Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics, and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Guillotine, and this is another edition of the director's Bag.
Quick announcement. In August we have our public symposium every square inch, and that will be at Providence Christian College in California. Please be sure to register on the website truthexchange.com. and we have more information on that.
Rachel from New Mexico writes. Hi, Doctor Ventrella. I wondered if you could talk a bit more about science, psychedelics, and perhaps medicinal marijuana from a christian worldview.
Jordan Peterson has indicated that psychedelics may have been what Moses experienced in the desert with the burning bush or what was kept in the ark of the covenant. You, along with others like Albert Mohler, seem to draw a conclusion that it is never good.
I can think of a few scenarios where it can be of aid, like a glass of wine or for those who suffer from cancer, is there a way to steward them? Well, then, being medicinal marijuana and psychedelics for the glory or for God's glory.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: That'S a very thought provoking question. I go in about five different directions here, so thank you for it. So a couple of thoughts with respect to it.
One is, let's make sure that we don't slip into gnosticism. Truth exchange opposes gnosticism. Of course it's a heresy. Gnosticism in the sense that we think that things that are physical in themselves are evil, as opposed to that can they be stewarded and utilized to the glory of God and to the benefit of human flourishing. So we don't want to just knock off kinds of things and have a taste, not touch, not sort of mentality. It may surprise the listeners that I've had fentanyl, that very potent synthetic opiate. The reason I had it because I had a medical procedure, and that was they had to administer it to me. I've also had cocaine in my system. Oh, dear. What was that about? Well, because I had a medical procedure in my nasal cavity, and cocaine is a vascular constrictor and physicians use it all the time to control bleeding. So we have to be very careful about when we disdain something simply because it may have a difficult impact. But I think what she's getting at in this question deals with what we essentially call recreational usage, getting high, getting stoned, those sorts of things. And of course, the scripture would stand opposed to that in the sense that you're not to be drunkenness perpetually intoxicated, as addicted to something is not anything that can be countenanced. Should we utilize wine? Absolutely. It's commanded. It's commanded in the Eucharist, it's commanded strong drinks, commanded to those who are depressed, actually, in the proverbs. And of course, it's commanded for medicinal purposes. As Paul tells Timothy, have a little wine with your dinner. So that's not the problem. The problem is over indulging. I think the same argument could be made, although there's one little qualification for some of these other substances. The qualification is, the very purpose of taking many of these substances is to get high. There's really no medicinal value or making the heart glad. And scripture tells us to be sober minded, not to be drunken and foolish, but to be sober minded and to be self controlled. Someone who's tripping on psychedelics, frankly, is not in a state of being self controlled. In fact, in the article you referenced there, when I talked about mushrooms, the proprietor there, Mister Wilson, had sitters, what he called sitters. These are typically spiritual shamans and pagans that guide him and make sure nothing bad happens. That is not a position of self control. And so I think we need to recognize that with respect to psychedelics, marijuana is an interesting thing. We're now seeing the medical benefits of cannabis, and that typically does not have the hallucinogenic component, THC.
I think that you'll find that inhaling marijuana is very detrimental to the throat and to the lungs. I was a jazz musician. I was around this stuff all the time, and I never, never imbibed it. I thought it was not only illegal, but very harmful. We're also seeing, though, that types of marijuana can ease, for example, glaucoma, interocular eye pressure. I don't think there's a christian objection to that, but I think it needs to be conducted in a medically appropriate sense, and not going down to the, you know, the street corner at the local stop and rob and finding some guy and buying a bag of dope or something like that.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Buying edibles?
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, buying egg. Oh boy. I'll tell you what, I never knew what that term meant. And someone said, well, these are edibles. I go, well, that means it's food. No, no, no, these are edibles. I said, what do you mean? Well, it's got like, you know, and so what's the purpose of taking? It's not health, I assure people. It's usually a way of deflecting responsibility. Yeah, it's a. I was talking to a very good friend of mine who's a recovered alcoholic, and he's been sober for 1314 years. And we were talking about this. I. And I said, you know, sometimes you just have to put the brakes on some of that consumption. And he goes, well, you know why people do it, don't you? I say, well, I don't know. I mean, he says, because it works.
And I was talking to another recovery guy I had dinner with two weeks ago, not really an alcoholic, but he just. He works in his church in a recovery ministry, and he just said, you know, that's exactly right. People have hang ups. They have habits, they have hurts. And this, you know, drinking too much or taking drugs works in the sense that it numbs it in a sense that it helps them to forget. Doesn't solve anything, however. And so we need to recognize that that's it. I. You know, people know, and I love being the fact that I'm italian. Italians basically have wine with every dinner meal, I mean, almost seven days a week, just because it's a food, but it's a glass. In an italian culture, drunkenness or drinking to where you're sloppy is absolutely culturally condemned. And you'll be, how should I put this? Tuned up. If you act inappropriately and are drunken, even the lacosa nostra, what we call the mafia, had a very strict code. Yeah, they partied, but if you were inappropriate, said something, touched something or someone or were falling down drunk, you would be tuned up.
And. And so that's just, I think, civil society doing what it should do. So that's kind of my funking there. What do you think, Joshua?
[00:07:28] Speaker A: I think. I think that's. That's quite right. And I think the. The aspect of not being in control, it's not stewarding your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit where to be transformed through the renewing of our mind. The whole Jordan and Peterson thing is quite interesting, and I've heard him say that, and I've heard him also talk with Joe Rogan about yoga. And there's certain types of yoga that also produce the same almost, or at least in the brain, the chemistry of the brain, a release that is very similar to psychedelics. And with the whole revival of the neopaganism that peter and you have talked about over the years, you see that go hand in hand with that is the whole psychedelics and the rise of marijuana and other types of narcotics.
And what's even more shocking is how the agent of the barrier or for young people to be participating in it seems to get lower and lower.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: That is certainly true. I had a course a long time ago, but a very good course in it was called the philosophy of India. And India was always interesting to me because at one point I was involved in, when I was a teenager, transcendental meditation, which is just a form of hindu yoga practice, typically through meditation. But there are different forms of hindu practice, yoga practices that involve different kinds of breathing. And when you hyper oxygenate your blood, you can come into hallucinating things and are naturally. Now, I forgot what it's called. My mind's blipping. But they're actually now a westernized version of these places where you go and you induce, through rapid breathing and panting, these kinds of states. And that's supposed to be. Be good for you. So there is a relationship, I think the dicta that we are talking about demonstrate relationship, the spirituality of some of these kinds of practices, and that hallucinogens do provide it.
The questioner, I think, resides in New Mexico, where a lot of these things, in fact, exist. Peyote, for example, is utilized consistently there with respect to some of the pagan religions that have spawned there. And it's very interesting that the focus is on escape and going inside very much pagan with respect to these kinds of issues. We see this also the ecstatic state of the Sufi worldly dervishes. It's a form of Islam where they whip themselves into these different states. You see this with the Hare krishnas, which is a form of a distorted form of Hinduism, but very much involving that history and so on and so forth. So there's certainly relationship there. And frankly, just like Jesus told Peter, you know, Satan could sift us like grains of sand. We need to be very careful and not think we're, you know, bronze age superman and can resist everything, because that's just not true. It's Christ who is our strength.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Amen.
Victor from San Bernardino, California. He says, hey, joshua. And Doctor Ventrella, I love the new director's bag podcast setup. I wish you had more. And release them throughout the week. Keep them coming. Thank you, Victor. We will try to do that. This month is pride month, and I admit I am not very charitable or eloquent in talking to believers or non believers who are stuck in the LGBTQ lifestyle.
Do you have any advice for how you engage personally, personally with the LGBTQ community? Please keep me in prayer as I think through how I should engage them.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: That's a very important topic. And sometimes christians have a form of gnosticism in the sense that, oh, I'm not going to talk to those people. It's icky. I'm just going to condemn them. It's icky. Sticky. No. So a couple of thoughts there. I'll tell a story, too.
One is this. Keep this in mind.
You are more like your LGBTQ neighbor than you're like Jesus.
You have nothing to boast about when you stand before Christ, except Christ. You are more like that person.
Second of all, you need to be the great apologist. Cornelius van Til said, anytime you have a one on one sort of apologetic encounter, always make sure the conversation ends so that you can buy the next cup of coffee. In other words, be in a position to agreeably disagree, to keep that dialogue going because you don't know what the Lord's going to do. So be in a position to buy the next cup of coffee. And then the story I would tell you is there was a well known pastor, he's a longtime friend of mine, pastored in San Francisco during the so called gay liberation right after Stonewall, which was in New York and then San Francisco, had all these things happen, and he was involved in litigation. It was just an ugly situation. But he was well known as being very stalwart and very gracious in these situations. But he was hated. Then someone from the Bay Area called him. He was in San Francisco, this was from the Bay Area, and said, pastor, pastor. So and so. Did you hear what happened in the election last night? There are, you know, two homosexuals or something like that. You know, a homosexual at least, was elected to the school board in San Jose. Can you believe it?
And the person just was just, you know, ranting about it. And my friend Chuck said, well, that's interesting.
How many adulterers are on the school board? How many fornicators are on the school board? How many divorced and wrongly remarried people are on the school board? His point being is, I understand, you know, you're upset about this, but you weren't upset about these other notorious sexual sins that Paul calls out. Such were some of you. And we must understand that there is redemption with respect to this, and that's what we hold out. Certainly our good friend of truth exchange, Rosaria Butterfield, would be our. A classic example of this. Another friend of mine, Greg Quinn Quinlan, is another example of this. And so this is possible. And so I think in engaging with those people, the manner of the gospel really matters. But then also these facts that they want to suppress in unrighteousness. Romans one, that people can change, that people do not need to be enslaved by a same sex attraction or same sex addiction or same sex behavior. The gospel is potent, and God redeems those made in his image, including those that have been in the abyss of sexual sin.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Because it is pride month, there is a lot of stores that are showing their support simply by slapping a rainbow sticker on their logo.
Do you recommend, and we've talked about this in the past about boycotts and refraining from purchasing and shopping at certain stores, and I'm seeing that buzz, well, guess we can't shop there now because they're supporting this. And what would your response to that kind of line of thinking be?
[00:15:16] Speaker B: I was in the airport this week and the Southwest office. I was not flying southwest, but the southwest office had all those sorts of cultural relics and virtue signals as well. So a couple of thoughts. One is, understand that, and I did write about this in one of the dictas cultural liturgies. It's not just June, it's throughout the year. The LGBT agenda has all sorts of claims and calls for people to be allies and to affirm all throughout the year. So if you were to boycott in June, you'd need to be boycotting basically the entire year. And so I think it's a matter of conscience, but I don't think that we should fool ourselves to think that that is necessarily going to make a last lasting difference, because the reality is that we need cultural change, we need cultural engagement. We need to. And that's one of the things truth exchange is really strong on, is not only do we inform the public, but we equip the church. And ultimately, with our new initiatives, we're going to be protecting the future by training up people in every discipline so that they can begin to impact those cultures and be in the corner offices, in the executive offices, in the boardrooms, to be able to demonstrate that when you go against the design of the creator, bad things ultimately happen. And so I think that we should maybe a matter of conscience, as I said, but understand that it's not going to make a whole lot and you're not more righteous necessarily by doing it, because the reality is most people listening to this podcast have a 401K or similar retirement fund, and most of those are invested in companies that are very pride friendly and lgbt because they want to get the little check mark from those situations.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: So it's not like getting the mark of the beast or anything like that.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I have a particular view of that and it would not be consistent with that. Though I do think if you're going to end up in conversations, point out a couple things. First of all, God claimed the rainbow as a cultural sign. First the way, and explain what that means. God's not going to destroy the world again. He's going to have regularity of seasons. The fact that we have annual pride month is actually a testament to the regularity of the orbit of the earth around those sorts of things that we have seasons and all, and we can eat regularly because of planting and harvesting. That's a testimony to God, first of all. And then I think, point out this is a could be snarky, so don't do it in a snarky way. But the lgbt groups, when they snagged and appropriated the rainbow, botched it, and they made and they copyrighted it with only six colors. But of course, the actual rainbow that God makes is seven colors. And you could just point out, that's not even a real rainbow.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: That's good. One of the things that we incorporated, and I got this from a friend of mine in our evening, worship as a family is in the catechism. If we have a new catechism question is, what should I think when I see the rainbow? And I should think about God's judgment, but instead, God gave me mercy.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: And so rather than highlight the ickiness of the pride and the distortion of creation and worship of creation rather than the creator and the byproduct of that worship, let's focus on the mercy of God through that covenantal sign that he gave.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: And he gave it to the entire created order.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: The entire created order. Very good.
This concludes the recording of the director's bag. For more resources from training Truth exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on x as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the director's bag. I'm your host, Joshua Guillot, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
