What is your opinion on using chemical aid? Are drugs tools or problems or both? Leave your comment at the bottom.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8
I can almost guarantee you are consuming some type of psychoactive substance. The extent to which the element is psychoactive is the only thing that varies and is the only way Christians justify its consumption. The most basic debate is caffeine versus amphetamines. “Caffeine is completely fine for the Christian to consume”, so they say, even though it is a chemical brother to amphetamines that include meth.
Because caffeine has arguably milder psychological effects, Christians can justify consuming it. I enjoy caffeine as much as the next guy, but I am not going to pretend that caffeine is as different from amphetamines as many people would like to suggest. Amphetamines just have a lower overdose point. Every substance has its own lethal overdose point. For caffeine the overdose point is around 10 grams, as far as we know. Everything is a poison, it is only a question of dosage.
Caffeine’s chemical effect still stimulates the body like a mild form of meth, just to a lesser degree and with less damaging side effects as far as is currently known.
Obviously smoking or snorting something made with battery acid is going to be more damaging than a well-researched substance like caffeine.
What exactly do you think your doctor is giving you when he prescribes Adderall or Ritalin? “Amphetamines are bad, unless my doctor gives them to my under-disciplined ADHD child. At that point it is totally okay”.
And before everyone jumps to the, “But Coffee is natural” argument, let me remind you that Hemlock poison, Lily of the Valley Berries, several various mushrooms and cyanide producing sudangrass or sorghum are all natural plants that produce lethal poisons. Natural does not automatically equal safe.
Chemicals are on the earth to be used to our advantage.
Most Christians just have to run a cost-benefit analysis to determine if a certain drug is okay for them to take. As long as the drug does not damage the body too much, and does not alter the state of the mind to an excessive degree, it is okay for most people to consume.
I think this philosophy is cowardly and ridiculous. These same Christian who would be angry at people who “try to find where the line of God’s commands is” so they can get as close to the line as possible without going over it are making the same arguments when it comes to what they put in their bodies. Weak-minded Christian people simply want to see how much they can experience of a drug without sinning. Just like weak-minded Christians want to see how much they can do sexually without actually having penis-in-vagina intercourse. It is the same delusional justification scheme.
Caffeine is approved by Christians because it does not damage the body in small doses, and only alters the mind slightly, giving it more energy but also a sense of great anxiety and impending doom. Caffeine is an anxiogenic compound, meaning is causes anxiety.
But wait: if a substance induces anxiety, something the Bible tells us explicitly to avoid (Matt 6:25-34; Philippians 4:6), how can it be right to consume it?
No one can answer this without excessively justifying their own behavior. Furthermore, most Christians discussing the effects of various drugs have no scientific knowledge whatsoever and no ability to think rationally or scientifically. The lack of scientific thinkers in the religious world is a plague that has contributed to the growth of radical liberalism and buttressed the emotionalistic propaganda of weak thinking beta-males. Note: There are many more religious scientists than there are religious scientific thinkers – there is a difference between the two.
The absence of scientific thought in the religious world regarding drugs is clearest when you observe someone accepting or refusing to consume something based on whether or not there are any “chemicals” in it. People are never more stupid than when they accept this blind-faith line of thinking, because they are conceding to their own ignorance. They refuse to consume something because they are ignorant of it. Furthermore, everything you see is a chemical! Everything you lay eyes on is composed of chemicals in various arrangements and structures. So to say that you do not consume chemicals means that you do not consume anything, neither can you even breathe the air, because you would be taking in various chemicals into your lungs.
What most people mean is that they do not want to consume any artificial, man-made chemicals.
This is also insipid because it assumes that what chemicals occur naturally are better for you than what is created by man. This mode of reasoning is faulty at the core. See the previous paragraph where a few natural but lethal plants are discussed. Antibiotics are synthetic, man-made, artificial compounds and can save your life if you need them. That is just one example that shows that what is natural is not necessarily “healthier” than what is unnatural. There is a difference in feeling healthy and actually being healthy.
What about other chemicals that aid in the war against anxiety and depression?
These are tremendous inventions, but they also can promote lethargy in people who take them. Taking antidepressants can cause weight gain and avoidance of exercise, but they also prevent us from having our faith damaged while it is brought under siege by our emotions and depression. Anti-anxiety medications can bring peace of mind to those who never experience it, yet they can encourage gluttony. There may be no clear cut answer to the questions about many different drugs, and there are very few circumstances in Christianity that have any gray area.
All this to say that we are not attacking the use of caffeine, what we are attacking is a behavior and a pattern of thought manifested by many religious people. The same religious people who condemn drugs use drugs.
Mantra
Think rationally about faith at all times.
Application
You have to decide for yourself what you think about chemical aid. This section is not meant to condemn certain drugs or encourage others. The sole purpose of this section is to get you to think critically about why some drugs/chemicals are fine to consume while others are not. You must get in the habit of thinking critically and must also avoid mindlessly swallowing the traditions and doctrines of men. You must understand all sides of a debate if you truly want to find out the truth of a matter, and this applies to drugs also.
There will always be debate in the church about what drugs you can and cannot take.
You have to use your own mind and think logically about what everyone in the church is saying about drugs. Ask yourself: “Are they speaking based on the Bible or based on their emotions? Is what they are saying simply the passing down the traditional thought they have heard all their lives? Are my teachers thinking critically, or do they want to avoid critical thinking in favor of more passive forms of thought like tradition and blind acceptance?”
Once you ask yourself these questions, begin to reject philosophies of people who speak from emotions rather than logic. Emotions have no place in the discussion of religion, faith and drugs. You will inevitably encounter someone who has lost a family member to an illegal drug overdose and therefore rejects every single form of mind altering chemical. The loss of a family member is tragic, but it does not confer expertise in any area related to the death of that family member. Meaning if you lose a family member to drugs, it does not immediately make you an expert on drugs, nor does it give you the right to promote your agenda regarding drugs. You must exclusively use logic in every aspect of your faith.
Additionally, all chemical drugs have a spectrum of use: some men use them moderately, others abuse them by chronically taking high doses.
It tends to follow that any drug that is abused will have negative effects on the body. Too much caffeine can start to wear out hormone producing glands or wear out the circulatory pathways of the body. Too much alcohol kills you instantly, yet we constantly use various microdoses of alcohol as medicines. Interesting to note, too much water can kill you as well
Any chemical compound whose name ends in “-ol” is an alcohol compound. It will not make you drunk, and it helps other compounds dissolve and absorb in the body. This is the difference between use and abuse: abuse pushes so far past ‘use’ that excessive negative effects ensue. Even the threshold of abuse will vary from person to person. So many variables make the spiritual question of chemicals and drugs difficult, and are the reason why so many Christians want to avoid the question all together, because asking the questions would require them to think long and hard about what they believe, and no one wants to do that.
There are also two primary logical fallacies you will want to avoid when thinking about drugs:
Fallacy 1 – Avoid using 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 as a trump card that alleviates you of the responsibility of thinking.
When most Christians cannot make a rational argument against a drug or compound or even a behavior, they result in using God as a tool for their own agenda. They claim that because the body is a temple of God, we should not be putting these chemicals into our body.
“Because the body is the Temple of God, you should be a vegan”-
Person taking Scripture out of context.
This argument is irreverent because this passage is taken out of context. In 1 Corinthians 6 the apostle Paul is talking about sexual integrity, which means you cannot take that passage and make it apply to every single question of the physical body. The Christian who uses this argument is not rational enough to think through his faith logically, so he resorts to using scripture quoted out of context to justify his generic, commonplace and ignorant thinking about an issue.
If you are going to make a case against a chemical of some kind, you need to do more than twist the Scripture to suit your own narrative – this isn’t mainstream politics.
Fallacy 2 – You must ask the question, “Does this compound affect my sobriety?”
The only rational, scripture based argument against various chemical compounds is the fact that some of them reduce sobriety and lead us to other sins.
If we are drunk, we are not watching for temptation and we are exponentially more likely to do something stupid. If the compound I want to take reduces my ability to conduct myself like a man, I should avoid it. However, if the compound increases my sobriety, who could argue against it?
These are dangerous waters of thought for the rational Christian, as other weak Christians may call it ‘heresy’. You may want to argue for DMT or other psychedelics because they supposedly increase sobriety and allegedly put you in contact with God directly. No one knows what really happens with these compounds, and no Christians speak about them openly which is why there will be eternal debate about it. Again, this paragraph is not encouraging or arguing for the use of any of these drugs, it is only encouraging you to apply rational thought to every one of your philosophies instead of simply swallowing what your parents day.
You will have to decide for yourself what you think of drugs.
Think through your faith.
Use your mind.
Fortify your belief.
Use every available weapon against the adversary.
Conduct yourselves like men.
Sources
1. Association of the anxiogenic and alerting effects of caffeine with ADORA2A and ADORA1 polymorphisms and habitual level of caffeine consumption
2. How can someone die from drinking too much water?
3. Understanding the Dangers of Alcohol Overdose
4. Antidepressants and weight gain: What causes it?
5. When Your Antidepressant Makes You Tired
6. Caffeine Toxicity
7. Anxiety
8. Crush Anxiety
9. Secular Reasons To Avoid Drunkenness