That's the subject of my latest essay over at The Gospel Coalition. Here's my concluding paragraphs:
Yet the more interesting cases come closer to us. Consider the interrelationship between caffeine and marijuana. On the one hand, many of us rely on caffeine to fuel our work obsessions. Caffeine abuses reveal an overworked, exhausted culture that refuses to rest. A cup of tea is a wonderful gift. Five cups a day may signify unhealthy dependency.
On the other hand, recreational marijuana use seems can engender something resembling sloth. Proper relaxation is a sort of satisfaction—"a job well done"—not a form of escape. Cannabis use may undercut this rest, or at least short-circuit it.
Sloth and overwork are symptoms of the same diseased understanding of how we labor. Some people will strap themselves to and die on the wheel of performance, while others escape their troubles by medicating themselves. In that sense, drugs are (ab)used to therapeutically fill a gap that is felt without being articulated.
Drug use of various kinds highlights our culture's fundamental commitments and raises questions about how we interact with those commitments as Christians. Just how far does the therapeutic mentality infiltrate our churches? The fastest-growing segment of drug use seems to be painkillers and prescription medicines. Such "white collar" abuses reveal the same sort of escapist mentality that marijuana may foster in different social contexts.
Expanding the framework for evaluating marijuana implicates us all. But the gospel of Jesus Christ creates churches where we carry one another's burdens. We admonish one another by observing the ways we have failed in our discipleship because we idolize performance and success. Then we begin the process of repenting for our own sins and ensuring that a gospel-centered judgment about whether to use marijuana will actually sound like good news.
I approached the piece as something of an exercise in moral reasoning. It's underdeveloped in a lot of ways, but I am attempting to expand some of my earlier thoughts on the body into new areas. Make of all of it what you will.
