WITCH WAY ON DRUGS?

With its brutal excesses and reliance on snitches and finks as informants,
I don't think it's far off-kilter to describe the modern-day drug war as
oddly similar to the Salem witch trials. In fact, if words mean anything,
the war on drugs is a witch-hunt in the most literal sense of the two terms
- -- both "drug" and "witch."

As the history books tell it, in the late 1600s the witches of Salem,
Mass., became the exalted guests at a New England hemp party -- which is to
say, as a point of clarification, that they swung from ropes composed of
it, rather than smoked doobies rolled from it. Likewise, today there are
those who argue for the same treatment for drug sellers and users. In
Christian circles, this rallying cry to give dope peddlers the chair
usually hinges on the same justification as hanging witches.

Taking up this banner is Media House International Director Jay Rogers in a
review of the 1994 book, "Politically Incorrect," by Pat Robertson's former
right arm, Ralph Reed. "The moral Law of God requires only two punishments
for lawbreakers," explains Rogers, "restitution or execution. A repeat
violent offender would spend the rest of his life in servitude or would be
executed," Rogers elaborates, arriving at this shocking conclusion:

Convicted drug dealers who sold drugs to children would be executed for the
crime of sorcery. ...

Rogers hinges this bold call for blood on Scripture's condemnation of
witchcraft. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," enjoins the Lord in
the 22nd chapter of Exodus. As the Bible would have it, the life of a witch
follows the Bob Dylan lyric: "Everybody must get stoned." Rogers has it
sewed. It's cake. Toke a bong, and they'll stoke your pyre. But what's the
connection? How does a death sentence for hocus-pocus apply to pill heads
and junkies?

Figuring 'pharmakeia' When I argued in my July 20 column, "One toke over
the line, sweet Jesus?" that Christians should reconsider their support for
the war on drugs on the basis that Scripture gives no justification for
legal action against dope smokers and pill poppers, a flurry of e-mail
erupted across my screen. While much of it was good, many were either
hesitant or outright offended at the notion of legalizing drugs.

"Only drug dealers want legalization," wrote one reader, Jim, adding,
"Drugs are destroying this country inside and out." Then Jim offered this
gem: "It was prophesized in Revelation, 'For by thy sorceries (pharmakeia)
were all nations deceived.'" Backing his charge that legalization is bad
news, Jim quoted the 18th Chapter of John's Apocalypse, making -- just as
Rogers does -- a clear connection between witchcraft and drug use.

Aboard the same ideological bus is evangelical end-times guru Jack Van
Impe. Writing about the latest outbreak of fad drug use in his April 1997
Intelligence Briefing, Van Impe references the ninth and 18th chapters of
Revelation, explaining the witchcraft-drugs connection when he notes, "The
term 'sorceries' in these texts comes from the Greek term -- pharmakeia --
translated 'pharmacy' or 'drugs.'" Indeed, pharmakeia is the word from
which our terms "pharmacy" and "pharmaceutical" are derived.

As I point out in "One toke over the line, sweet Jesus?" there is little in
Scripture directly condemning drugs, as such (mainly, God's word attacks
drunkenness, insobriety and dissipation). Au contraire, say the proponents
of the "pharmakeia factor," pinning drugs to Scripture's clear condemnation
of witchcraft and sorcery.

It's all Greek to me A little lexical history is in order: When the Hebrew
Scriptures -- the Old Testament to us Christians -- found their way into
the hands of the Greek translators some 250 years before Christ was born,
they translated the Hebrew word for sorcery with "pharmakeia," having
connotations to both witchcraft and drugs. As defined by the
Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek, pharmakeia is tied to "the
use of any kind of drugs, potions, or spells," as well as "poisoning or
witchcraft."

The connection is easy to see. In many pagan societies mind-altering
substances were used in religious ceremonies. Along with the Greeks' use of
drugs, the ancient Celts used to "do" mistletoe -- and not for kissing;
ditto for American Indians and their use of peyote. The point wasn't,
however, to kick back and wig out on a batch of herb. Drug use was not
recreational; it was ceremonial.

To see one Greek example of the use of pharmakeia, consider the story of
Jason and the Argonauts. In one passage, translated by Sir James George
Frazer, the hero Jason goes to the sorceress Medea, who has the hots for
him. Not wanting him to be harmed in his upcoming battles, she concocts a
drug, a "pharmakon," for him if he'll marry her and take her to Greece.
"When Jason swore to do so," Frazer's version goes, "she gave him a drug
with which she bade him anoint his shield, spear, and body when he was
about to yoke the bulls; for she said that, anointed with it, he could for
a single day be harmed neither by fire nor by iron."

The drug was magic. We're not talking hashish here. We're not talking LSD.
We're talking oogie-boogie. Clearly, the word pharmakeia has much more to
do with magic than muddleheadedness, witchcraft than wiffle pipes, sorcery
than smack.

Consider the following passage from Leviticus. Talking about ceremonial
cleanliness and keeping the faith unadulterated by pagan practices, God
instructs in chapter 19,

You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not practice
augury or witchcraft. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or
mar the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh
on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Do not
profane your daughter by making her a harlot, lest the land fall into
harlotry and the land become full of wickedness. You shall keep my sabbaths
and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. Do not turn to mediums or
wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.

As one e-mailer tipped me, "Obviously, this is not about 'don't take
aspirin.'" All these things are indicative of the religious practices of
the Canaanites -- including temple prostitution, self-mutilation and
divination -- whose land the Israelites were to occupy. God didn't want
them whoring after the false gods of the natives. This is made all the more
obvious when we look at the original Hebrew words from which the Greek
translators were working. The Hebrew terms for witchcraft -- words like
"kashaph," "qacam" and their derivatives -- refer to divination and
spiritism; they have no drug-related connotations. Zip, zilch, nada, nil --
or "loh," as the Hebrew puts it. God's concern in these passages isn't with
LSD blotters or hypodermic needles. He's concerned with false religion.
It's just a lexical quirk that the Greek word is tainted with definitional
baggage -- being connected to the perverse religious practices of the
Greeks -- and is thus susceptible to manipulation in the current drug-war
debate.

While none of this is to suggest that getting plastered on dope is
scriptural (I don't believe it is), neither is it correct to say it's a
form of witchcraft, deserving the same sort of punishment.

Defending bad ideas can be just about as entertaining as the circus; the
gymnastics are terrific. It seems the mental contortion artists -- adroitly
bending, stretching and flipping logic with the greatest of ease -- are
especially talented when it comes to debating drugs. But in the end, it's
all just playing games with the text to arrive at a predetermined end --
saying dope is naughty. This is using Scripture to support, rather than
reform, your prejudices. And, at bottom, it's dishonest.

Rather than allow cultural biases, gut instincts or basic distaste to cloud
our judgment, as Christians we need to take the drug debate to the bar of
Scripture, which -- while condemning drug abuse and insobriety -- provides
no legal argument for pursuing a government-orchestrated war on drugs.