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I am in agreement with all you stated about the surpassing glory that awaits. The question here, though, is what role the law of God has in relation to our civil codes and further, what place, if any, do materials in this world have to "make the heart merry." I have already said I don't smoke pot. The question is not "is it wrong" but "should it be illegal?"

Let me ask you a question then, The Law says "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and that the punishment is to be taken outside the village and stoned to death by all your neighbors. Why should this not be enshrined in civil code? What is the result that we have not done so in our society?

For what you are getting at here is the purpose of the "Law" and I need to know where you stand.

Because the civil aspects of the law were never meant to be trans cultural. They were intended as a body of civil law for the political body of jews in Palestine only. They were NOT a reflection of God's moral character, as evidenced by Jesus's statement to the Pharisees that the law of God "permitted" divorce because of the hardness of men's hearts, but that this practice was not a part of God's good and holy will.

Also, the attempt to divide the law into neat distinguishable categories of "civil ceremonial, and moral" wind up a hopeless mess if you truly try to parse the law in this manner.

Finally, the OT law never proscribed any intoxicating substances, be they alcoholic beverages or drugs. The closest you can come to that is the proscription for witches "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and then jumping to the description of sorcerers in Revelation as "pharmakeia," pointing to the drug use of shamans to enter an altered state of conciousness and then communicate with the spirit world. That is a big jump to demanding that one outlaw marijuana or alcohol on the basis of OT law.

Would you outlaw building a church on a mountaintop? If you want to institute OT law as normative today you would. The "high places" were associated with Ba'al worship and were forbidden as a spot for a place of worship in OT. Do you demand that a parapet be built around the roof of ever habitation? That is OT civil code. How about mandating a yearly trip to Jerusalem? Again, OT law. I don't think you want to go there.