Legal Highs, drugs and the Christian mind set.

If a drug is legal, should it be okay to take it?

In what way are ‘herbal highs’ any different from caffeine or alcohol?

I know that I have taken a very strong stand on these things all my life, but now I find myself questioning not only whether I was right, but also why I held those opinions and whether my motives were right.
Much of my previous motivation for standing against smoking and other legal drugs has been motivated by what I thought a Christian should or should not do. “I am a Christian, Christians shouldn’t smoke, therefore I won’t either.”

This wasn’t based on a researched, thought about, meditated upon or whatever series of thoughts. Just what was fed to me by culture essentially.

I have known several Afro-Caribbean Christians who are strictly against the imbibing of alcohol. For a long time I couldn’t understand what their problem was quite frankly. I can go to the pub and have a couple of pints of beer and actually further the gospel in that setting more than outside it actually due to the (in England anyway) social setting that beer is usually consumed in. So what gives.

Later I lived with a Kenyan fella who was working at a church nearby, and whilst he has no problem with alcohol per se, he wouldn’t do it because his church back in Kenya would probably ostracise him for it. When I asked him further why that was, he told me that whilst pubs had long been the social centres for most British settlements (towns, villages suburbs etc.), this was not the case in Africa. In fact, the places where people go to drink alcohol are regarded similar to how we in the west would regard Crack/Cocaine and Heroin houses. At that point I began to see how strongly culture shapes our beliefs and how easy it is to make our culture Gospel, instead of just what is written in the Bible.

So, continuing down this road, what about smoking? All my life smoking has been not exactly forbidden, but definitely taboo within Christian circles. Well, in England anyway. This changes when you look to the continent. Many of my Christian friends from Germany and Holland amongst other places, smoke. But I noticed (and still do notice) that this doesn’t actually from their life’s integrity. This has always bothered me.

So, when faced with a housemate (who has since moved out) who smokes a tobacco pipe, I just thought, “Why not?” And so now I smoke, but only a tobacco pipe. Not cigars and most certainly not cigarettes. What has surprised me the most is that I really enjoy smoking, I don’t feel guilty and that in fact it has had a positive effect on my spiritual walk at present.

Why? Because when you smoke a pipe you are essentially committing yourself to an hour of time doing it. By the time you have packed the pipe with tobacco, lit it and got it going properly, smoked the whole bowl and then cleaned the pipe at the end, that’s an hour. During this time I can’t really do much else. All I do is simply sit and smoke and look at the horizon or the street or whatever is in front of me. So I think. And I pray. And I give my mind a chance to process, wander and float about and cultivate the internal life a little more.

Now whilst I would not extend these benefits of course to smoking speed or crack (which I am certain is not conducive to my spiritual well-being – you only have to look at the people who take these drugs to know that) my point about cultural confusion with the gospel still stands.

~ by thesynapse on 21 October, 2008.