He’s concern is not specifically for mRNA vaccine technology, which really is a cool bit of scientific engineering. His concern is specifically for these particular mRNA vaccines because they don’t all seem to stay in the arm muscle where they are injected but have been shown to migrate around the body to other tissues, where their cytopathic tendencies can cause significant problems.
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Ben, in your experience, do men in the position of saviors tend to back down in the face of criticism or double-down in the face of criticism?
Here in November of 2020, we have enormous quantities of evidence that the vaccines do not do all of what we were told they do (reduce transmission, reduce infections, reduce severity, reduce deaths), and that what they do do, they do at a much higher risk level than we were led to believe.
“Somebody” has noticed, but the somebodies who notice are consistently un-personed by the authorities, who are in the midst of doubling down on vaccines. Perhaps the somebodies are all wrong and vaccines are the way out of this. But I personally wouldn’t bet a lot on the modern-day Lysenkos. There is so much smoke on both vaccine efficacy and on vaccine safety, I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that there is no fire underneath.
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I think one reason we keep going around in circles is that we aren’t putting decisions in the right categories. Imagine a scenario in which a commanding officer orders a subordinate officer to attack a particular enemy position. The subordinate officer is convinced that the attack will fail at great loss of life and that his commander is giving the order out of incompetence or for the purpose of obscuring other screw-ups. In light of the sixth commandment, it may be that the right thing to do is for the subordinate officer to refuse the order and accept the consequences, but that’s not a matter of conscientious objection. Even though the sixth commandment is involved, the decision is driven by prudence, not religious freedom. The same is true for vaccine mandates – it’s a matter to be argued on the basis of prudence, not religious freedom.
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And by “these particular vaccines” you mean the COVID19 vaccines. I also said that he still isn’t anti-vaccine for COVID19, but has been clearly opposed to mandates.
And as I’ve said, soldier’s bodies belong to the army. They are to a point expendable. But civilians are not soldiers and to make that correlation is precisely the kind of tyranny that people have been arguing about. When a government treats its populous as expendable when ordering this or that mandate, then that is the very definition of tyranny.
If you are arguing that the government may never mandate that citizens be vaccinated – even if it is proven 100% safe and saves 90% of the population from death in an epidemic – then make that argument from Scripture and the historic Reformed view.
If you are arguing instead that the government may not mandate a particular vaccine because it is untested and possibly dangerous, then you are arguing on the basis of prudence, not fundamental religious principle.
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Gather 'round children and let me tell you a tale. One day some people in China ate some bat soup…
Argh!! 
I value being able to read discussions like this thread taking place. It sometimes carries its own form of odd frustration. So many true things being said well by everyone and yet a pervasive confusion persists. It seems like it blankets the globe actually. Maybe not as much as it might appear initially, though. I have a freaky (and continuously increasing) optimism regarding these matters.
I know your statement doesn’t imply an acceptance as “normal” all of the societal degradation that was part of our pre-COVID world, it’s simply to convey a comparative description. 
“When will this current set of particularly disruptive issues be ‘solved’ and behind us?” I have to say that it won’t happen. Not if vaccines reach 91% of the population rather than 89% or 80% rather than 62% or on and on, world without end. I think that we’re looking at several decades through some of this stuff. It doesn’t go back to normal. Not until there’s very fundamental societal change for ill or good. Either result probably won’t resemble the world of 2019 in a whole lot of important ways. There’s a sense in which such statements are speculative but other senses in which they’re not at all. The intentions have been rather directly stated. We should prepare our hearts for perseverance and wisdom. Perhaps our Lord will work miracles of salvation. Maybe unfathomably destructive evil will sweep through. Possibly both. Something is clear in my own mind, though. Nothing about the present situation is even remotely “normal.”
It’s appropriate that you bring this up. Issues of the environment will be increasingly the claimed comprehensive basis for the further and very forceful implementation of changes to society. Viruses will get rolled in, too!
That’s not to avoid what your comment is communicating, btw. Either regarding risk or the history of the “green” movement. It’s amazing how much has been co-opted. The envisioned nightmare future would have the simultaneous endorsement of “big oil,” “big pharma,” Bayer/Monsanto, AND all the major environmentalist organizations, which is to say the ones that are funded/engineered by globalist money and think tanks. Also, the UN likes the idea. The only ones not on board are the majority of the human population everywhere. There will probably be some attempts to keep us in the dark regarding these things via manipulation or something, possibly regarding risk. 
These comments aren’t meant as off-topic for the thread, just to say that sometimes the back-and-forth in a thread like this can give the appearance of people talking past one another. I’ve read very little in it that I’d disagree with. Also, you’re all wrong. 
Thanks, Pastor Aaron, for your post with these comments. As a means of bringing my own thoughts closer to the original topic, I might ask what sorts of responses you would think best offered to someone who agrees in principle with what you argue in these lines but views the COVID vaccination and mandate situation as components to a much larger, more complex and illicit attempt to fundamentally take over and alter all of human society in extremely evil and ungodly ways. I don’t believe it to be sin to submit to a vaccination mandate. I think it’s highly problematic if what those same mandates are a part of isn’t worked against in ways that possess Christian foresight. I doubt you’d disagree. But in the land of confusion, the devil really is in the details.
Regarding what answers could be given, “That’s just nuts,” has the feel of an insufficient response. I don’t, of course, mean to me personally but to the broader assessment of COVID-dom that’s in some way represented by the sorts of things I’ve brought up both above or elsewhere.
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I’ve been clear about the arguments I’m making. If you don’t understand them, ask. But don’t put words in my mouth. Both statements lack any substance of what I’ve said.
You lost me too then because I thought Joel did a good job summarizing both possibilities for what you have been been arguing for in this thread.
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The real problem with this discussion is how it has been framed as an issue or question of “religious exemption”. The reason why it’s a problem, is because it presupposes that a Christian’s only duties are to not do certain enumerated things. But that is not the sum of God’s law.
As they say the one who asks the questions frames the outcome of the argument. And you guys have been hammering on me long enough.
So let me frame a question that may illuminate the points I’m making. What are a Christian’s duties, or what is the church’s duties, in the face of a government that murders its own people, treating them more as chattel than neighbors or citizens?
Before you say this doesn’t apply to this situation, I challenge you to answer it. I’m thinking of chattel slave markets, Nazi concentration camps, and nuclear testing on American soldiers.
Is there no obligation? Must the church in general and Christians in particular just simply remain quiet, not permitted to speak, like a woman in one of Paul’s church plants.
Why is there any duty to say anything outside an abortion mill? Who’s religious liberties were violated there? I say that knowing the activism of this group in that area.
So please entertain my questions. What is a Christian or the Church to do in Nazi Germany, or slave trading South Carolina in the 1600’s, or as a family member of a soldier being ordered to March toward a nuclear blast in order to establish operational range, and this long after world war 2.
So what are the duties? And what may a Christian do as matter of conscience.
But this thread is responding to the growing trend of churches or groups offering religious exemption letters for their congregants as well as the growing number of Christians demanding religious exemption letters from their pastors. I don’t think anyone has said our duty as a Christian is only in what we don’t do.
Who has said this? As I mentioned above, many of us are speaking out about this. And publicly. I genuinely don’t understand why you’re still bringing this up as if no one is addressing it.
To answer your question, in the face of clear injustice it is right for Christians to oppose the injustice. We can’t say, as a church, that they must oppose it in each and every instance (cf Paul’s example in Philippi - Acts 16.16-18). But opposition is certainly permitted and is even commendable.
But the question is whether or not that opposition is an absolute moral duty binding on all Christians (or all Christians in a particular church) in the same way the command to sing/pray/hear sermons each Lord’s Day or not to murder or not to bear false witness or is. I assert the answer is ‘no.’ Thus that opposition cannot be equated with a religious freedom issue. It is not that there is no religious or theological component to our opposition. Far from it. But it’s a category mistake to confuse the two. Is taking the vaccine today equivalent to joining the Nazis? Is not opposing vaccine mandates as a church equivalent to silence in the face of the Holocaust? Were Christians in early-mid 19th century American South sinning if they did not oppose slavery? Were they sinning if they owned slaves? Was not owning slaves an absolute moral duty binding as a Christian in good standing in a local congregation? Philemon might find your response helpful.
You seem to want to make opposition to this vaccine a matter of religious observation, of religious necessity. Maybe not for all Christians, but certainly for yourself. I want to question that assumption. I, and many others here, assert it is a wisdom call (that is not to minimise it!), not a necessary moral duty. And comparing this vaccine with Nazi Germany, with southern slavery, or charging the mushroom is simply unhelpful. You insist on equating these things as if it’s perfectly clear that this is that. You are arguing from the assumption that this is that.
I reject both the basis of your argument (that this is indeed and unmistakably that) and the consequents of your argument (that opposition is a moral duty).
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You see it’s statements like this that seek to put words in my mouth. I have been absolutely clear and have said explicitly, it’s not opposition to the vaccine but the mandates.
If you can’t stop putting words in my mouth then I think there is no use continuing.
PS.
WLC question 135 says its a requirement to preserve the lives of others and to provide just defense in doing so.
WLC 136 “The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others“ provides only these three exceptions. “except in case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense”.
Furthermore the WLC 136 says the 6th commandment forbids “ the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life”.
These of course are generalizations, but you answer to me does not square with these duties and prohibitions. They’re not optional, they’re generally required and general prohibited. If you would want to make the argument that vaccine mandates that may put thousands life and limb in peril is an exception, well there are only three enumerated. Interested to see how you squeeze your optional instances in to those.
So a civil government (or any government for that matter) cannot mandate anything that carries any risk of harm or death? Joseph should have defied the authority and kept Mary at home because travel is dangerous especially when one is pregnant. Any father who sends his children to school violates the sixth commandment because buses can crash and cause death. There is no space as an authority instituted by God, to weigh the risks and benefits and make a decision on behalf of everyone under his authority? I was planning on having my son learn to mow the grass when he gets older but I guess I can’t now because it would violate the sixth commandment.
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We aren’t talking about any risk. For COVID19 vaccines the risks are exceptionally high for some and lower for others. How do you square with WLC on this regard?
And sir, your remarks toward me are uncharitable and nasty. You didn’t even engage with my argument.
It is your conclusion that the risks outweigh the benefits. You are not the God ordained authority though.
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My intent was not to be nasty. I was trying to point out a few scenarios where an authority must cause a subordinate to face a risk of harm or death. Your argument seemed to be that if there is a risk of death, than it is not something that could be made mandatory.
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Dear brother you are not arguing charitably. As soon as I address the mandates and the government’s legitimate authority to issue mandates you switch to the vaccine itself. When I address the vaccine you switch back to the mandates.
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No you are trying to argue that they are mutually exclusive issues. They are not.
If the magistrate in their incompetence passed a law, that said ‘due to the public health crisis of increasing rates of obesity in American every American is mandated to receive a one unit shot of insulin every day to insure lower blood sugars and prevent obesity, if you don’t present evidence of having received your shot then you would be refused service at all dining establishments. And due to increased demand and the need for equality no one will be permitted more than two units per day.”
If I oppose the mandate, that doesn’t make me anti-insulin. The numbers would absolutely matter, and the blood guilt incurred would be significant.
And it would not be a moral option to take something that could send you into a coma or kill you.
Medicine is dangerous. They are heavily regulated. And dispensed only upon prescription depending on a person’s medical needs. Vaccine mandates ignore this fact.
Hey everyone!
Thanks for participating in this thread. It has died down in the last couple of days, and so I figured it was a good time to close it down.
We’ve spent quite a lot of time talking about COVID and government mandates here on Sanityville. I think it’s time to give it a rest for a while.
We aren’t banning COVID discussions forever, but I think a break would do us all some good.
Here are two topics I’m excited about:
- We just started a podcast series about work and rest. Would love to hear your feedback about it.
- @hhtuck just posted about the Dorean Principle, and I think that could lead to some very fruitful discussion.
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