Craig Gross is a man on a mission.
Gross, a 43-year-old pastor in California, first became known in the early 2000s when he founded XXXchurch, an anti-porn Christian group thatāunlike other anti-porn Christian groupsāconverts members through love and acceptance rather than fear-mongering and shame. He was the cool anti-porn crusaderāyoung, hip, attractive, and onlineāand he launched XXXchurch at an annual porn industry convention in Las Vegas, where he tried to entice those in the industry into leaving it. He had Bibles made that said, āJesus loves porn stars.ā
This effort didnāt win him many friends in either the porn industry or the church, but nearly two decades years later, heās still at it. Today, XXXchurch is a nonprofit, an online resource, and a business: They sell workshops, books, and apps to help people battling porn and sex āaddiction.ā (Itās important to note that these so-called addictions are not recognized by the medical or psychological establishments and, according to most sex researchers, have no basis in science.)
Grossā new endeavor is about something nearly as taboo in Christianity as sex: weed, and this time, heās going against the churchās teachings. Heās not a prohibitionist; heās a consumer, and on April 20, 2019, he launched Christian Cannabis, a website that aims to reduce the stigma surrounding weed in the Christian community. He also sells shit: THC mints, topicals for both āemotional and spiritual pain,ā and vape pens with names like Peace, Persevere, and Praise. He says the business was an afterthought. What he really wants to do is spark a conversationāand maybe a movement.
āI knew this would cause some controversy, which is probably why I waited so long to do it,ā Gross told me in an interview. A lifelong Christian, Gross didnāt try weed until he was 37. He was having chronic headaches that sent him to the ER, and during this period, he happened to watch the infamous 2013 CNN special in which host and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta detailed why heād changed his mind about weed.
āThe special ended with the story of a five-year-old girl from Colorado,ā Gross wrote in a mass email to his friends and family in which he came out as a cannabis user. āShe was dying until her parents looked into medical marijuana, extracted into a liquid form, that ended up saving her life. Her 300-plus seizures a week had been [reduced]āto one. Plus, she was now able to talk. Best of all, it seemed like the side effects were mild, especially when compared to the crazy stuff Iād been reading about these other pills available at my local pharmacy.ā The next day, he applied for his medical cannabis license.
Gross didnāt exactly turn into a pothead or anything like that. He prefers small dosesāfive-milligram mints are perfect for himāand he only imbibes a few times a week. But heās had some transformative experiences, in which he felt that God was really speaking to him, under the influence of weed. āIād been taught all these demonized things about weed,ā he told me, āand I realized it was not like what Iād been told.ā
The feedback on Christian Cannabis hasnāt all been positive. Gross has had members of his church community come out to him as closet weed users, but heās also had people say heās having a mid-life crisis and needs to repent. Heās lost friends over it. But, he told me, heās always been more of a rule breaker than a rule follower, and this isnāt the first time heās butted up against Christian dogma. At the strict Christian high school he attended in Sacramento, he says, āI would have to bring in my four secular tapes and turn them in for one Christian tape. We had a rock music seminar that said if you play AC/DC backward, you hear Satanic messages. It was a lot of brainwashing.ā
Still, something was bugging me during our conversation. If Gross had this eye-opening experience about weed, and if heās already aware that some of what the church preaches is bullshit, why the objection to pornography? There are obvious ethical concerns about how porn is madeāand plenty of secular feminists will argue that itās inherently exploitativeābut troves of research tell us that itās not porn thatās the problem for most people. The problem is the shame that comes along with it. So if the church was wrong about weed, is it not possible that theyāre wrong about porn, too?
The problem, of course, comes from the church. āI grew up like the Jonas Brothers,ā Gross said. āYou took a vow of virginity. I never had sex until I got married, and I learned that standard from the churchās perspective.ā He can point to Biblical scripture that condemns looking at women with lust, but, he adds, there are less spiritual reasons he opposes porn too. āIām finding more and more people who are let down by real sexual experiences because it doesnāt match up [to porn],ā he says. āSo we try to help people figure out why they are looking at this. Either they are numbing something or avoiding something or running from something. For me, itās less about championing against porn and more trying to dig into why people are medicating with this.ā
The same, obviously, could be said about weed, but while Craig Gross has already had his come-to-Jesus momentāhis realization that everything heād been taught about cannabis by the church was wrongāheās still deeply immersed in the narrative that porn is inherently bad. Perhaps someday, heāll toss off that dogma too, but for now, challenging the old church line on weed is radical in itself. āGod made plants on the third day,ā Gross told me, āAnd I think he did that for us.ā