All but one of the characters in The Emperor’s New Clothes would feel right at home in the 21st Century. Today the pint-sized realist of the story would be silenced long before his words of truth reached any ruler’s delicate ears.

When you mute the still, small voices, you might be proceeding headlong toward embarrassment, shame, regret, damage, and disaster.

I am a child of the 1960s and a teenager of the ’70s, so the arguments favoring recreational use of marijuana are not new to me. Cigarette smoking was common among my high school classmates, and it was permitted outdoors; so scores of youth stood outside our three cafeterias over lunch hour—rain or shine, hot or cold. Everyone, including teachers, knew that joints were being smoked there too, and that you could buy marijuana and other drugs in the woods on the way to or from school.

We also knew that smoking marijuana produced predictable effects, some of which were considered desirable for short periods of time. We knew that regular smoking of marijuana brought less desirable but equally discernible effects.

To this day, we laugh at characterizations of “potheads” and know that the stereotype matches regular users we’ve known. Such people can be relaxed to the point of laziness, less focused on reality, slower, less ambitious. But addiction can get ugly. I know a man in his late 50s who has been addicted to pot since age 11. He readily says he ruined his life with it.

Marijuana leads to various kinds of impairment with various degrees of consequence, but most of them stop being funny pretty quickly. This week three teenagers watched, filmed, and mocked a drowning disabled man for several minutes and then walked away without notifying anyone. His body was recovered days later, and the truth was discovered when a relative of the deceased saw the video on social meda. As shocking as the story is, and as much as it betrays deep sin problems, no one was shocked to learn that the teens were under the influence of marijuana.

Why would entire states of voters want their residents to be less clear-headed, less productive, less civil? The 1960s generation has lost its backbone, and lost its mind. The high-sounding goals of unfettered love and communal peace have evolved into bourgeois capitalism and selfish immorality. We are the hypocrites of our parents’ generation, wrapped in tie-dyed clothes to appear radically new.

We are in the Age of the Emporer’s New Clothes, where we pursue the allure of free love and ignore the ugliness of disposable lovers and discarded babies. We have replaced communal ideals with the pursuit of riches through gambling or otherwise spending time and money on things that don’t satisfy. We call for peace in the world without changing our lifestyle to pursue peace with our neighbors. We pursue the altered state brought by drugs and alcohol while we fill our rehab centers, homeless shelters, prisons, and cemeteries.

Does anyone see a need for the gospel here?