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"When an entire segment of the population is already feeling persecuted, silenced, and having its fears marginalized, it’s no wonder that their knee-jerk response will be one of heel-digging and wagon-circling, especially among many Evangelical Christians who equate resistance to persecution with faith."

This is a feature for the anti-vaxxers, not a bug. It allows them to double-down on an initially dubious claim (however that claim sprouted) and instead of using the challenge from folks telling to Get the Shot to assess the pros/cons of getting vaccinated using their pre-COVID stances on shots and immunizations, they use people pressuring them to get the shot to support the belief that they enjoy some form of Gnostic knowledge that they have the Secret Truth that makes them Special. Given that we seem to be running low on Us VS Them tribal cultural conflicts, it allows them to slot in their medical ignorance into that familiar schema so that they can feel the thrill of the fight once more.

"Any Christian who listens to another—a preacher, teacher, or even a trusted friend—tell them not to accept the vaccine, and does not check with the Lord for themselves, is being foolish. The question is actually a test of one’s life in faith—as one cannot be saved by another’s faith, one also cannot put blind faith in another’s message from God applicable to one’s own very life and soul."

How about telling the Christian to ask their Doctor about getting the shot instead of relying on the testimony of their preacher, teacher, trusted friend, or you yourself? Are Christians bold enough to assume that your God does not use the medical profession as a way of getting the word out to His flock? Or that the Hand of God doesn't work through the efforts of the scientists and researchers who produced the vaccine in record time? What is it that leads the vocal Evangelical community to not acknowledge the tools that we have to fight the pandemic as a gift or miracle?

"They will get COVID-19 or be spared; they will live or die, but we as Christians are to love them all as God loves them. As for the living and the dead, let God sort them out."

The Biblical God was never shy of showing tough love with consequences when his people failed to listen to him. I'm not a believer, but I'm having a hard time seeing this as being that dissimilar to the story of the Israelites who doubted God's generosity as they were freed from bondage in Egypt, refused to enter Canaan, and were left to wander in the wilderness for four decades.

In the secular world, Love is wanting what's best for someone, and sometime you express that with kindness and encouragement, and sometimes a harder approach must be used. I'm somewhere in the middle with some of my family members, because the folks who are anti-vaxxers have young children that will need their father and mother to grow into the wonderful people they can become. If that means that if I have to bring up to my brother that he's playing with fire and risking leaving his sons fatherless, I'm going to bring that point up. Not to shame him or to judge him, but to take the risk of his sons who will need their Daddy off the table as much as I can.

"Now in the light of a massive wave of Delta COVID-19 infections, as the reality of their precarious decision is finally weighing upon many refuseniks, those who once tried to reason with them are frustrated and bitter in their reproach. It reminds me of Martin Luther’s later writing on Jews, after many years of trying to befriend the Jewish community, then being rebuffed. Ghoulish pronouncements and I-told-you-so’s, even among many Christians, will not heal the breach in trust."

I don't know how it is in your neck of the woods, but in the areas where I have lived and live now, there were religious sects (Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses, primarily) who did a decent job self-isolating themselves from the rest of us on the basis of their religious beliefs with respect to medicine. They were few enough in number that their lack of faith in modern medicine that they were tolerated as the local cranks. To the extent that the anti-vax movement becomes associated with your churches and congregations, the same thing will happen to those believers.

In an era when Christian churches are withering on the vine, a silver lining of this pandemic cloud was that it offered an opportunity for Christians to step up and lead proudly with their Pro-Life philosophy and mobilize to become the point of the spear in getting society healed and vaccinated. It was an opportunity to get out in to communities that had not heard your Word for quite a while and to show your beliefs in action, SHOWING, not TELLING, what your faith is all about. Instead, the opposite happened, they focused inward instead of outward, and we're worrying more about protecting believers' feelings than making those communities that those believers are embedded within better and using that as a recruiting tool to grow the flock.

Now, I understand that you think that the hard line is counterproductive here, and that's probably true for the remaining hold-outs that remain members of your spiritual circle. It's difficult convincing a Gnostic that they don't actually hold the secrets of the Universe, and I don't envy your position trying to convince them otherwise, or watching enough of them die and seeing if that will be persuasive. However, by only focusing on being nice to members of your own tribe, you're missing that in an era when your tribe should be growing and getting stronger, it's only accelerating its own journey into irrelevance.

Anyhoo, this is probably more words than is merited (or appreciated) by someone from the outside looking in. It's just difficult to watch people punch themselves in the face repeatedly, and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is going on.

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Aug 30, 2021Liked by Chris J. Karr

There is no accounting for what individuals believe and the action they take based on those beliefs. I personally think that some people will suffer ill effects from the vaccine. As an older person I decided that risk is very low compared to the benefits of being vaccinated.

I pay little attention to anti-vaxxers who claim the vaccine is all bad. The people who believe them are weak-minded and can't think for themselves. Ranting against them does no good and rational argument doesn't change their minds. We are not going to isolate them in colonies or institutions like once was done with lepers and TB patients. We are not going to strap them down and administer vaccines. We can't add oral vaccines to the water supply like we did with fluoride over the objection of millions. I wish we could. My son is 55 and has never had a cavity.

Unfortunately for people who have immune system deficiencies, they will have to deal with it on their own. Those allergic to peanuts and shellfish have similar problems but generally do not have to avoid other people. However, one girl did die in 2005 after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter snack. The commenters on this page have done all they can to help once they were vaccinated and tried to convince friends and relatives to do the same.

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So many excuses for why your religion is a mass of selfish deluded nut jobs. Their trust isn't being broken by the world its being broken by the people they have decided to trust who have been lying to them for the better part of their whole life. Stop blaming everyone else but yourselves.

Those in my community, the transplant survivors I talk to who have had to avoid returning to even a shadow of normal because of christian selfishness are tired of the excuses. They have abandoned churches because they actively spit at wearing a mask for our safety. They refuse to even listen or take into account our points of view.

We're done.

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