually that easy? The Bible speaks of alcohol in a variety of ways. The Scriptures are clear that drunkenness is sinful, but wine is also celebrated in the Bible and plays a vital role in the Old Testament feasts and the New Testament practice of the Lord’s Supper. Further, marijuana and wine are different is some important and basic respects. Wine is a drink; marijuana is not. While both intoxicate, alcohol impacts the brain in a different manner from marijuana. A little wine does not intoxicate; it is not clear that marijuana can be smoked in moderation without effects. Therefore, simply substituting marijuana for wine will not work. To determine if we can apply the biblical teaching on alcohol and drunkenness, we must understand what marijuana is and how it works.

What Is Marijuana?

Marijuana comes from the cannabis, or hemp, plant. The most common varieties are Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. For many, the image of marijuana that immediately comes to mind is a green plant with long pointy leaves. There are drawings of it everywhere—T-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, even the cover of this book. Yesterday, on a walk with my wife, I saw someone wearing pants with marijuana leaf imprints. (I think they were actually pajama bottoms; my hometown is weird.) But the drug itself is a greenish-gray, sometimes brown, mixture of dried products from the cannabis plant’s seeds, leaves, stems, and flowers. Resins and oils are also commonly extracted from the cannabis plant.

The dried plant products are smoked in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints (doobies, if you are over forty) or cigar wraps called blunts. Marijuana can also be smoked in water pipes called bongs. Vaping cannabis (or cannavaping) is an increasingly popular way to smoke the drug. Cannabis is often mixed into food (like brownies or candies), which are called edibles. Marijuana teas can be imbibed. The resins and oils offer a more concentrated form of the drug’s active components.5

What Does Marijuana Do to the Brain?

The human brain is designed with microscopic sockets called cannabinoid receptors. The two main types of receptors are called CB1 and CB2. CB1 receptors are found throughout the body but are mainly concentrated in the brain and central nervous system. CB2 receptors are also found throughout the body, primarily in the immune system tissues and nerves, but can also be found in the brain. When your brain is functioning normally, neurons “communicate” with one another via chemicals called neurotransmitters. Endocannabinoids are neurotransmitters that “plug” into the cannabinoid receptors, activating those receptors, which then allows the neurons to communicate with one another. The human body creates and releases these endocannabinoids when properly stimulated. (When the human body makes them, they are called “endocannabinoids”; when they come from the cannabis plant, they are called “phytocannabinoids.”) The endocannabinoids, cannabinoid receptors, and the enzymes that break down the endocannabinoids when they have done their job comprise the endocannabinoid system (ECS).

Scientists are still discovering what the ECS does, but it appears that it is responsible for regulating such bodily functions as appetite and digestion, metabolism, pain response, mood, sleep, the cardiovascular system, muscle formation, and many more. Many of the cannabinoid receptors are found in parts of the brain that control thinking, pleasure, concentration, coordination, time perception, and memory—basically many of the things that make you who you are and enable you to do what you do, feel what you feel, and think what you think. But the human body is not the only creator of cannabinoids.

The cannabis plant is remarkably complex, with more than four hundred chemical compounds, more than sixty of which are cannabinoids. For our purposes, the two most significant cannabinoids are Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC) and cannabidiol (or CBD). THC produces psychoactive effects (the “high” we associate with marijuana use), while CBD does not. For that reason, I will initially focus on THC and pick up the discussion of CBD in the medical marijuana ch...