Getting High with God
A Breathtaking Reflection on The Ascension
Have you ever gotten high? No judgment if you have. I had a life before Christ too, or at least what I thought was a life…
People get high for various reasons: addiction, boredom, anesthetizing pain, peer pressure, etc. People ultimately get high to attain a euphoric state of transcendence - the kind that feels like your soul is leaving your body.
I can attest to this personally.
There is something about a drug-induced state of consciousness that hints at the delusion our foreparents chased when the serpent convinced them they could ‘be like God’. The ideal of autonomy has an intoxicating effect that can manifest itself through drug abuse, or any vice for that matter.
But what if people smoke trees to recapture that first breath of life God gave us in the garden? The inhalation brings an initial rush followed by the kind of levity Adam and Eve must have felt before sin ruined the world.
Whether we get high or not, do we not all have ways of seeking to recover what we lost in paradise? Even the language of “recovery” betrays an instinct to re-cover the nakedness and shame we inherited from the fall.
In some capacity, we are all in recovery. We have all experienced the trauma of disconnection from the Creator, and as a result we turn to the creation to find relief.
It is not incidental that we describe ecstatic experiences as breathtaking. A “runner’s high” is synonymous with catching a “second wind.” Conversely, a crushing disappointment is often described as having “the wind knocked out of you.” Even the search for relief is described as slowing down to “catch your breath.”
Deep down, we know something is wrong. Wrong with us. Wrong with the world. Wrong with our lives. So we reach for the nearest thing we can find to fill the void. Sometimes that happens to be a bong, a pipe, or a pack of rolling papers.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul refers to the first man’s creation when he writes: “The first man Adam became a living being,” invoking the moment God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Paul then contrasts the Last Adam, who “became a life-giving spirit.” This echoes the risen Christ, who in John’s Gospel breathed on His disciples to give them new life—life that is received, not earned through the manifold ways we seek to justify ourselves. This same life is given to us as a preacher exhales the words of life through the gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Though smoking trees may provide a temporary high and the illusion of transcendence, Christ was lifted up on the tree to give us eternal life. When He ascended on high, He restored us to something greater than the paradise we squandered - He seated us in heavenly places we do not deserve to sit.
There is no drug that can deliver such relief. Neither is there any other savior who can deliver us from ourselves.
Sigh…now that is the good life worth living.
Or rather, He is the good life, lived on our behalf…and inhaled through the hearing of faith.