July 30, 2025

In 2008, medical use of cannabis became legalized in Michigan through the Michigan Compassionate Care Initiative. Not surprising, 10 years later Cannabis became legal in Michigan for recreational use. Toward the end of 2019, state licensed sales of recreational cannabis began. Lawmakers figured that people were buying it anyway so, why burden police with enforcing an unpopular law when it can legalize, tax and bring in money.

Since smoking has been legal for such a long time, health studies have had plenty of time to observe its long-term effects. We are just now seeing the front end of the returns of some of the long-term effects of cannabis and the results, unsurprisingly are not pretty.

Cannabis has a direct negative influence on the brain, which is, of course some of the reason why people use it. But getting high comes at a cost. Cannabis affects memory, learning, attention, decision making, coordination, emotions and reaction time. It also can cause the heart to beat faster, raise blood pressure and increases the risk of stroke, heart and other vascular diseases. When a vehicle next to you smells like a cannabis store, the danger is more than olfactory. Driving high, stoned or even a little under the influence causes reaction times to slow, distorts perception and impairment as well as negatively influences coordination and response times. This is one of the areas where further study is needed, but initial data suggests a connection between cannabis use and vehicle accidents. Shocking, eh? Who would have thunk? There’s more: lung health, mental health and accidental poisoning are other realities and dangers. Reports indicate that the intensity of the cannabis today is significantly more potent than in the past.

There are 12 cannabis stores within a 5.5-mile radius of our church building. Four of them are only 1 mile or closer. Given the incredible demand for electricity, I wonder if our areas frequent power outages aren’t connected to this in some way.

How did we get here? Go back to the opening line of this blog. Note the name of the initiative; Michigan Compassionate Care Initiative. Doesn’t that sound nice? Who would vote against Compassionate Care? That’s the point of good marketing and deceitful advertising. If you can call poison a vitamin, who wouldn’t think it was good?

This Sunday, our text is Luke 13:1-5. It’s a hard text. It’s one of the passages that is not on the top 10 most popular sayings of Jesus list. It sounds almost cold and unfeeling, but rightly understood, it’s the opposite. Have you ever noticed how Satan is so good at marketing? He makes evil seem so good, and hell like a place to party. Then he switches the price tags. The freedom and pleasure become chains, addiction and terror. God, on the other hand, tells us the truth up front. When he does, like Jesus does in this text, it can thin out the crowds and cause the approval levels in the polls to take a hit.

I’ve talked with a few people through the years who became disillusioned with Christianity because life did not go as they expected. It became clear that they had a Disneyland view of Christianity instead of a biblical one. Why? The Bible is so clear about these things. Life in these shadowlands is hard. Life as a follower of Christ is like going uphill with the wind in your face. This has been the stories of the faithful in the OT (see Hebrews 11) and the apostles and early believers in the NT. So why do people have a Disneyland view of being a Christian? Either they don’t read their Bibles or since hard passages like Luke 13:1-5 are not popular, that many have never heard them preached. Lament and confession Psalms, passages on hell, and explicit warnings on sin are not sure-fire ways to draw a crowd. But they are part of God’s revelation to us so that we can know the entire story and be ready.

Are you willing to hear truth even if it makes you uncomfortable?

Grace and peace,

Bob

Sunday’s Text: Luke 13:1-5