I hate being controversial. I hate disagreeing with those I care deeply about. I respect their beliefs and decisions and yet I am troubled that I have remained quiet. Concerned that my silence may be preventing someone from seeing another angle to this whole dilemma. And so I choose to speak up, but I do so respectfully, fully aware that others will disagree. I take that risk. I ask, however, that you don't let these differences mar our relationship. It would be easier to remain quiet and not jeopardise the threads that bind us together. Like you, I am trying to make sense of this whole situation. I don't have all the answers. I don't even know if my answer is right.
But I can't be sure it's wrong either.
Like everyone else, I want to be done with this pandemic. Its restrictions. Its daily tally of cases. Its masks (how I hate wearing masks). Its lockdowns. (We're fortunate not to be in Auckland where there have been nine weeks of lockdown so far and still no end in sight.) Its divisiveness. And the fear.
And now we have mandates. As a teacher I have to have had my first vaccine by November 15 and be fully vaccinated by January 1. Health workers have even less time to get fully vaccinated. Other fields and professions are following suit. Be jabbed or lose your job. (Of course it's not said outright that you'll lose your job but that seems to be the writing on the wall. Hopefully I'm wrong.)
There has been resistance. Debate. Anxiety and even anger.
I get all that and yet I personally don't have a big problem with the mandate. At least on one level. To tell the truth, I actually have more of a problem with my tax dollars being spent on climate change and that whole agenda than I do on the vaccine being mandated.
However, I do understand those that question the morality and the ethics of a government being able to determine what goes into your body. I do understand the uncertainty about a vaccine that is still relatively new. I do understand the helplessness that here in New Zealand we have no choice as to which vaccine is injected into our body. The feeling of being powerless. I understand all that.
When the mandate was announced, I stopped dithering about having my second vaccination and booked it. I had been anxious about side effects after having joint and muscle pain for weeks after the first one, but had been told repeatedly by health care workers that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the side effects. (Yes, I know that is what they are supposed to say but as a profession I credit them with more integrity than has been given them during this pandemic. They, too, know little about the long term effects of the vaccine but they are also the ones battling this relatively new virus. I decided to trust them and the scientists.)
Once I had made the appointment I felt at peace. Previously I had been trying to determine where I stood as a Christian, pleading for wisdom, but once I made the decision, those doubts and fears disappeared. I wish I had read these verses when I was dithering and not after the fact:
Therefore subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether to the king, as supreme, or to governors ... For this is the will of God ... Live as free people, but not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.
1 Peter 2:14a, 15a, 16-17, WMBBE
Not everyone will agree with how I have applied those verses to this situation. That's okay. I'm no Bible scholar. But I have been troubled by those saying that we are to obey God and not the government. The first part of that is true: we are to obey God. The second part is only partly true: we are also to obey the government whenever it does not contradict the Word of God. I have searched my heart and I cannot see how receiving the vaccine would do that. Mandated or not.
I have also been troubled by the whole rhetoric of freedom and freedom of rights. I wonder if this is a modern concept that the apostle Peter would shake his head over in confusion? I wonder if our own ancestors would have understood this a hundred years ago, or a hundred before that - in the sense and extent to which we apply it? I'm not saying to give up everything that has been hard fought, but are we really arguing for freedom of conscience, freedom to believe, or is it a mask for something else? And if our freedom harms others is it really our freedom to exercise? How do we honour all men and love the brotherhood if our freedom puts them at risk?
With freedom also comes obligation. And yet we hear so little about that nowadays unless it's an obligation to care for our planet (there's that climate change again). But an obligation to consider others ... that's not talked about or if it is, one is accused of peddling a works-based gospel.
If vaccination does what they say and reduces severity and the need for hospital beds, then if we have the choice shouldn't we consider it for the sake of those who are at greater risk: the elderly, the immuno-compromised, the neighbour with cancer, the church member on dialysis, the premature baby, the person in the supermarket who cannot for whatever reason take the vaccine? Isn't that how we show love? It's not a works-based message as some have claimed, but a practical way we can obey the Biblical mandate to love others.
And, to my mind at least, that mandate can at times be far harder to bear than the government's mandate on vaccination.
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