The speed with which medical companies—Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZenica, and Johnson & Johnson—produced anti-COVID “vaccines” within one year of the COVID virus’s arrival in the United States of America is remarkable. No matter how energetically the Biden-Harris administration endeavors to suppress the truth and receive credit for producing these “vaccines,” reasonable people acknowledge that President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed expedited an early, if not hasty Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer and Moderna “vaccines” December 11 and December 18, 2020, respectively. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine received EUA on February 27, 2021. Under Emergency Use Authorization the Food and Drug Administration authorizes a product for public use based upon the best available evidence without requiring the normal wait time for all the evidence that is necessary for FDA clearance for public use.
Dr. Tal Zaks, Chief Medical Officer of Moderna, explains why the Moderna injection has nothing to do with the actual virus itself. In fact, the three leading anti-COVID injections—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZenica—are not true vaccines because they are not developed from the COVID virus. Rather, they are Messenger RNA injections because they insert “information” into the human body. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain:
The mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the immune cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them.Next, the cell displays the protein piece on its surface. Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19.
At the end of the process, our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection. The benefit of mRNA vaccines, like all vaccines, is those vaccinated gain this protection without ever having to risk the serious consequences of getting sick with COVID-19.
That none of the anti-COVID “vaccines” have been approved for public use other than the Emergency Use Authorization, which means that all three are still experimental, prompts many, including frontline healthcare workers, to resist receiving any of the so-called vaccines. In fact, reticence tends to increase the more one investigates how the “vaccines” function, the numerous reported side-effects, the many reported deaths or miscarriages or disabling effects, and the hasty dismissal, censuring, and censoring of adverse events following the reception of the various “vaccines.” (The CDC maintains a page where medical personnel may submit reports of adverse effects [VAERS]).
Given the experimental nature of all the anti-COVID “vaccines,” it is reasonable and understandable that many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, either resist or refuse to receive an injection. Lamentably, major voices among Evangelicals not only advocate strongly for Christians to receive a “vaccine,” but also insist that to resist is either or both foolish and unloving. Thus, I closed my last blog entry by asking whether outspoken Evangelicals such as Curtis Chang, David French, and Russell Moore and many others are correct to insist that Christian love obligates us to receive a COVID-19 vaccine? After a whole year of being subjected to wildly conflicting orders, advice, and actions from those who are reputed to be the followers of science, what are we to do? Does Christian love obligate us to obey those who keep telling us that they are following “the science,” but at the same time they engage in blatant contradictions, push vaccines that have been not only rushed to the market but are also an unconventional kind of vaccine developed not from actual samples of the virus itself but around a piece of the encoded information necessary for the human body to recognize it?
None of those who advocate for Christians to receive a “vaccine,” whose arguments I have read or listened to, have even broached the freedom of the Christian’s conscience. An important aspect of Christian liberty consists in our conscientious free use of or abstinence from things that are indifferent. Things indifferent are things that in themselves are not sinful. Nothing in all of God’s creation is evil in itself. This includes substances that we ingest, whether food or drink (Romans 14:2-3, 6, 14, 17, 21; 1 Corinthians 8:8; 10:25-26). It also includes such matters as observance of certain days (Romans 14:5-6) and whether to marry or to remain celibate (1 Corinthians 7:28). Likewise, the Christian’s conscience is free with reference to receiving medicines whether ingested or injected. What about the wearing of face masks and receiving anti-COVID “vaccines”? Are we to yield to fellow Evangelicals who strongly insist that Christian love obligates us not only to wear face masks but also to receive “vaccines”?
What does the Lord Jesus Christ require of us concerning these things that are indifferent? What is our duty as Christians concerning things that are not inherently sinful? Are we obliged to wear masks or not to wear masks? Does Christian love compel us to yield and receive either a Messenger RNA injection or the biological vaccine by Johnson & Johnson? No! We Christians must refuse to allow either science, which is only a human discipline or field of study, or scientists ever to bind our consciences. Both experience and scientific research may provide plausible reasons for abstaining from or for submitting to certain actions or things, but neither can ever of themselves bind the conscience of a Christian.
Furthermore, people who tell us “follow the science” as an authority over our consciences and behavior invariably do so as if science were a kind of canon, a standard, an authority. Science, however, is a human construct, a method of research, a field of study just like other disciplines. As an educated and long-practiced theologian, I would not be so foolish as to tell others, “Follow the theology.” People would justifiably wonder, “Whose theology?” The same is true of science. “Whose science do the so-called experts want us to follow?” Well, of course, they insist that we follow their science. But scientists regularly contradict one another’s research conclusions. This is all the more disturbing when the Food and Drug Administration awards only Emergency Use Authorization for “vaccines” that are still in their experimental stages, albeit released for public use, rendering millions of people subjects of an experiment. When daily reports indicate that the “vaccines” may result in a variety of adverse effects ranging from mild and passing symptoms to death, reasonable people are right to pause, to question, and to resist the bureaucratic command, “Follow the science” issued by politicians and medical officials whose continued lucrative employment depends upon their advocating the accepted science du jour. Oh, and the drug companies whose “vaccines” have received the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization will not be held liable for adverse effects. The United States government has granted Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson immunity from liability for any unintentional effects from their “vaccines,” including death. Consequently, many who voted for President Trump on November 3, 2020, the President whose savvy coordinated Operation Warp Speed, resist receiving any of the three “vaccines” given EUA by the FDA, which accounts for his recent appeal to his supporters to receive a “vaccine.”
So, what should Christians do? Are we obligated by love, as many insist, to receive one of the “vaccine” treatments? Part 3 of this blog series will offer a biblically based response to these questions and more when I develop the Scripture’s instruction concerning the freedom of the Christian. In the meantime, I encourage you to read two passages from Paul’s letters: Romans 14:1-15:7 and 1 Corinthians 8:1-11:1.