Hansen Wendlandt, Pastor, Nederland Community Presbyterian Church. I know a few Christians who don’t let their children watch movies. Those poor kids will never see Footloose, wherein the parents of one church won’t let their children dance. Sheesh, I get it that parenting is difficult, but it sure seems rotten to blame God for your fears and neuroses.

Maybe you’ve run across other religious people who think it is absolutely wrong to drink. Or, maybe you know someone who is convinced that the Bible is against anything and everything having to do with sex. The cultural expectation has been, for the longest time, that Christianity is just a bunch of Thou Shalt Not’s, with a sprinkling of You Must go to church and You Must believe certain things.

As a minister, a lot of this stuff gets pinned on me. I suppose it’s a cross I can bear. Sometimes it’s laughable, such as when people assume they should be more “pure” around me and constantly apologize for cursing. (They wouldn’t know what to do if they ever heard me trying to get up a hard rock climb.) But sometimes it is just obnoxious, when people assume that they know how I must feel in any controversial situation, because “all church-y people are against…” fill in the blank.

Marijuana is our loud controversy. And church-y people are against it, right? Well, some are, and some aren’t. Would you believe that Pat Robertson—the self-righteous televised windbag who blames natural disasters on people’s so-called moral failures—that guy is for legal weed!

I also know some very liberal pastors, the kinds of veritable saints who move into the inner city just to live closer to kids in trouble, the kinds of visionaries who march and protest for peace, the kinds of counter-culture folks who grow dreadlocks and their own food. Many of them are disgusted by how much pot has destroyed young lives and old neighborhoods. Marijuana and the church is more complicated than “right” and “wrong.”

A few folks in Nederland know some of my own story. Others are about to become way more comfortable cursing around me. Here it is. My father was a grower. I don’t mean he was a back-in-the-seventies-he-had-a-couple-plants kind of grower. I mean, all the way through my high school, if you wanted good weed in the Ozarks, you came to Hippie Jack.

I grew up with the sights and smells, totally normalized to this taboo. Even today I could walk you to some of my dad’s old hidden garden plots in those mountains. When I returned from college, my family had a few plants in the back yard, right on Main Street, eight short blocks from the center of our quaint little town, where the world’s first Walmart stood by the courthouse and the statue of a Confederate soldier. This issue is more complicated than “these” people and “those” people.

On one hand, it was a bummer for my dad to choose that occupation, because he was in and out of jail my whole life. On the other hand, I’m thankful that my experience allows me a unique perspective, such that I’m not intimidated by the drug or the industry, nor by pietistic types who demand that cannabis is evil no matter what.

Here is what most sticks out to me today, the key to why I land where I do on this controversy. As a youngster, whenever my dad wanted to smoke, he made the decision not to do it around me. He would give me a Tootsie Roll, and send me outside to play, probably to protect me from second-hand smoke, probably to buffer me from an activity that just doesn’t belong around kids. For all the irresponsibility that followed him, in just about every corner of life (and my mother would tell you, there was a lot of irresponsibility), still he made it a priority to protect his child and my development.

Plenty of people will disagree with me, but I get the sense that, all things being equal, Jesus would be as open to pot as he was to wine—it’s just fine until it gets in the way of an abundant life. For some adults, perhaps that means it can be a regular part of their life—although, to be honest, most of us have a dozen other less controversial things that get in the way of an abundant life, and I’d hope we all try to grow through all our distractions. For other people, the slightest bit of beer or weed will send them on a spiral out of control, dramatically or subtly. Maybe you know folks who could use some help in that area.

But when it comes to children and teenagers, we have to be far more responsible. For youngsters, even into young adulthood, the science and social science is clear, that cannabis does get in the way of healthy development.

So, parents, how do you manage your stash, as you would a gun case? How do you talk with your kids about making good, life-affirming decisions, as you would about sexuality? How do you build trust with honesty, so that they can bring their feelings about this to you? How do you set boundaries and supervise, so that they have every opportunity to flourish? I get it that parenting is difficult, but it sure would be rotten for marijuana to take the blame for your child not living a full and rewarding life.

Wednesday, March 4, is an event at the Community Center, sponsored by a range of organizations: “High Expectations: What Message Are We Sending To Our Kids?” No one will be there to tell you what to do, or how to parent. Instead, we’ve invited nationally respected educator and comedian Ray Lozano and a panel of local leaders to answer your questions, share some information, and lead a conversation to help us all take care of our kids.

Youngsters age 9 and up are welcome. There will be a FREE light dinner at 5:30, and childcare is available. Watch for flyers around town and on NedHeads, for more information.

Raising children in a marijuana-proximate environment is complicated. Together, let’s work to make it a little easier.