Lynn Green

Tag: USA

  • Is Britain Going To Pot?

    Is Britain Going To Pot?

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    You might be relieved to learn that this blog is not about Brexit.

    This is about pot, weed, cannabis, marijuana, hashish, bhang, kif, Mary Jane, dope, skunk….My goodness, there are so many names for this stuff!

    SOFTENING US UP FOR CHANGE IN THE LAW? My wife, Marti, and I are just back from a visit to Colorado, where cannabis has been approved for medical and recreational use for quite a few years, so we have some recent experience with the results of legalization.  In the few days since we got back, I see that a number of national newspapers and several TV programs have focused on the pros and cons of legalizing cannabis.  It is quite obvious that they usually lean towards the positives, especially since Canada just decided it was in the best interests of the nation to make it legal.    When this kind of media onslaught appears, my experience tells me that it usually implies some measure of government and media coordination.  Someone with quite a lot of clout has decided to change the law, so first they aim to change public opinion.

     

    THE FIRST ARGUMENT The most common argument is summarized by this quote from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying that it had become, “too easy for our kids to get marijuana – and for criminals to reap the profits.”  So we asked around our friends and family in Colorado to see if legalizing stopped illegal dealing in the state.  The answer was;

    “No, there are always people who will grow and sell illegally because they want to avoid the state tax and the regulations which were the inevitable result of legalization.  They can undercut the legal pot shops and make bigger profit.” So that seems to be one argument shot down, or at least seriously holed.

    Since my home state, Colorado, led the USA in legalizing pot, it would be good to know what the Governor thinks now.  In a recent interview with CNN, he explained that the crime rate has been rising since pot was made legal six years ago and he has not ruled out making it illegal again.  He said:

    “Trust me, if the data was coming back and we saw spikes in violent crime, we saw spikes in overall crime, there would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in.  It doesn’t seem likely to me, but I’m not ruling it out.”

    Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper opposed legalizing marijuana, but embraced the choice of his state.

    THE COMPASSIONATE ARGUMENT The second argument is medical and there is no doubt that cannabis or cannabis extracts have proven to be helpful for alleviating some painful illnesses or reducing the symptoms of some diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.  I don’t think there is any case for continuing to criminalize the medical use of cannabis or extracts from it.  However, the medical uses are difficult to monitor.  For example, I recently spoke to a young man who was prescribed cannabis to reduce his anxieties.  I have personal experience that leads me to pretty clear conclusions on that.

     

    MY CANNABIS STORYAt this point, I should make a confession.  In the year before I committed my life to the lordship of Christ, I smoked hashish (cannabis resin) at least a couple of times a week.  I was attending the University of Colorado at the time.  I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to smoke whenever it was possible.  Although I was in my third year of a four-year electrical engineering degree, it was my first year completely away from home, as I had done the first two years at a junior college in my home town.  When I got to the home of CU in Boulder, I joined in the party atmosphere.

    I then proceeded to demonstrate an obvious truism; partying, drunkenness and pot smoking don’t contribute to an engineering degree!  It wasn’t long before I was experiencing anxieties and there was a reason for that.  It’s not much fun to go to a math class, having missed the two previous ones, only to realize that you can’t begin to understand what the professor is talking about.  In those circumstances I could see two choices:  I could stop partying and study with the “nerds” who understood, or I could reduce my anxieties with hashish.  I smoked more. 

    The problem was I was only anxiety free when I was high.  Every high was followed by ever more excruciating anxieties. Back to the young man who was prescribed cannabis to reduce anxiety:  I notice that he is not addressing the reasons for his anxiety.  He is still avoiding the hard choices required to make his life better, but the smoking makes him feel less anxious–at least temporarily.  It seems quite clear to me that his prescription cannabis is not helping him lead a better, more fulfilling and satisfying life.  All he gets is a temporary delusion that things aren’t as bad as he feels they are.

    A BETTER CURE There are much better cures for anxiety.  Since my conversion, I have aimed to live clear-conscience Christianity and that has given me the key to anxiety management.  Where there are reasons for me to feel anxious, I should never avoid the circumstances causing the anxiety or attempt to anesthetize my conscience; I must face the reasons and make the choices that reduce my anxieties.  However, sometimes anxieties arise for no identifiable reason.  In those cases, once again, a clear Christian faith provides a pathway to overcoming.  I have access to God’s presence, His promises and His reassuring love for me as an individual.  When I focus on those realities, anxiety begins to shrivel.

    I conclude that substance use, whether alcohol or cannabis or another something else, is no way to manage anxiety or fear.  It is so much better to change the way I think and live and thus increase relational harmony and whole-person peace—shalom.

    REVENUE FOR GOVERNMENTS I think the only obvious case for legalizing pot is the case for revenue. When a government legalizes and taxes pot, they will certainly increase their tax income.  How much of that will have to go on extra policing is hard to say because it is so difficult to say that certain crimes are the result of pot use and others are not.  But it’s not just a matter of policing.  Some people will be able to use pot recreationally without it apparently affecting their behavior, but others will lose more time from work, withdraw from relationships, become less industrious and make more mistakes at work.  Some of those mistakes can result in injury or death.  How do we calculate the cost of that?

    Driving under the influence of cannabis can be as dangerous as driving drunk.  Note the following quote from a Canadian news service earlier this year,

    As Canada prepares for legal pot, the federal government plans to spend as much as $80-million to train 750 police officers to smoke out high drivers. But how sound is the test? A Fifth Estate investigation raises serious questions, showing it can lead to false arrests, is prone to police bias and, according to one scientific expert, is no better at detecting high drivers than “flipping a coin”

    The same article states that the Canadian government has spent as much as $80 million to train 750 police officers to “smoke out high drivers”.  So where does all this leave the equation that all governments have to work out?  (Revenue minus costs equals the overall financial benefit.)  The answer is not clear, but it is not likely to be an overall positive income.

    We become used to governments presenting this sort of decision in purely financial terms, but they are always more than that.  This one is certainly about more than mammon.  What impact will legalization have on the character of our nation?  Will it be a help or a hindrance to young people as they grow up?  Will it help develop more reliable and responsible citizens?  The answer to that one is self-evident.

    So is there a case for legalizing pot?  Should Britain go the same way some other liberal western democracies have gone?  Now that it seems many other nations will follow suit, so should we be among them?

    A few months ago I watched a BBC documentary in which about half a dozen British TV celebrities were taken to Colorado where they talked to lots of people about pot.  They toured pot farms and went to the specialist shops where they tried many different kinds of smokes and eats.  They were older celebrities—I would say the average age was middle fifties—so their giggling and fooling around was quite entertaining.  After their fascinating and picturesque tour was over, they were asked the big question:

     

    “Would you recommend that pot be legalised in Britain?” 

     

    I was sure their answer would be yes.  But to my amazement, each one had exactly the same answer. “After all we have seen and experienced on this trip—the answer is no.”

    I agree.

    Lynn Green.

  • Is the United States Tearing Itself Apart?

    Is the United States Tearing Itself Apart?

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    I have heard a few people voice that opinion recently.  As for me, I am of two minds.  On the one hand, I am an American citizen and on the other, I am a British citizen who has been resident in England for over 40 years.  So, part of me is a patriotic, loyal American and another part has the perspective of one who is influenced by the British/European perspective.  Does that make me unusually objective?   Well, as you might imagine, I would like to think so.

    Over the past few weeks, the American media has been focussed on a few discouraging incidents—first there was the Ferguson shooting and then the “I can’t breathe” incident in New York.  Both of these served to magnify the racial and policing issues in the USA.  They were both tragic, but neither one represents a true picture of American race relations.  Americans of all races reacted with dismay, sympathy with the victims and their loved ones and a desire to know more about what really happened.

    But that is not what I want to comment on today.  Right now I am more concerned about the results of the Congressional Report on the CIA.  The the release of the report, and the global publicity surrounding it, has put American lives at risk.  The lives of those who might look like Americans and those from nations that are seen to be allied with America are also at risk.  So, my immediate concern was to warn those whom I know and who fall into those categories, to give serious consideration to their personal security and the safety of their families.  Let us hope and pray that the jihadist reaction will not be either widespread or effective.  (By the way, let us also pray for the reasonable and moderate Muslim leaders who are dismayed at the rise and prominence of violent jihadist movements and are working hard to defuse them.)

    So what should a “Resident Alien” think about these charges that the CIA used torture to obtain information from jihadist operatives they had captured?  Firstly, we will want to agree with CIA Director, John Brennan’s statement today, that he thinks some of the methods used for extracting information were “abhorrent”.  He acknowledged that these were used by agents who went beyond the authorized methods for interrogation. These include waterboarding and confinement in a coffin-like box.  Surely no-one can accept such abuses of fellow human beings.

    Then we want to be grateful for an open and reasonably transparent governmental system that scrutinizes the use of power, especially coercive or lethal power.  I have to admit that, in the wake of the first few newspaper articles about the Congressional Report, I was beginning to think that the CIA was “off the leash and running wild”.  But when I read the response by six former Directors and Deputy Directors, I was surprised to learn that there was considerable Congressional and Presidential oversight of the CIA with regular briefings to both branches of government and clear operational guidelines laid down by the elected officials.  So there should be.

    There is a bigger issue here for those of us who try to think and act consistently as Biblical Christians:  What do we think about the use of coercive and lethal force to combat evil?  And an obvious corollary  of that question, is there a place for a spy agency?  To be honest, I have gone back and forth over the years on that issue—sometimes I have leaned towards pacifism and at other times I have conceded that the use of such force is a necessary evil.  That is where I stand today.  I believe that, in the light of a world populated by sinful people, God has mandated government at its various levels to resist evil with force.  The first epistle from Peter makes an important statement in chapter two and verse 14 when he writes that the Head of State and his officials are “sent to punish those who do wrong…”

    But the use of force to corral evil is a tricky business.  Those who are forced to “toe the line” against their will, can never be fully trusted, so issues of lawlessness are not really resolved by force.  In addition, those who exercise the force to limit evil, are very often corrupted by the process—hence the policing problems we referred to briefly above and the atrocities a few years ago at the Abu Ghraib detention centre in Iraq where US troops used terribly degrading methods on prisoners.  Undoubtedly some CIA agents have become warped by the business with which they are engaged.

    However, my conclusion on this subject today is that the “sins” of the CIA area real and serious, but they have been used for party political purposes.  As the letter from former CIA officers says,   “The country and the CIA would have benefited from a more balanced study of these programs and a corresponding set of recommendations. The committee’s report is not that study. It offers not a single recommendation.”

    So as Americans abroad and the citizens of allied nations run for cover in the wake of this highly publicised report, let us hope that the political posturing will give way to healthy examination of the issues and greater adherence to the values that make a nation great.  There was an encouraging comment today and I close with that.

    ”David Petraeus , a retired Army general who served for more than a year as CIA director under Mr. Obama, said Thursday that, “If you want information from a detainee, you become his best friend, and that is what worked for us with our special operators as well as our conventional forces in both Iraq and in Afghanistan.””

    If this subject has grabbed your attention, you can read the entire letter from the former CIA officers at:  http://on.wsj.com/1wX7eHy  Details of the report released by Senator Feinstein will receive widespread report in the days to come.

  • What does “blessing Israel” actually mean?

    What does “blessing Israel” actually mean?

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    I just completed my third trip to Israel in the past six months.  Where ever I have gone during these trips, and the many I have made in the previous 44 years, I hear people say, “I am here to bless Israel!”  If they get a chance to explain what they mean, the most common answer is, “ God says that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed,” and they often know that it has something to do with God’s promise to Abraham.  In other words, this is some way of being sure that God will bless me.  Is that right?

    Others will apply this way of thinking more broadly and find direct connections with the well-being or decline of entire nations.  In one interpretation, this means that the nations that vote with Israel in the UN will thrive and the nations that vote against Israel will experience hardship and disaster.  (By the way, there is no doubt that the United Nations has some sort of obsession with condemning Israel.  In light of all the abuses of human rights by so many nations, the General Assembly spends an inordinate amount of time accusing Israel.)

    On this particular trip, I was part of the leadership of a large event in Jerusalem. There were about 3,500 people from many nations with nearly half of them being Chinese who have a passion for Jews and Arabs.  It was an amazing few days of worship, prayer and unity between nations and peoples and that included Jews and Arabs.  In fact believers from both backgrounds joyfully made a public covenant to walk together as “one new man”, as Paul describes in Ephesians 2:15.  However, when various individuals and delegations spoke about “blessing Israel”, I think they often did not mean the same thing as others; there were important misunderstandings associated with that phrase.

    There is a simple question that can help clear up the misunderstanding.   Do we mean we intend to bless the nation-state of Israel, or do we mean we intend to bless the people who have historically been known as Israel?  There is a big difference.

    The nation-state of Israel is, like all other nations, a mix of good and bad.  There is no doubt that God intended its resurrection in 1948 and that its birth and survival until today has been nothing short of Providential.  The scriptures make it clear that God ordains the nations and their boundaries so, in that sense, every nation is ordained of God, but Israel is unique among the nations.  There has never been an occasion in history in which people were able to return to their historical home after 1900 years of exile.  That is simply, amazingly miraculous.

    That does not mean that Israel is a uniquely righteous nation, though.  Actually, it’s founding philosophies had much more to do with Eastern European Socialism from the 1930s and 40s than any desire to return to the God of the Bible.  In the past few decades, the number of religious Jews has grown dramatically, but they are mostly of the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox persuasions and, as such, they are fiercely opposed to anything to do with Jesus Christ.  From a political perspective, Israel is like any other nation with a whole range of ideologies and dozens of political parties.  They oppose one another on nearly every subject, sometimes violently.  So, which of them do we support if “blessing Israel” means political support?

    That subject is not so complicated if we just think about the Old Testament prophetic scriptures.  None of the prophets ever unconditionally supported the government and military of Israel.  They loved the nation but, because they loved it, had to speak against the godlessness, the idolatry and their trust in their own wealth and might.  When we read Jeremiah and the other prophets, it seems that only the false prophets offered unconditional support.

    So, we must bless what is good and upright in a nation, but never call evil good, as the false prophets did.  But that is exactly what we do when we offer unconditional support to a nation.  Of course that principle applies to any nation.  When “the church” of any nation aligns itself with the ambitions of its government and military it ends up strengthening the Principalities and Powers that drive nations to evil.

    Yet, I am convinced that God wants us to bless Israel because anyone who reads and understands the message of the New Testament will know that God is not finished with the people who are called Israel—the Jewish people.  In Romans, Paul writes about them being branches that have been broken off, temporarily, from an olive tree.  Then he describes the believers of all the other nations as branches that were grafted into the tree.  And then he says that the breaking off was a blessing to all the other nations, but they will be grafted back in and that will be a MUCH greater blessing.

    So, that is not really complicated:  We maintain a prophetic stance to any and every nation and that includes the nation-state of Israel.  We simply cannot offer unconditional support because we would end up calling evil good.  Jeremiah and other prophets lost their lives because they refused to do exactly that.  But we can pray for and bless the Jewish people.  That means we long for the day when they will see their hope for a Messiah fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  We also work toward that end by supporting mission to the Jewish people and take every opportunity to extend love and kindness to them.

    If that is clear, let me make one more thing completely clear:  I BLESS ISRAEL!

  • World Perspectives – by Life Community with Tim Nutting

    World Perspectives – by Life Community with Tim Nutting

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    Life Community pastor Tim Nutting interviews Lynn Green, a key leader in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) on what God is doing around the world. For more info on Life Community Visit: http://www.lifegj.org (C)2014 Life Community Church