Get Jabbed!

 

I’m a little concerned by media reports, and by what I’m hearing firsthand from some friends of mine in the medical field that there are quite a number of folks who identify themselves as Christians who are refusing for one reason or another to get their COVID-19 shots, or jabs as the Brits say. So, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around their thinking.

From what I can tell this vaccine hesitancy amongst Christians boils down to a few different lines of thinking that I’d like to take on from a Biblical perspective. The first, and maybe least common, motivation stems from a reading of the book of Revelation. For these folks the vaccine is equated with the mark of the beast, who is opposed to Christ and at the head of a worldwide anti-Christian cabal. Seeing 666 as an anagram in which numbers stand for letters, the beast has been identified by various interpreters as the emperor Nero or as a future evil doer. Understandably Christians would want nothing to do with such a character.

But the COVID-19 vaccine fails the smell test as the mark of the beast. First the mark of the beast in Revelation 13 is a mark of loyalty, it’s not a medical procedure. The mark of the beast can best be understood as not a physical thing at all but a spiritual thing, a condition of the heart. Revelation also makes note of the seal of the Lamb – something we also understand as a condition of the heart. Revelation is all about the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God in Christ over the kingdom of evil and darkness. Christians affirm that the real work has already been done on the cross – proclaimed by the empty tomb. If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are sealed by him! You’re not worshipping a manifestation of evil by getting a vaccine. In fact, I would suggest just the opposite, you are a living witness of the gospel of grace and hope manifest in Christ.

From a public health perspective, the more members of a community that have immunity from a virus, the less likely it is that the virus will spread. In the case of COVID-19 the best way to gain immunity is to be vaccinated with one of the now widely available and well-studied two shot vaccines. Even having had COVID-19 doesn’t guarantee immunity. In other words, once you are vaccinated, you’re not going to spread the disease to your neighbor! How better to show them love? Sure, it’s scary, stepping out and loving your neighbor is often scary, but that’s what Jesus calls us to do.

The second argument I hear begins with the question, “Why would I get this vaccine? God gave me an immune system for a reason!” I’m a pastor but I’m also a science teacher. Basically, my understanding is that by using a weakened viral strain or a portion of a viral RNA or DNA strand, vaccines prepare your own immune system (the one God gave you) to fight a virus that it hasn’t yet come in contact with. It’s like training to run the race or fight the good fight. The Apostle Paul uses these analogies in the New Testament with regards to living out our spiritual callings. The ultimate goal of course is to use the gifts we’ve been given, spiritual, intellectual, physical, etc., to the best of our abilities to love God, love our neighbors, and share the hope that we have within us of new life in Christ. Paul says this all takes training! There are sure to be difficulties and struggles along the way as there were for Paul, but Paul wrote, “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Since the pandemic began more than a year ago, I’ve frequently heard people use the expression, “you can’t live your life in fear.” I agree, but it seems that fear is a third reason a number of Christians aren’t lined up to get vaccinated – fear of blood clots or a vaccine reaction. Yeah, these are scary possibilities. For me I think it’s important to weigh the fear I might have of vaccine complications against the other, even scarier possibility of dying as my lungs fill with fluid in a COVID-19 ward at St. Luke’s without my wife or kids near me, the possibility that my infection might have led to the infection of several others I love, and that I’ve perpetuated and extended this pandemic. Some people get COVID- 19 and they fare pretty well, but others don’t, and there’s no telling which you might be. Meanwhile the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been shown to be really, really safe – way safer than the polio vaccines your parents (or grandparents) might have gotten as kids! We’re never promised that there will be nothing in this world to fear – but Jesus says get on with it, “I’ve overcome the world.”

Finally, I suspect that a few Christians are vaccine hesitant because they just don’t like being told what to do. It feels like an affront to their ideal of independence and freedom. Maybe they’re also concerned about betraying their circle of like-minded friends and having given in to the things of this world. Remember, though, that Jesus didn’t teach that the Christian walk was about loyalty to anyone except him and the things of this world he was concerned about weren’t things like vaccines. They were the deceitfulness of wealth, the desire for possessions, and the like.

Is this pressure to get a vaccine an unprecedented invasion of our freedom? I don’t think so. I set this moment against my own family history. My grandmother was diagnosed with Tuberculosis when my father and uncles were in high school in the 1950’s. Grandma Lois didn’t have much of a choice, except which TB hospital she wanted to be confined to for 16 months. My grandfather, father and uncles didn’t either. Their house was quarantined, they could only visit Grandma Lois through a window for more than a year, they had to get chest x-rays, take Mantoux tests and were monitored for some time afterwards. Why? To protect their neighbors from getting the disease. They got through it and were stronger for it. That was the 1950’s. We can go back to the era of the Spanish Flu, or further back, to find more examples in American history. Like shouting “Fire” in a movie hall, we’ve been struggling with questions of individual freedoms versus the public good since the founding of the nation.

It all reminds me of hiking portage trails in the BWCA as a canoe guide. Sometimes I’d come to a fork in the trail and I’d have to decide which way to go. I’d know I’d chosen the right path when I could see the blue of the lake through the trees. It would be only a few more moments swatting mosquitoes under my aluminum awning before I’d be out on the water again with the wind at my back. In this case it’s like there’s a trail, the unvaccinated trail, going deep into the forest. It’s strewn with more than a half a million lives cut short. Think on that for a minute. Going in another direction is the vaccinated trail. It has a few casualties as well, but you can count them on one hand. Best of all, at the end of the vaccinated trail you can see the lake through the trees.

If you are holding out from getting vaccinated, you are probably finding other voices on social media that are telling you what you want to hear. But I want to encourage you as someone who trusts Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, to live fearlessly, love generously, choose the path that leads to the wind on your back, and get vaccinated. If you prefer, get jabbed! It’s the right thing to do. Daren Blanck is the Pastor of Zoar Church in Tofte, MN, a Lutheran Congregation in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Pastor Daren holds a BS in Environmental Science from Bemidji State, a MS in Education from UW-Superior, and recently completed his MA in Pastoral Theology from Kingswood University in New Brunswick. In addition he studied theatre in the UK and trained for ministry through the LCMC’s Beyond the River Academy. He’s also a part-time teacher in Silver Bay.