This interview captures a candid discussion among pastor-friends who are ministering in areas affected by the legalization of marijuana. These pastors recognize a need for both medical research to understand mari­juana and counsel from the Church on the biblical warrant for the use of marijuana, but they have agreed to share their current thoughts and pastoral experiences for the benefit of the broader Church.

Hemphill: Explain how things have changed in your area since Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012. Have things changed in the state, in the community, in the church?

Kingsbury: One thing that has changed is the prevalence of marijuana stores and dispensaries. North of our church building is a Safeway bakery. The area used to smell like bread, and now it smells like skunk. That’s depressing. It’s hard to put your finger on, but the quality of life, in Denver at least, has been slightly degraded by having marijuana so massively and publicly available.

A lot of warehouse space has been converted into grow facilities. Over the last five years, new power lines had to be put in because of the hydroponics equipment and the grow lights in all these facilities.

Sapp: I don’t think much has changed in the church right now. But, I remember living in Los Angeles, and the only time I would smell marijuana is when I rode my bike through Venice Beach. I smell it often now.

Boulder County, which is the closest large county to us, has many laws about the height of buildings, the color of buildings, and signs, and all these laws regulating the impact of your property on the rest of society, the local community; but, ironically, they have marijuana-growing facilities that make the surrounding area stink.

Hemphill: A lot of the regulations for marijuana are similar to the regulations about alcohol. For example, you’re not supposed to smoke in a public place; but obviously you’re seeing it out there.

Sapp: In March I went skiing. Two days in a row, guys offered to smoke with me. These guys were my parents’ age.

Kingsbury: In my neighborhood, which primarily is a lot of families, a bunch of our neighbors smoke weed. You can smell it on a summer night, when we’re in our backyard.

Hemphill: Let’s bring it down to the congregation. Has this legal change affected your congregation’s ministry?

Sapp: I have preemptively discussed marijuana with some people who would probably be interested in thinking through the biblical ethics of it. Since it has been legalized, no one has approached me and said, “Hey, Shane, I’ve been smoking marijuana [medically or recreationally].” And I draw a distinction there. I’m not as interested in medical marijuana as I was originally, but I’m still open to it. Matthew and I and two other pastors talked about the issue of marijuana a couple years ago, so I’ve been trying to plant some of the seeds from that conversation into helping people think through it.

Hemphill: Have either of you preached on it?

Kingsbury: I’ve stuck it in my repertoire along with alcohol. On those occasions when you’d be preaching about drunkenness, you can also address marijuana. Kids and adolescents of our day are now growing up in an environment where it is legal; and, even though I think 21 is the age for recreational use, it still is smoking and falls in the same place as tobacco use, the same place regarding temptations and peer pressure.

On at least one occasion, I’ve threatened the youth in our congregation, “Don’t ever come up to me, and tell me marijuana is legal, so it’s OK, Pastor, because I will use the rod and staff of Psalm 23 on your head!” Sometimes you have to be blunt with youth: “Don’t be stupid, and please don’t think those stupid arguments are going to hold any water with me, and especially don’t think stupid arguments are going to hold water with the Lord.”

In our church, we have several people with addiction issues, and the temptation is always there. Many have relapsed into something at some point. One of my concerns is with the prevalence of marijuana and the fact that marijuana is much easier to get, it helps people make excuses—“Well it’s legal, so it’s OK”—even though they know better. As sinners we are always rationalizing our sin, so the legality and the pervasiveness make it easier to rationalize that first step.

Sapp: There is one other effect it has had on our lives. It is driving the housing market somewhat, as I have been told by people close to the real estate industry. Because marijuana is technically illegal according to the federal government, people can’t put the money into banks. So people are laundering their money legally by buying real estate. And they don’t care what the home costs. So if you’re a 20s or early 30s couple trying to get into a home, it’s really hard. Our market is so high; it takes tons of attempts to actually get a contract on a house.

Hemphill: There is debate about whether marijuana has brought tourism, and I think it has. The other thing I noticed is Colorado’s estimated sales from marijuana for 2017 is 1 billion dollars. The sales tax is big income for Colorado municipalities. For example, last year Denver took in 29 million dollars from sales tax and licensing of marijuana. And Wheat Ridge, a smaller town, with five outlets, took in $530,000 in taxes and licenses.

Kingsbury: Marijuana tourism is definitely a thing. Something we hear from a lot of our friends who are outside of the church is that when family or friends visit from out of state, they’ll go buy marijuana and smoke it. They are normal, middle-class folk. We’re not talking stoners.

Hemphill: After seeing marijuana used widely for medicine and recreation, how have your views changed or developed?

Sapp: Before I went to seminary, I was open to the validity of a Christian using medical marijuana when it became legal. I thought about some of the side effects of the pharmaceuticals we use for pain management and other things, and I thought marijuana might have fewer side effects.

Once I saw the long-term side effects of recreational marijuana, I’ve grown less supportive of medical marijuana. If I were to counsel someone at this time, I might encourage other treatments.

Kingsbury: The way the federal government has regulated marijuana as class one (there’s no medical use for it) makes it almost impossible to even legally do medical research on it. I don’t think that is a particularly helpful stance. There’s certainly enough anecdotal evidence that people have gotten help from marijuana.

A big thing is dealing with the side effects of cancer treatments. We had a person in our church undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. Marijuana was the only thing that counteracted and lessened the nausea and other side effects he had.

There’s clearly some use there. As for anti-anxiety, I’ve thought about using it myself a couple times. I’ve had some really bad anxiety over the past few years. It seems like an option, but my doctors don’t do that because they are part of a national, multi-state HMO. Their procedures are very much inside the box.

That being said, what happened in California is the same thing that happened here: You allow medical marijuana, and suddenly everybody has back pain. It was particularly ironic in Colorado, which is supposed to be one of the healthiest states in the country. Apparently there is a massive epidemic of back pain that started as soon as marijuana became legalized.

Sapp: Seizures are a reason some people use marijuana. We know a family whose son has constant seizures and uses marijuana for treatment. And my ski boot fitter smokes lots of marijuana because he has seizures.

There is a different side of marijuana tourism, and people are moving here because they’re desperate. People end up being desperate when there is no treatment they can find to help their loved one deal with something, so they move to Colorado and have to do this alegal research or experimenting on themselves without having these studies.

Hemphill: As we think about whether Christians should be totally against marijuana or should advocate legalization particularly for medical use, one thing to think about is that marijuana has a biological and psychological effect. So do substances that are legal, such as coffee, tea, sugar, and alcohol. How do passages like 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 apply to these substances? Other than its legality, how is marijuana different from the others?

Kingsbury: I’m of the view that marijuana is—fullstop—an intoxicant. A responsible adult would not want to use marijuana and then drive for several hours. Even if you feel well, it has an intoxicating effect.

Hemphill: Would you say also that it’s mind altering? Does even a little dose do that?

Kingsbury: I think even a little bit does. And that’s one of the debates we had. If my perspective is correct, then it is by definition an intoxicant. If you are using it for non-medical reasons, then you ought not. You’re getting drunk, essentially. It’s not like a glass of wine, which may make glad the heart.

Marijuana in my view is different because it is used to create that intoxicating effect, and generally has that intoxicating effect. So therefore it ought not to be used—certainly not recreationally. I am open to somebody who has a medical condition whose doctor has said to use it.

Sapp: I think the psychological effects of marijuana, especially long-term use, make it fall into the “not beneficial” category, even though technically in our state it is permitted for recreational use. However, we have this odd ethical issue related to the fifth commandment, because our state says we can use it but our federal government says we can’t. We still have to ask the Lord if He would have us do it.

For example, it’s legal to commit abortion, but is it permissible by God? Marijuana use may be permissible in some measure by our government, but scripturally, can you use marijuana and benefit from the gladdening effect that is lawful, biblically, from alcohol? Can you use marijuana in the same way and can you do it without being intoxicated?

I have talked to people who have smoked marijuana, and they have said you can use it without being intoxicated. But we do not have research that establishes that as a fact. We need someone to help us in our ethical decision and to say we’ve done research and people smoke marijuana to get intoxicated unless it’s for a medical use. Until then, I don’t see a biblical warrant to be able to use it in a recreational way at all. I’m with Matthew that until there is further research or the church really does understand the issue well, we shouldn’t use marijuana recreationally.

Hemphill: The tide is against Christians that take the point of view you have, which I think is what an awful lot of us would take; so how do we respond? Is there some response we should be making more publicly? Has the Christian response been lacking?

Kingsbury: Going through the legalization campaign in California and in Colorado, I don’t remember a lot of Christian organizations against the legalization of marijuana, either for medical or recreational use. Certainly not in confessionally Reformed circles. I don’t remember anybody—myself included—speaking out about it.

Hemphill: We want to emphasize the gospel, and we don’t want to always be coming across as those who are challenging issues and laws. That may be one reason the church has been quiet.

Sapp: People think there’s at least a possibility to consider medical use of marijuana. I didn’t feel like I could have a conversation with people in the RPCNA about marijuana, because the Seattle church and the churches in Colorado were the only ones that had to deal with it. For everyone else it was an easy issue: it was illegal. As marijuana is becoming legal incrementally, the church is probably going to have a response, coming a little late to the game to speak up.

The LGBT, gay marriage, and transgender issues have taken precedence. I wonder if marijuana has fallen through the cracks—we have a limited amount of time and ability. Marijuana has crept in throughout this process and it may be that that is why we haven’t responded.

Kingsbury: There are several factors at play. One, a lot of congregants and ministers have had negative experiences with overly politicized pulpits. They say, “Oh, I’m not going to do that. The Bible doesn’t really speak on what candidate you should vote for.” And I think that is generally true. So we avoid that. Marijuana and LGBT are political things, and we tend not to make the current events a big topic in most of our sermons.

You also have the issue of doing some form of consecutive expository preaching. So if you’re doing consecutive expository preaching, what are the passages that deal with marijuana? You can easily go through many books of the Bible without hitting a lot of these themes.

The one thing I did to address this question was preach a series on Larger Catechism question 99, on the proper interpretation of God’s law, and that our duty to our neighbors requires us to not do anything that would encourage them to sin.

Hemphill: As you’re preaching through the Catechism or the Confession, almost everything will come up. We had a young man in our congregation who spoke to me about his concern on a college campus to have some answers for a lot of issues there. It made me think about my own preaching and to work harder at seeing applications in the passage.

As the Lord took hold of my life in my teenage years, after that “conversion experience,” I didn’t think a lot about “Should I do this or that?” I was focused on serving the Lord. And that’s what we hope for our kids as they’re going on in their lives and being tempted. If I hadn’t had that change of heart, then I would have been wrestling with those things.

Sapp: One nice thing about marijuana being legalized is that it is not a taboo subject to discuss anymore. It stimulates us to have these conversations with our kids. In some areas of the world, you don’t see marijuana used or you don’t see LGBT behavior. Here, even though I would rather not have that influence around, it is a natural opportunity to talk about these things with our kids so that when they do leave the house, we will have dealt with it. I appreciate God’s providence of bringing these issues up so I can have conversations with my kids that my parents never had with me.

Kingsbury: What occurs to me is that in some sense the marijuana issue is the tip of a much larger iceberg, which is that the culture is deliberately moving in an anti-Christian direction. When I was a kid, even when I entered the pastorate in 1999, we ran the moral structure of this country. We defined what was good and what was not. That is completely flipped on its head now. We’re not looked to, and we’re even considered backwards, hostile, and recalcitrant. This makes it necessary for us to have these conversations and think about these things.

On the corner of one of the streets near where I live, there’s a strip joint. So that’s a conversation with my kids every time we drive around that corner. My 13-year-old’s hobby is to pick out all the marijuana dispensaries. Sort of like how we used to do license-plate spotting. We have to have conversations with our kids.

If we recognize that in preaching we’re meeting the spiritual needs of the people through ministering the gospel, then some of this other stuff, like worldview formation, you will get over the years as you’re bathed in preaching. But I think we probably need to be more explicit about it. I don’t think the pulpit is necessarily the place to do it. It is occurring to me now that maybe in our adult Sunday school class we should do a class once a year that addresses what the Bible says about the pressing issues of the day, which goes beyond the issues of marijuana.

Sapp: It is helpful to teach our kids to work through these issues and give them the biblical principles to process them. I’ve become more aware that we do live in a post-Christian era.

The first time I had to address hard issues with my kids wasn’t when they said, “Oh, there’s a marijuana store,” or “Oh, is that guy gay?” It was driving to church while my kids asked, “Why are they playing soccer on the Lord’s Day, Dad?”

We’ve been in a world beyond Christian ethics for a while; we just haven’t noticed it until now because the issues are becoming bigger.

I’ve been focusing on how we should live in this post-Christian age where we are the minority. One way I’ve approached that is I preached 1 Peter, just to realize: if you’re a Christian in this world, you’re going to get whacked. And you need to be grateful for that and you need to trust Christ, have the true biblical eschatology, and know the gospel. But be willing to get whacked, for the sake of Christ.

Hemphill: Any thoughts to sum up what we have been talking about?

From RPCNA Testimony, chapter 26: For preservation of life and because of respect for our bodies as God’s creation, we are to be careful in the use of drugs. Christians should avoid enslavement to alcohol, tobacco, or any habit-forming drug…Christians must be careful not to conform to the attitudes and the practices of the world…The use of drugs for pleasure or escape from moral responsibility should be avoided; one should strive for victory over physical and emotional weakness through the strength of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and make wise use of proper medical care.

Sapp: Preaching to and ministering to a church in this age in human history, we need to endeavor to know Christ as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. We need to know our confession of faith and have the biblical support for it. We need to know Christ, and not just intellectually, but in our hearts: to love Him and long to serve Him. We need to find comfort in the gospel and pray that the Spirit of God would produce the fruit of the gospel in our lives.

When we counsel someone who is addicted to drugs, where do we go? We go to the gospel. That’s the hope of freedom from that sin; it’s the hope of that satisfaction you’re looking for in those drugs or in those behaviors.

We should not just listen to the data, but talk to the people who are pursuing the subject. Get to know them, get to know the struggles they have, the fears they have. Have them over for dinner.

We need to know the real concerns that each person has, so that we can address them with the gospel, but also so we can address the presented issues. We should use wisdom, and the law and the gospel as the Lord has given them to us, to really investigate the issues. If we react immediately with, “That’s sin, that’s awful,” I think we make things worse. We lose the ear of the culture. I don’t even care about losing the ear of the culture: I care about losing the ear of the person.

Our role in the congregation is shepherding the people of God through these circumstances in life. We need to teach them a full and robust understanding of Scripture. Matthew’s point about preaching continuous, expository series of sermons is a good answer of why the church hasn’t dealt with marijuana more. We need to preach on hell, sexual sin, and using marijuana with the importance that the Bible gives—and rightly balance the instruction of the law and the gospel. Otherwise, we can tend to fall back into a fundamentalist temptation that everything here is about smoking marijuana or not being gay. Instead, we need to realize that we would be in the same boat as these people who are caught in these sins and these behaviors, but for the grace of God. They need the same thing that we need. Maybe my heart is filled with pride, hatred, jealousy, or lust, but it doesn’t manifest itself outside all the time; however, I am just as guilty and deserving of the curse of God as the person smoking pot down the corner or the homosexual couple that lives a few doors down, or the person who is attacking the church.

We should preach the whole counsel of God to people, be honest about it, and address these issues. Sometimes, we believe all these people around us are beyond the gospel, so we think we don’t need to share the gospel with them. Yet if someone hadn’t done that for me, I wouldn’t be here.

Kingsbury: First, as a church, we need to think more carefully about catechesis and that we are living in a post-Christian age where people have these very worldly assumptions. They don’t really know how to act like Christians.

That leads into the next point, which, in terms of preaching, is that often I find myself making a clear demarcation between the world and the call of the gospel. Worldliness is so pervasive, so we have to think about how to call people out of the patterns of this present age and how to think according to the eschaton, what the Lord is going to bring in the age to come. In our preaching, we need to emphasize how people see that antithesis, then it helps them to apply it to these specific questions, like “I think it’s OK to smoke marijuana or have sex outside marriage because that’s what everyone around me is saying, but is that in fact what the Bible is teaching me?” This sense that because I am a Christian, I have to be very careful about my assumptions. And if you get that idea in there, then sometimes people can simply apply that on their own. You don’t have to specifically hit every ethical issue in a sermon or a class.

The third thing is the centrality of the cross. Why do you have sex outside of marriage? “Well, because it makes me feel good and I don’t feel good right now.” Why do I want to smoke dope or drink? “Because life is hard, I’m under a lot of stress, and I need relief and escape because I’m burdened.” And I think that’s where we need to bring people back again and again to the gospel: “Come, ye who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

There is rest and freedom in Christ. The burdens of this age are not removed. We still carry them this side of glory; but because we carry them to Christ, they don’t have central importance, and we can die to the world. I can accept whatever my sufferings are, whether because I live in a fallen world or because of my sin, because Christ has promised me something better. The cross offers me not just forgiveness of sins, but it gives me eternity with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. The fully formed gospel gives people the ability to deny temptation and live to Christ. If we would simply embrace that there is a better life to come, then we could avoid the temptations of this present age.

Bob Hemphill recently retired after 36 years as an RPCNA pastor. He and his wife, Cheryl, live in Laramie, Wyo., a state where possessors of marijuana are still regularly arrested by law enforcement officers.

Though he has lived all over the world and the U.S., Matthew W. Kingsbury has pastored Park Hill Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Denver since 1999. He and his wife, Joanna, have four children and encourage others in our Reformed circles to consider foster care and adoption.

Shane Sapp has been the pastor of Westminster, Colo., RPC since 2009. Shane, his wife, Kelly, and their two children, Grover and Clementine, love life in Colorado. They enjoy most of the state’s opportunities for recreation year-round.