Is It a Sin to Use Cannabis Products?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Corinthians 6:12

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--is-it-a-sin-to-use-cannabis-products
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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let me establish the foundation that regardless of what the law allows or regardless of what the culture condones we oppose alcohol tobacco recreational drugs drugs that would cause a high such as marijuana cocaine heroin anything that would cause intoxication or addiction or is clearly harmful to the body such as tobacco we oppose all the use of all such drugs and substances and that's based on scripture first corinthians 6 19 through 20 says your body is the temple of the holy spirit we should not defile our bodies and then first corinthians 6 12 says all things are lawful so this summit we have christian liberty to make personal choices all things are lawful but not all things are expedient or beneficial all things are lawful but i will not be brought under the power of any so even though in pr as a general principle god gives us the liberty to eat and drink what we wish we don't have the dietary laws of the old testament but we're not supposed to use our liberty in a way that is harmful to the body or we're not supposed to use our liberty to allow something to control us in the form of intoxication or addiction so that's the the bottom line that's the baseline now what's interesting cbd is an extract from hemp or marijuana hemp being the industrial version um that excludes uh the thc which is the psychoactive ingredient so obviously we would be opposed to any use of that psychoactive ingredient but at least allegedly cbd is supposed to exclude that so in principle it wouldn't go against the things i've just mentioned so i did a little research and i checked with the mayo clinic which is highly regarded in the u.s as a premier medical institution and here's what their official position is there is a prescription drug that contains cbd that has been proven effective in treating certain types of epilepsy so they do recommend it with a doctor's prescription so i would agree with something like that so it's not psychoactive it is proven to be a remedy for a specific disease so i would say with a doctor's prescription that would be fine to use that medicine there are many other medicines that could be harmful in fact we oppose abuse of prescription drugs but yet we do recognize there are certain drugs that can be very useful for pain when used appropriately now what the mayo clinic also says is there are many claims that cbd helps all kinds of conditions and helps all kinds of pain but there have been no large-scale studies to document that so a conservative approach would be unless there's a clear medical study and unless there's a prescription for it from a doctor then don't use it that would be the the most conservative approach which i would tend to favor now uh people say well but you know in my personal experience my friend's experience is helpful in blah blah blah and it's purely medicinal well here are some of the concerns since these other products are not regulated then they're very uneven quality and tests have been done that some of these cbd products that are not supposed to be psychoactive actually do have thc and i don't know whether that's accidental because of a poor process or whether it's skirting you know they're offering it for one basis but the users really know that certain products can do other things so that would be a concern another concern is uh it does have side effects so just taking it because you think it might help you not knowing what it also might do so i would say even in those cases then i would say you know check with your own medical doctor before you consider any of these other uses get a prescription but there are concerns about the quality the dosage the presence of thc the side effects impurities um and also there's still questions about law federal law and state law there's an intersection of this some products are allowed some products are not allowed so i would certainly say uh be very cautious i wouldn't want to violate any state or federal law i would certainly not want to violate the word of god that i've just said and so i would recommend uh by prescription use by as a as approved by a medical doctor but aside from that there are many other options for pain uh and other conditions there's not just one solution there are many solutions and and so i would explore those other proven options as my preferred choice and of course i do not want to end the conversation without saying first and foremost in every need we should go to god in prayer god is a healer god is a deliverer and while i believe in medicine i believe in doctors and i believe in hospitals and i've used all of them on occasion our first and foremost trust should be in god and i think we should use these other things as minimally as possible we shouldn't have a cabinet full of medicine that we rely on for whenever we have a need we should go to god in prayer and we should use prescribed medications only when it's truly necessary i think if we trust in god and we pray and we follow some good principles of stewardship of our body and and health diet rest recreation i think we can take exercise i think we can take care of a lot of things and so i would first say let's trust god