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MARIJUANA: STRONGER THAN CHRISTIANITY

by Andre Lee  
11/06/2014 / Christian Living

Well, they did it. They legalized marijuana. In my home town of Colorado Springs, CO., it's a phenomenon! You can see people casually smoking a joint outside on a warm summer day, and you can hardly spend a day outside without a car driving by that completely reeks of the smell of it. I have even met people who have traveled from other cities and states on bikes just to be a part of the now-legal pastime. Then something hit me. I'm not a marijuana smoker by any means, yet my ability to avoid this marijuana movement is almost non-existent. I can't go anywhere without seeing the effects of the legalization of marijuana. A movement has to be pretty big to sweep up people who aren't even involved in it. However, I looked around to try and find a movement of the Gospel of the same magnitude, but was broken hearted to realize... there wasn't one.

I didn't want to believe that the Christian church had less drive than pot-heads, but the ugly comparison was undeniable! On an average day, I took a tally of how many people I could tell were a part of this new marijuana movement, versus how many people I could tell belonged to the church of Jesus Christ, and sadly, the smokers won by a land-slide. The heart-breaking truth that Christianity starts when we enter a church building and stops once we leave it, is more evident than ever. Especially with the comparison of stronger, more effective movements happening around it. So why have Christians isolated their Christianity to a church building, and keep it to themselves in their daily lives (something that the Bible blatantly condemns, and something that we will be judged on)? The answer lies deep in the heart of the American dream.

Let's be honest, we all want stuff. I want stuff, you want stuff, and everyone around us does too. That's what the American dream is; it's a mission to get to a stable place of success so we can have constant access to nice stuff. The finer things in life. But we also don't want to be considered bad people. Mix these two ideas together, and what do you have? You have the modern day church: A holy way of getting stuff. The message behind the American church is, "How to get stuff in a more polite, friendly, sinless way than the rest of the world, so you're not a bad person while doing it." For example: "I didn't curse anyone out while waiting in line for a plasma-screen television on Black Friday." (But you also didn't use your plasma screen television money to help that stranded car you saw on the way to the store.)

This kind of church system requires very little, if any, display of your beliefs, because in this method, our beliefs are just a means to an end. They don't change what we're after, they simply justify it. Now we live the American dream with less guilt. When the people on the outside long for a Lexus, they're worshiping idols; when the people in the church long for a Lexus, they're seeking a blessing. After the rise and fall of the prosperity Gospel, church attendance was at an all-time low. Why was this the case if people were in church for any other reason but holy access to the American dream, with God paving the way for them? Most people felt like God failed to live up to His end of the bargain when they didn't get that new house or promotion at work.

Not only has this turned people on the outside away from church, it has also allowed weeds to grow on the inside. Since church in the United States is treated like another facet of the America dream, it is ran like a business or an organization, and pastors teach and run churches as if spiritual life is a separate entity from everyday life. Most of our teachings allow the American dream to still be the focal point of our lives ("Don't sin while you're running that business," rather than, "Step away from running that business and ask God what He wants from you."). Never clarifying that, while having stuff could be your life, your mission is to spread the Gospel. All in all, the American dream has choked the life out of the Gospel and Christianity, with none of our pastors challenging or correcting this.

This is more important now than ever. The Holy Spirit has spoken to me, amongst a few others, saying our time is up! We have to filter-out His church, because we're only looking at years before events start taking place. Not decades, not centuries... years! And if we don't start weeding out the America dream from our Christianity, we will not know how far we actually are from Christ. And we will find out harshly. There is no more time to sit around having church.




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Author and teacher Andre Lee has dedicated his life to preparing the church for the coming of Christ.

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