The Archbishop of Canterbury Fumbles
The top bishop of the Church of England, Justin Welby, has come out to say that not getting jabbed is unchristian. We’d like to thank him for providing a rich and timely example of everything we write about here. He’s proven that lack of fidelity to principles of the Word of God leads to chaos, loss of liberty, and eventually outright apostasy.
So, how is Bishop Welby wrong?
First, he betrays the sovereignty of God in his worldly reasoning. By claiming that getting vaccinated is a “moral” issue but then expressing hesitance over whether the rejection of the mRNA vaccine is sinful, he exposes a fracture in his theology. To wit, how is he judging morality if not through the Word of God? What is his standard if not Scripture? If morality isn’t what the Bible says it is, then there’s a moral law that exists outside of God. That means, necessarily, that God isn’t God. But if the Word of the Lord is true and authoritative, then what it says is sinful is immoral and that’s all there is to it. His reticence to answer the question fully isn’t intellectual humility, it’s a sign of the cancer of unbelief.
Second, he doesn’t quote Scripture to support his position. Granted, he does present Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbor as support for getting vaccinated. The problem is that he (or he lets the world do it for him) defines what love means, not God. “It’s not about me and my rights to choose, it’s about how I love my neighbor. Vaccination reduces my chances – doesn’t eliminate – but it reduces my chances of getting ill and reducing my chances of infecting others. It’s very simple, so I would say yes, to love one another as Jesus said, get vaccinated, get boosted,” he said.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it’s woefully unbiblical. To define the principle he uses (since he doesn’t) we assume, from his argument, that if something can reduce, though not eliminate, risk to others, then we owe it to them. Love and freedom are, according to this principle, if not antithetical, at least in great tension.
We struggle to be clear because sin always flourishes in vagueness. Sin is a context dropper. So, to be clear, we note his principle means that love is whatever a majority (or authority) says you owe others for their welfare. That is grossly unbiblical and we call on the Bishop to repent of this. It is God who defines the categories of life and chaos ensues, as well as strife and oppression, when man takes for himself that right. Thus, we call on him to repent of his worldliness and his slander of those who, like yours truly, disagree with him over the efficacy, necessity, and safety of mRNA vaccines.
To love your neighbor is defined by the Bible, not by man. Love means to do no wrong to a neighbor – especially and including slander, which is to malign their motives. Romans 13 defines love in the social/political context as the absence of violating the rights of your neighbor through criminal activity. To “do no wrong to a neighbor” is to not commit adultery, theft, and murder. It also means “to owe no one anything – except to love (Romans 13).” The demand that others get a vaccine they don’t trust in order to prove they love you is tyrannical and a violation of the Scriptural principle. If love means having to perform “positive” deeds as defined by man, rather than not performing “negative” deeds as per Romans 13, then we have a recipe for tyranny.
There is simply no Biblical mandate to enforce a quarantine upon healthy people, nor to force them to take into their body, which belongs only and ultimately to the Lord, a vaccine they don’t trust. The principle of loving one’s neighbor actually says the opposite. What the Bible does say is to test everything (Romans 12:1-2) and that each person must be convinced in his/her own mind on issues not directly spoken about in Scripture. Whatever isn’t of faith, is sin (Romans 14:23).
Third, he slanders his neighbor by claiming their reticence to the vaccine is immoral. No where does the Scripture give the civil magistrate the authority to mandate “positive” health actions. The biblical command is to punish criminals who use fraud or force against their neighbor. The civil magistrate is the self-defense arm of a private citizen who was overpowered or defrauded. Thus, it’s a wondrous common grace by God in this sinful world.
Only if I could have used force to defend myself from the crime in the first place can the magistrate, according to the principles of Scripture, lawfully initiate force against a citizen. What else could it mean for the magistrate to be “God’s avenger (Romans 13:4)?” When the Bishop argues that this isn’t an issue of freedom he implies that the use of government force (via regulation) is morally required as it is in a case of vengeance. That’s obviously nonsensical. My not getting vaccinated does not, repeat – does not – require your vengeance upon me. Therefore, according to Scripture, it’s none of your business. Equally, it’s none of mine if you want to get jabbed. Freedom, insofar as civil government is concerned, is hemmed in by God’s definition of the magistrate. He’s an avenger. He isn’t the Messiah. He punishes “positive” actions of evil, i.e., crime. The messiah-complex is alive and well in the Bishop’s mind because he doesn’t believe/understand the foundation principle of Romans 13:1.
Vaccine mandates and lockdowns are sinful abuses of government authority that violate the God-given freedom of our neighbors. So, what to do about “public health?” The Bible allows for a quarantine of the sick. That’s it. It provides no governmental/vengeance power in the name of public health past that. To claim that it does is to throw the entire authority structure of Scripture to the wind. Modern leftists/statists, animated by the same foundational principle, continue to decry the fact that we can’t all get along. That’s like Skut Farkus griping that Ralphie hit him. We can’t get along because they keep bossing everyone around. They don’t believe in God because they believe they get to play Him through the state.
So what of public health? It’s private, not public. Don’t let the world define the terms. The command is clear: where the Bible has not spoken directly, we are left with our conscience. To force someone to go against their conscience is evil. To claim that a neighbor’s right to decide for themselves what is faithful (in areas not directly spoken of in Scripture) is also evil. No doctor has authority over a single person so, therefore, he can’t have authority over all people. To argue otherwise is to embrace medical-fascism. What’s next, fat police? Obesity causes more health problems than COVID (and still is the primary consideration in who gets very sick from COVID, by the way).
Fourth, his position is unloving in that he doesn’t address the valid and reasonable concerns of those who disagree with him. This is the case with all who malign vaccine hesitant people. To claim that mRNA is new technology is true. To point out that there’s no long term human studies is also true. To point out the thousands of deaths from the vaccine in healthy young people and the hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions, many severe, is also factual. To state that a healthy young person has virtually no chance of dying from COVID-19 but a higher chance of being harmed by the vaccine is also a mathematical fact. The Bible commands us to be reasonable, not carried away by emotion. These are sober facts and must be addressed. That advocates for the vaccine routinely ignore them is troubling, thus heightening our mistrust of the so-called science.
To love our neighbor we must consider his arguments carefully and logically. We must not arbitrarily assign immoral impulses to his line of reasoning, but reason with care and Biblical fidelity. Then, in areas where there’s an impasse, where the disagreeing sides can’t come to an accord, so long as the clear commandments of Scripture aren’t being violated, they must, in Christ, lovingly tolerate the other. In other words, they must leave them alone.
Have the maligners of the unvaccinated (as they’re pejoratively called) been given such honor? Have the reasonable questions/concerns listed above been answered – especially concerns about a growing medical-fascistic state? They have not. To answer “the experts say…” is the fallacy of appeal to authority and not a rebuttal.
Fifth and finally, notice that we have not said that someone who gets the vaccine is sinning. We have merely presented our reasons for refusal, based on applying the principled categories of Scripture to the issue at hand. Since the Bible doesn’t directly say anything about the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, we then apply the rigors of logic to the issue. With a mind “renewed” in faith, we seek the truth. That many have trusted the medical/political establishment is, we believe, very naive. Nevertheless, that’s their business and we extend to them the principle of Romans 14:22. We are happy to reason with our neighbor – thereby showing them the love and honor we’d like from them. There is no contradiction in this position insofar as Scripture is concerned. The contradiction – the lack of love, defined by the Bible – is on the other side. It’s on the Bishop’s side. To claim that I’m immoral for doing something you arbitrarily decide is loving, thereby placing a commandment upon me that God didn’t, is to stop being my neighbor and start being my god.
Only if both sides accept the absolute sovereignty and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word, are we able to actually love one another. I must respect God’s authority over you, not assert my own and vice-versa. Defining our love by any other standard leads to the chaos and tyranny we’re seeing today.
For all this, we call again for the Bishop to reconsider. We call for him to repent to God for his abuse of Scripture in that he demands that others accept man’s definition of love rather than God’s. We call for him to repent for not loving those he disagrees with by meeting them in the field of ideas and answering their reasonable questions about the vaccine. Also, we’re hopeful that we’re wrong about the dangers of the new mRNA vaccines and pray for the health of all. Though we personally, on grounds of sound logic and history, reject the vaccine, we uphold the God-given liberty of our neighbors to disagree with us in faith. We will not resort to calling them sinners in an area where the Lord has not given us the authority. Instead we will patiently endure this time and continue making sound and logical arguments as we await the unveiling of the full truth in God.
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