KENT COUNTY, MI - Wyoming is asking the Michigan Supreme Court to uphold a local ban on medical marijuana. Meanwhile, Grand Rapids city voters in November will consider a measure to decriminalize the use of recreational marijuana.

The mayor of Wyoming, Jack Poll, attends a Christian Reformed church that is socially conservative compared to some faith groups. The mayor of Grand Rapids, George Heartwell, is an ordained pastor in the relatively liberal United Church of Christ.

What does your religious tradition say about the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise? The Ethics and Religion Talk panel addresses that question this week.

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Ethics and Religion Talk, by Rabbi David Krishef

In general, Jewish ethics prohibit self-endangerment. A leading Jewish legal scholar opposed the use of recreational marijuana on the grounds that it limits one's ability to exercise free will, alters one's sense of reality, impairs one's judgment and affects one's ability to function. However, there is also a legal obligation to heal, and sometimes healing entails injury to the body for the sake of restoring the body to health.

When conventional medications do not provide relief and marijuana has been found to be highly effective, its use is consistent with the position within Jewish law that analgesics may be administered even at the risk of possibly shortening a patient's life, as long as the purpose is solely for relief from acute pain.

Here's what other panelists say:

The Rev. Fred Wooden, senior minister of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids

Dr. Aly Mageed, a Shura member of the Islamic Mosque and Religious Institute of Grand Rapids

The Rev. Howard Earle, Jr., senior pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Grand Rapids

RELATED:

Would you vote again for the medical marijuana law if you had a chance?

Although our traditions concur with marijuana as a medical treatment, three of the four traditions represented here do not look favorably on the recreational use of marijuana. What do you think?

As always, please email your ethical questions for the panel to consider. We welcome the questions that you encounter from day to day, the questions on your mind, large and small.

Ethics and Religion Talk is compiled and written by David Krishef, rabbi at Congregation Ahavas Israel in Grand Rapids. Krishef takes questions from readers and shares them with a panel of clergy, then provides the responses in collaboration with MLive.com reporter Matt Vande Bunte. Please submit questions from your own day-to-day encounters to EthicsAndReligionTalk@gmail.com.