Consider this a cartheritic post.

My Facebook feed started with a thread that highlighted pride at avoiding the covid vaccine¹. In the comments was a reply to the effect that God had told this family not to get a vaccine and that the blood of Jesus would protect them.

This is one of a handful of things that makes me wonder if my faith is nuts: if people are this crazy, am I this crazy?

I could tell the joke of Two Boats and a Helicopter, which is dated but aptly demonstrates my point, but today I’ll stick with a couple of other ideas.

There is an astounding dissonance on the right where Christian values require political power (i.e., human forces) to affect real-world change, but only God’s sovereignty is recognized in other areas. I.e., Covid and other vaccines.

Comments like the above 100% conflate the blood covering sin and salvation vs physical protection (if you really want to dig in then you need to pull out some olive oil and wine. Note I’m not advocating for this.) The blood is a sacrifice to cover sin. It is not a magical tool to prevent illness. (The closest exception is passover, where the Israelites used the blood of a lamb to mark their houses for the angel of God to not kill their firstborn, the last of the plagues in Exodus.)

Some final questions:

1. Do you think this view allows Christians to their doors to stay safe?
2. Do you think this view allows people to use guns themselves and their family?
3. Does this logic advocate that there is no situation where a Christian ought to use some level of physical protection, instead of relying only on “the Blood of Jesus” for protection².

Does this post matter at all? Well, it makes me feel better 😆. But it’s also important that the opposite view be expressed. People need to know its OK to trust medicine and other non-Christian factors (not un-Christian) in life, as least as a matter of pragmatics and common sense.

1. If you want to argue against the vaccine on scientific grounds there is room for that. Most (all?) of the vaccines are under emergency use authorizations because they haven’t been vetted by the normal process. Personally, I think the risk tradeoff is 100% worth it, but if you don’t I can understand.

2. There are people that advocate this, including handling snakes and drinking poison. At least the theology is consistent in this manner.