Their testimony is that they don’t know? Better safe than sorry would be the response then, I suppose. I’m not saying it to be combative, but rather to say “let’s ensure that any vaccine is free and clear” — especially in this matter.
Eventually most vaccines for any virus will be made using them, and since it’s acceptable to get one if they’re all made using the babies, there will be no spine to say no. The bishop should have just said NO! Forgive me, this topic grieves me greatly as I know it does you brothers too.
I’m working on a piece on this topic (it’s not ready for public presentation yet). But I think there may be a solution in 1 Corinthians 10 for how Christians think about abortion tainted vaccines. Given all the evil, abuse, and immorality surrounding pagan worship practices in Corinth, it is striking that Paul still allows Christians to eat meat downstream from that pagan worship system.
I think there are very practical ramifications for not just how we think about abortion tainted vaccines, but also how we view our brothers with whom we have disagreements on this topic.
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My point wasn’t that we’re uncertain of the provenance of HEK 293, but that neither of the two principal researchers in Holland where it had its origin have said it was an elective abortion. Abortion was illegal in Holland at the time and the researchers did not say the abortion was elective as opposed to spontaneous. This cell line has been used everywhere for everything ever since, including food products. For Christians to bind others’ consciences stating directly that this is from an elective abortion is deception.
If Christians want to say Covid is a farce and masks are idolatry and vaccines are evil, let them make their case and choose their churches accordingly, if they wish. But when they say the reason they oppose vaccines is the HEK 293 cell line is from a baby killed by his mother, they lie. We don’t assume the worst about everyone but ourselves. Love,
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This video series (which I’ve shared earlier) addresses the science and ethics of fetal cell research. The host, Dr. Robert Carter, is a Biblical creationist whose bona fides can hardly be questioned on science or commitment to being pro-life. Of course there can be sincere disagreements with his application of biblical principles, but I feel there is a general lack of appreciation for the complexities surrounding this topic which are made more accessible by this series.
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I’m new to this and so have research to do, but it seems from what you’ve said that it would be more accurate to say that it is unknown whether it was. In which case everyone must make his own decision on his comfort level with that ambiguity.
Here is the overview of the historical background of HEK 293. In regards to the moral dilemma, the more relevant question is how many degrees of separation from evil are required to live righteously. Do you do business with companies that donate to Planned Parenthood? Do you know which companies donate? Do you know which companies donate indirectly by giving to charities that support Planned Parenthood? If you can’t answer these questions confidently then I feel HEK 293 is of relatively low concern. If you just want an answer about HEK 293 then I suggest you watch from here where Dr. Carter goes over a list of things tested with HEK 293. They include most medicine, food additives, clothing, fire retardants, dyes, and vaccines. In other words, we are all already tainted by HEK 293. I say that not to trivialize or relativize the issue but to say that the ultimate problem is sin. If we are called and qualified we should look for alternatives to existing and future uses of fetal cell lines. If we are not experts, I agree with @tbbayly that we should refrain from binding others’ consciences. @aaron.prelock pointed to the answer in 1 Corithians 10 and I look forward to reading his piece.
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Perhaps. Maybe we’ve become too comfortable with it. I need some time to look into this.
I don’t have a lot of knowledge of the situation so it may not correlate perfectly, but the question that keeps coming to my mind whenever this subject is discussed is: Would you reject a needed kidney because the donor had been a murder victim?
If the person offering me the kidney was the murderer, yes?
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Of course you wouldn’t. But that isn’t the case with the vaccine is it?
I’ll only chime in briefly on this, as I have written at greater length on the topic elsewhere.
People tend to one to focus on the question of, “did this vaccine come from such and such strain that came from an aborted fetus.” As I’ve argued elsewhere, that question barely scratches the surface.
The more I’ve learned about vaccination development in general, the more I’ve concluded that the research and development of vaccines – regardless of what “cell lines” are connected to the final product – has been largely predicated upon the use of aborted fetal tissue. A good demonstration of this is a video that can be found floating around online of Dr. Stanley Plotkins testifying in a court case where he is interviewed at length concerning development work he has done overtime for various prominent vaccines that utilized tissue from dozens of aborted fetuses. It was an eye-opening testimony for me.
I continue to conclude that Christians tend to think too shallowly about this topic – on either side. I am not against the concept of vaccination. But if the only way we can develop vaccines is at the expense of the unborn and their precious, pure, untainted little flesh for our petri dishes, then I can’t find it in my conscience to want anything to do with it.
Perhaps staunchly pro-vaccine Christians could direct some of their energies toward insisting upon ethics in the medical industry that align with their pro-life convictions, rather than spending all of their energies lecturing their non-vaccinating brethren concerning their civil duty? Food for thought, maybe.
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Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about, taken from this release: http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/docs/vaccine/VaccineDevelopment_FetalCellLines.pdf
“Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were found to be ethically uncontroversial by the pro-life policy organization the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Further, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, a committee within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has stated: “neither Pfizer nor Moderna used an abortion-derived cell line in the development or production of the vaccine.”…
Sounds great, right? No problem here. But read on…
“However, such a cell line was used to test the efficacy of both vaccines. Thus, while neither vaccine is completely free from any use of abortion-derived cell lines, in these two cases the use is very remote from the initial evil of the abortion…”
The author goes on to conclude that it’s ethically fine, because the connection with abortion is not direct.
I’m not buying it.
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Dear Tim,
When you’ve said it’s more complicated I have heard you saying that these ethical issues are smaller and matter less than engineerish people are making them. But I wonder if what you have actually been saying has nothing to do with the importance of the issues but rather that the scope of the problem goes far beyond what we’re currently looking at, so that a solution that avoids a vaccine for instance but ignores all the other ways fetal tissue and cell lines may be used to produce the lives we live (for a hypothetical that maybe isn’t hypothetical) misses the heart of the issue and is in danger of making hypocrites of us, doing relatively small things to be able to see ourselves as clean while maintaining a blindness to all the ways we’re stained.
Love,
Dear Daniel, I’ve never implied the slaughter of men matters less. Only more. The slaughters of abortion, organ-harvesting, infanticide, euthanasia, and “contraceptives” are each as serious as death.
What I’ve worked to oppose during Covid is trivializing the Christian conscience along political lines whose center is merely resentiment. Nothing makes this more obvious than the full shift of attention from any of the above horrendous evils to government overreach through masks and vaccines.
Then, concerning vaccines, I’ve also tried to oppose those arguing as if opposing HEK 293 is “pro-life,” refusing to admit the difference between hiring someone to murder your child and using skin lotion, food, or a vaccine that had some connection to a cell line originating from a baby whom no one involved in the origin of that cell line has ever testified came from an elective abortion.
Many Christians are really angry today and lashing out at the closest authority using every means at their disposal. Among belligerators there is no slightest hint of honoring the king. No slightest hint. This is direct rebellion against God’s command. Trivializing the Christian conscience and Christian persecution and martyrdom as I believe is happening now leaves us and our children less prepared for the growing persecution that is truly a matter of God’s Word. I wonder if belligerators have read the story of the boy who cried “Wolf?” But of course, they would respond (as one just did to me on social media) that masks and vaccines are the equivalents of Ceasar’s command to Christians to deny Jesus’ lordship by repeating, “Ceasar is Lord.”
Right…
I’m not against Christians denying the serious threat of Covid. I’m not against Christians choosing between authorities and refusing vaccines. If it comes to it, I’m not against Christians going to jail and losing their job over masks and vaccines. I’m not against other Christians arguing in courts and online that people should not have to wear masks or get vaccinated. If Christians want to spend three years arguing stats and screaming at public authorities abt Covid, I say let them. Knock their socks off, but it’s not for me because it’s nowhere near the boundaries of when Christian conscience should submit to God rather than man.
In fact, we’ve already been way past that line, but it’s at a place where Christians aren’t wanting to belligerate, I’m guessing partly because it’s only words.
Thing is, words are what the early Christians died over. “Ceasar is Lord.” The Gospel is dependent upon preaching using words, and as belligerators harp against masks, I try to resurrect the Christian testimony concerning the sins Scripture says will bar us from the kingdom of God and social media shut that witness down and mask-belligerators shrug, saying among themselves, “See, he should be refusing to wear masks and get the vaccine. That’s were the real action is.”
Nobody watching the past year and a half can fail to see that Christians are more concerned about bodies than the words of God and religious freedom to speak and preach them, testifying through them to our most holy Faith.
Fetal cell lines clearly originating in elective abortions from decades ago are horrendous and we ought to protest this scientific participation in genocide. But our protest against the direct current killings of our church’s children through ECPs, IUDs, the Pill, and all the other forms of abortifacient birth control methods should be more constant and vociferous.
But of course, precious few men are preaching or writing or arguing over these murders so painfully clear and so bloody prevalent within our own families and churches. We’re too busy having hissy fits over masks and endlessly debating vaccine stats.
I’m confident some here reading this will acknowledge this is more than a tell in our circles today. Others will deny it, saying they themselves are both/and, but precious few of the belligerators can make that claim as evidenced by this post being now twelve years old and unprecedented among them. Love,
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Perhaps we run in different circles but the people I know fighting the tyranny of the present are the only ones I know besides you that are also willing to speak to the birth control pill, sodomy, feminism, and the other battles facing the church today.
My concern is that by belittling the fight against masks and mandated vaccines, you are actually doing what you are concerned that the anti maskers are doing. That is by taking the wind out of our sails now that it is a lesser fight, those sails won’t stand against the harder winds to come.
It seems to me that it would be better to make a stand against lesser tyranny rather than to allow them to continue to strengthen until the only thing left is much harder to fight. And I agree that the time to fight was way before now. But we are here and can’t go back to the past. Rather we need to make do with what we got. We have a bunch of men who are sick with the weak Evangelical cheap grace. The masks were just the tipping point for many of them. I’ll grant you it’s a stupid tipping point but still it’s what has moved many men to leave behind churches that don’t engage in preaching to the sins of their people or of our culture.
Almost every person we have dealt with who have come our way because of masks, it was not the only issue but rather a long train of issues. When they have come, they have come with issues in their own lives to be confronted but they have been open to being confronted because that is what they were in part looking for.
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No, we run in the same circles and most of the belligerators have been silent about abortifacients. In fact, I’ve talked to their top dog abt them and had to work hard to keep him from continuing to say the Pill is fine. We’re not talking about what men in private may admit, but what they write abt publicly and preach and teach in their own churches, for starters.
Find me anything even remotely close to what I wrote twelve years ago from anyone other than Randy Alcorn on what you simply call “the birth control pill.” Maybe the guys down in Arizona or New Mexico have said something about it, but your “present tyranny” is nowhere among no one understood to be the murder of unborn children by Christians claiming to be pro-life.
It’s masks, now morphing into vaccines. Plain and simple, it’s all about Covid. Love,
If it’s nowhere near the boundaries of when Christian conscience should submit to God rather than man, then we shouldn’t be doing it, right? We shouldn’t be arguing about masks or vaccines in court. After all, what they’re doing is legal, so what’s the use?
Christians should be committed to truth, which includes scientific truth. We should not spread a false report. Previous articles on Warhorn have opposed scientific misinformation about Covid. I don’t see a way to recover proper reverence for authority among Christians unless you are willing to counter the rampant conspiracism and misinformation about the virus itself.
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Good point Ben but I’m not sure the truth is on the side of masks and forced vaccines. Read an article today from the Drudge Report that vaccines are now down to 45% effective. Personally I know people who have covid right now that were fully vaccinated and wore masks.
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