I grew up in a place infested with Baptists and Catholics, and they never quite quit gritchin’ at each other about the booze.
I finished growin’ up years ago, and have since grown OUT, and I continue to hear the godly gritchin’ about the booze. To this day, no one has ever given me a decent answer about how God feels about alcoholic beverages, aside from “my team is right, everyone else’s is wrong, and you are possibly goin’ to hell.”
So naturally now, I seek to expand the debate.
Recently, when we stopped off in Manitou Springs, Colorado, at a record store, my dear one and I were smacked upside the chops with the rich, earthy smell of marijuana.
There was nothing wrong with this. The record store was next door to a perfectly legal and licensed dispensary, and apparently, they were doing some pretty good business; it was the Saturday after Halloween, after all. Inside the record store, it didn’t smell like anything, but when we came back outdoors, we were again smacked with the odor of ganja in large quantities.
I remember living in Texas in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the oughts… and while you will find head shops in Texas if you look for them, they’re FURTIVE little joints, if you’ll pardon the pun. They know damn good and well what you’re buying that glass pipe for, the one that looks like it was made by a glassblower with hiccups, and you’re NOT doing it for Legitimate Legal Smoking Purposes. They’re NAUGHTY little places, with a feel and atmosphere like a defiant porn shop, and a grim determination to be LEGAL, goddammit, with bright fluorescent light and stern signs declaring their legality and defiance against lawbreaking purposes, even if the place reeks of patchouli incense and the clerk has dreadlocks down to his belt line.
In Colorado, though, now, they’re undergoing a bit of a renaissance. They’re not furtive any more. They’re BLATANT. “Yes, marijuana is legal, and while we are not currently licensed to sell you any, we’re working on it. The dispensary next door, however, has a variety of cannabis products for legal sale, with proper ID. In the meantime, would you like some glass pipes, flavoring agents, black light posters, Hostess Fruit Pies, or other perfectly legal merchandise to enhance your marijuana intoxication state, about which we are no longer required to lie and be hypocrites?”
It’s bizarre. Furthermore, it’s harder to get pipe tobacco, now. I like to smoke a pipe of flavored tobacco on occasion, and now the head shops don’t need to carry any to sustain the illusion that you’re, (ha-ha-chuckle-snort) smoking the stuff in a bong. I have to go looking for actual tobacco shops, and most of them are going full 420 now; it’s more profitable. Classy ol’ tobacco shops are getting hard to find!
And so I sit and observe and see what happens. Two communities that I know of are fighting political battles to see whether dope retailers will or won’t be allowed to do business in the community in question; it’s like having a dry county, but with dope instead of booze. Seen it before. Meanwhile, they continue to ponder new ways to market the stuff and the experience.
…but it got me to thinking: what about the religious contingent?
I spent a childhood in Texas being told conflicting stuff about whether or not God would punish me for drinkin’ booze. The Catholics were okay with wine, although they disapproved of excess. The Southern Baptists, on the other hand, are quite sure that a can of beer actually equals a sin against God all by itself. And I wrote a whole 'nother note around here somewhere about the particularly insistent fellow I knew that was quite sure that when the Bible mentioned “wine,” it actually meant “grape juice.”
Thing is, alcohol is legal, most places in the US. Sure, there are dry counties and such, but there aren’t many spots where, if you want a bottle of wine, you have to drive more than twenty miles to buy one, legally, during regular weekday business hours.
Marijuana, however, is *not *mentioned in the Bible, even in passing. Not one word about it. Does this mean that God doesn’t care one way or another if you get high? Again, I spent most of my life in Texas, where dope is illegal and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There didn’t NEED to be any religious discussion on Jesus and His position on the high green. But now I’m curious. Are Coloradoans going to hell for occasional indulgence in the smoking salad? And if so, upon what justification? When Jesus said “sin,” did he mean “marijuana?”
Anyone out there up to date on this information? Please, kindly share. I’m genuinely curious.