Hitler was not elected Chancellor of Germany by the people of Germany.
No; he was appointed by the Nazi Party, which
was democratically elected, albeit by a plurality rather than a majority.
And why should it matter? The Bible doesn't say "obey the laws of the land if they are created by a democratic process". If we are to accept that simplistic and acontextual rendering of scripture, then every government, no matter how corrupt, must be obeyed. Without exception. The Founding Rebels of the USA were in fact in rebellion against God; every Christian who hid escaped slaves was sinning by doing so; every Christian who hid Jews in Nazi Germany deserved to die at the hands of the state, as many did.
But if we hold the laws of the land to a standard of reason and justice, then it is certainly responsible to break those which are unreasonable and unjust. And considering that the laws of the land under which we now live are deliberately fashioned so as to be impossible to follow, being too voluminous to know and frequently contradictory, it is impossible to do otherwise. You can't follow every law without breaking some other law. The average American citizen commits several misdemeanors and a few felonies in a month without ever knowing it. The state has even gone so far as to criminalize, or at least to prohibitively regulate charitable acts - against which acts the apostle Paul wrote that "there can be no law".
Now, as I said, I don't think that drug use is a good idea in general. But the
fact that people can and do use drugs that the FDA has banned without becoming addicted or destroying their lives and the lives of others cannot be ignored without resulting in false judgments. Especially considering that there are illegal drugs which are FAR safer than alcohol and many legal pharmaceuticals, and that much of the danger associated with their use results entirely from their having been criminalized (as happened with alcohol during Prohibition).
I recall an incident where a man who has used marijuana to treat his Parkinson's disease confronted Mike Huckabee, who calls himself a Christian, about the possibility of legalizing marijuana for medical use. Huckabee, who claims to follow Christ, laughed in his face. And I suspect that many Christians laughed with him. The media-fueled hatred of drugs and drug users is completely bereft of compassion, grace, and plain reason. It is no position for a Christian to take.
I am not asking people to promote drug use. I am only asking that people stop making ignorant and callous judgments about the issue.
