By Mark S. Krause
A few months ago, a new type of “pharmacy” opened down the street from my church. It is a “medical marijuana dispensary.” Ironically, it is next door to the Los Angeles headquarters of Jews for Jesus, an aggressive Christian evangelistic organization.
According to published accounts, it is now possible to get a “cannabis card” from a nearby physician, which allows purchase of marijuana for personal use. A student from UCLA was interviewed and said he sought the marijuana for his attention deficit disorder, but knew other students who obtained the card “for the weed.”1
It is even more ironic that all of this is across the street from the new UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, rated as one of the finest hospitals in the world.
In January, Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance to close many of the estimated 1,000 medical marijuana stores within the city limits; but those that remain are likely to continue to do big business.2 It appears marijuana will be available for personal use for anyone who claims one of several dozen symptoms, from psychological disorders (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder) to chronic pain (such as migraines and joint pain).
I am neither a medical doctor nor a pharmacist, so my views on the virtues of using marijuana to treat such ailments are no more than personal opinions. And you might be thinking, Los Angeles nut jobs! as if this will never touch your community. But what happens in L.A. rarely stays in L.A. It would not be surprising if there were a medical marijuana dispensary in every community in America and Canada in the next 10 years. This is our brave new world, unimaginable 40 or 50 years ago.
NEW, BUT GODLESS?
Eighty years ago, British atheist Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, a terrifying vision of the future of Western society. Huxley called this a “negative utopia,” a description that literary critics now describe as “dystopia.”
Huxley projected a godless world controlled by technology. He was imagining the progression of human society as it continued to shed traditional understandings of morality and ethics. For example, Huxley hypothesized there would be lower classes of humans whose development was chemically stunted during gestation so they could become an uncomplaining workforce for menial labor, serving the elites of society.
Huxley also wrote that there would be free access to recreational drugs, refined to have no side effects, and that drug use would even take the place of religious experience for the now godless masses.
Despite these predictions of loss of faith in God (widespread in the early 20th century), religion is still here. In the first part of the 21st century, we have seen a new, strident atheism in popular authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens,3 but the overwhelming majority of people worldwide are still theists, still believers in the existence of God.
Huxley”s brave new world without religion has not arrived, but his vision of a techno-society seems to be more realized every year. What about his world of commonplace, even expected use of mind-altering drugs?
Imagine this situation: It becomes known one of the elders of your church smokes marijuana on a daily basis for a medical condition. Even more unsettling, the minister of your church comes to a board meeting smelling of marijuana, having just completed a “treatment.” What would your reaction be?
When I was a youth minister, I was asked many times about marijuana use and Christianity. In those days I avoided debate by simply saying, “It”s illegal. Christians don”t break the law.” That answer may no longer serve. What is our answer now? Last time I checked, marijuana was not in my Bible concordance. The issue is never addressed directly in Scripture.
LEGAL, BUT MORAL?
Personally, I never intend to use medical marijuana. I hope all the dispensaries in Los Angeles are closed. I do, however, believe the days when Christian ethics and morality were mirrored by civic law are long gone. It is truer now than ever that just because something is legal does not make it acceptable to a Bible-believing Christian. But where do we draw the lines?
In this century, we will be confronted by ethical issues never imagined by the Bible writers. Many of these will come from the massive advances in medical technology. Gene therapy, artificial organ growth for transplant, life-extension drug therapies””these are but a few of the areas where our brave new world will likely see remarkable advances.
At its core, Huxley”s idea of a “brave new world” was a world without God. He, like Friedrich Nietzsche before him, believed humanity was taking steps away from the safety and paternalism of religion. We must be brave, for we go into the future without the comfort of God, they thought.
They were right that we must be brave as we face the future. But our courage does not come from confidence in our own cleverness or abilities. It comes from the presence of God in our lives, in our churches, and in our society. He has not abandoned us, nor will he.
The future of the faith requires that we have men and women who are deeply acquainted with the mind of God as revealed in Scripture. We need more than proof texts or slogans. We need people of faith, committed Christians, to study the issues from a godly perspective and help us. We need Christian scholars who move beyond resolving arcane historical questions to grappling with the ironies and contradictions we face daily. We need preaching that goes beyond self-help advice to exposition of the mind and character of God, the creator of the universe.
May we trust in God”s grace and mercy to comfort and guide us in these confusing times as we engage our future.
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1See the article from the UCLA student newspaper, Daily Bruin, “Number of marijuana dispensaries growing in Westwood,” 5 October 2009; available online, www.dailybruin.com/articles/2009/10/5/cannabis-centers-growing-problem.
2One radio commentator estimated the biggest of these dispensaries does $60,000 a day in business.
3For more on this new, militant atheism, see E. LeRoy Lawson, “In God”s Defense,” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 7 December 2008, 6, 7, and David A. Fiensy, “The Lessons of Atheism,” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 25 January 2009, 13-15.
Mark S. Krause serves as minister with Westwood Hills Christian Church, Los Angeles, California. He served as a professor at Puget Sound Christian College from 1983 to 2007. He also serves as adjunct faculty with Hope International University and George Fox University.
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