Taboo or not Timely?⤒🔗

With interest I have read the stories in a few issues of the magazine Kivive (1993) about the use of drugs.

I can certainly not say that, among the many topics that keep me busy, the use of drugs often comes up. What I learn about it, I hear via radio and tv. There is regularly again a large amount of drugs confiscated, the largest catch of the year. You do not get the impression that the confiscations contribute to the eradication of the evil matter, because some time later there is again a record catch.

This type of message provides little hope that there is progress in the fight against drugs. We soon consider that we will not get rid of the drugs anymore. Learn to live with it, certainly in our country, where we are also tolerant about so many other things! We talk differently when the problem is signalled in our own home and we discover the devastating effect in our own family or church. It occurs unfortunately also in our own circles.

In one of the articles in Kivive, I read that talking about soft drugs and hard drugs would be taboo in our churches. Now the word taboo is used at any opportunity. According to the dictionary, the word taboo is something about which, in social conventions, may not be spoken. I do not believe that this applies to our people when dealing with the topic of drugs. It must mean that most Reformed people do not talk about drugs because they think that the problem passes by our own homes and church. In their view the topic is not taboo; they dare to talk about it, but to their feeling it just is not current.

Fortunately, there are many families and maybe also still many churches, where the drug problems do not play a role. You can find all sins and misery among us, but not all of them to the same extent. Many parents correctly do not worry about the matter of drugs. But we have been able to read in Kivive about children who use drugs and do anything to keep this secret from their family. You could say that not the parents, but the children, want to make drugs a taboo topic. No talk about this at home, because you could be exposed as a fraud!

Not a Habit but Addiction←⤒🔗

What struck me in the article is pretty much the unanimous testimony that soft drugs also work addictively. It starts as a habit, in which smoking or sniffing gives a nice feeling, but still not more than that. In that phase you can still stop it any moment. However such a habit can also lead to the next phase, the one of psychological dependency. It is then not possible anymore to just quit the use of it.

Everyone can observe something similar, even when he does not know anything about hash or cocaine. We may have few hash smokers among us, but still enough tobacco smokers, to ask them whether it is easy to quit that. Many among us can stop smoking only with difficulty or not at all.

It can even be worse, because there are also drugs that cause not only psychological dependency, but also physical dependency. Whoever then ceases to use the drug notices that his body protests seriously. Then unpleasant withdrawal symptoms occur, which have to be suppressed via the use of the drug.

What is the result? The desired effect demands even ever larger doses. The tolerance, as that is called, is increased. With body and soul one is handed over to drugs. Many can no longer escape the devilish cycle. Kicking the habit becomes a tremendous task, because it requires complete submission. If the effort to quit the drug succeeds, that is a blessing.

Kivive allows people to speak who have experienced what the liberation from drugs means for them.

It will not come to that←⤒🔗

Whoever reads this could argue that I should not talk about kicking the habit when talking about soft drugs. You should not use a canon to shoot at a fly. It will not come to that. A hash smoker is not a heroin user. Sure, I agree with that. There are enough hash smokers who quit in time. Now that they are a bit older, they probably reflect with a smile on their years of youth, when it looked cool to smoke a joint together. Many land on their feet, just as with many members of the congregation, of whom their minister tells me that in the past, they were fervent bar visitors.

It is nice when in hindsight you can say that, but I think that many parents would rather take measures beforehand, and I fully agree with them when they worry about the use of drugs by their children and do whatever they can to keep them completely off drugs.

In Kivive I read the story of a policeman who said that of the 100 addicts, 98 started with soft drugs. Not one of them said that it is harmless to start using drugs. That is already enough to be against the use of hash. Further, users of soft drugs say that they still experience physical effects from it. 

Soft drugs are not that soft. When inhaling the smoke of a joint, three times the amount of tar as compared to the smoke of a filter cigarette comes in. The short-time memory decreases. Moreover: who pays for them?

Soft drugs are expensive. I read that when you use them already at an early age, it can not be paid from just pocket money and part-time jobs. Still, the money must come from somewhere. Also in that area, children can be inventive, but honesty is something else!

Car with a Broken Steering Wheel←⤒🔗

Whoever wants to defend soft drugs says that the use of it is as innocent as drinking a beer. In Kivive a girl even quoted the Bible, in which the use of a glass of wine is not forbidden. But it is essential that we use such things in a responsible manner, but surely you can be busy in a responsible way when you do not use certain things at all.

Many drugs give a pleasant feeling which places the user outside of his normal world. In a bar someone says, that he smoked his first joint to try it, but also to rebel against common life. Soft drugs already can help people to get “high” and for a moment to be in another world, but only for a short time, and then reality returns again—a reality that for the real addict is harder and worse than it originally was.

Professor E. J. Ariens typifies the addict who has lost the controlling capacity over his central nervous system, as follows: He is driving a car with a broken steering wheel. The drug user is, as it were, flooded by sensory and other sensations, which occur to him in an uncoordinated fashion. A car with a broken steering wheel can veer in any direction, but do not try to use it while driving in traffic!

Why must we, as Christians, keep our distance from everything that allows us to escape our world in this way? And why must we do everything to get our children, after a first (mis)step, off this path? Because we have received the gospel of Christ. I think for a moment of the man who works in a bar, and there sells soft drugs, but does not use them himself. “I feel happy the way I am,” he tells Kivive.

Exactly, when one is happy, one does not need to use drugs. It is even better to also not sell them to others. And how can it be that such a man finds among his customers also Christians, who can know what is truly “happy,” and that living in a make-believe-world is absolutely unnecessary?

Easter and Addiction←⤒🔗

Christ has risen from the dead, and us with him. Can new people give themselves up to the pleasures of the old world, where the name of Christ can not be mentioned? Can our young people feel at home in a bar where often drinks and drugs are plentifully available? Who would dare to collar an addict and refer him to the gospel of Easter, if he comes there himself for drugs? It strikes me that the young people in Kivive, who, from their own experience, warn against the use of drugs, also make clear that they hung around with the wrong crowd and with the wrong friends.

It might be true that they did not get involved with all kinds of mischief, and that bar attendants are not “by definition” lost to the church. Often the troubles pass, but that is a sorry message. For the sake of the honour of Christ, honour, don’t we have to say something else when we, together with our children, listen to the gospel of Easter? When dealing with our deliverance, why then are we not saddened that in so many ways we are still drawn to the empty and sometimes dangerous pleasures of this world?

I have been addressing the issue of drugs, but everyone will understand that in the glory of Easter, more things will lose their appeal than just drugs.

Questions and Tasks←⤒🔗

1. Explain the title.
    
2. What is meant by “the devilish cycle”? (Second paragraph)
    
3. The cannabis products hash and marihuana contain THC, which influences the nervous system and so causes changes in the psychological condition. In 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 we read: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” Can you understand how it can be that there are Reformed young people who, although they know those Bible words, still begin with drugs?
   Explain your answer.
    
4. Professor Douma writes in Christian lifestyle: “Whether in case of unwillingness to refrain from visiting bars, a council does not allow young people to do profession of faith, is a drastic decision. But a council is serious about the task, given by Christ, when it urges the ones involved to break with the behaviour that certainly does not fit a Christian lifestyle.”
   What is your opinion of this point of view?
    
5. Discuss the following position: “Bars cannot condone the light of Easter.”