I've Been Shot!

 It’s been a LONG time since I last wrote a blog post.  In fact, just a few days over ten years.  TEN years.  What all has happened in that ten years?  Lots of stuff.  The birth of my third child.  Graduation from seminary.

But for the past year, the big news has been COVID.  It has impacted so much - church, school, going out to eat, going to the grocery store.  For a little while we were using disinfecting wipes to pump our gas.

There is probably lots I could say about this pandemic.  And I may come back and say some of that.  But I’ll start off with this:  one week ago I got my shot.

My reaction was pretty mild.  That night I had chills, and the next day I had a bit of a headache and body aches, and was pretty exhausted.  But that was about it.  I’ve been a little extra tired all week, but I’m not sure I can blame that on the shot.

I thought a bit about the shot before getting it.  I wasn’t in any particular rush to get it, but at the same time, I wasn’t particularly afraid of getting it.

I don't consider myself very high risk.  I'm not around a lot of people most of the time.  And I'm in pretty good health - although COVID doesn't always make sense, occasionally sending young and healthy people to the hospital or worse, and occasionally having only the mildest of symptoms to those who don’t fall into the “young and healthy” category.   But thinking in terms of obvious risk, there are others who I would have loved to give my place in line because they are obviously more at risk than I am.  But it doesn't work that way.  So I took my place and got my shot.

I’m not concerned about the shot’s safety.  There was concern about how quickly the vaccines were developed.  But what we have is not just a result of one year's work, but of many years of studying similar viruses.  Also, Operation Warp Speed provided a lot of money to work with that is normally not available for this kind of thing, which allowed among other things more testing to be done simultaneously.  There is no reason to believe there is any sort of microchip in the vaccine shots.  Finally, based on what I've read, I had no reason to expect to have an allergic reaction to the vaccine, although some might need to be concerned about that.  In short, I think the shot is reasonably safe.

I'm not concerned about the shot ethically.  This gets sticky, and all the more so with the Johnson & Johnson shot that I had.  The main issue here is in the use of embryotic cells from aborted babies to develop and test the various vaccines.  It is frustrating that this kind of ethical question has to be raised at all, because there are options that do not involve the same ethical dilemma.  But all three of the current vaccines did use embryotic cells to various degrees.  Therefore, we have to concern ourselves with the question of is it morally right to utilize something that was created by the death of a baby?  This article can deal with the whole issue better than I can (ERLC | Explainer: COVID-19 raises concern about abortive fetal cells in medicine), but the TL;DR (that stands for “too long; didn’t read”) answer is that it is similar to receiving an organ donation from someone who was murdered.  Morally, we are not complicit in that murder.

I'm not concerned about the shot as a Christian.  I don't think getting the shot makes me a better Christian or more loving than someone who may choose not to get the shot.  Nor do I think it makes me a worse Christian, one who doesn't trust God enough (that would actually be presumption, along the lines of Jesus throwing Himself off the pinnacle of the temple because He trusts God to take care of Him).  And, I need to say this because I have seen it too many times, the shot is NOT the Mark of the Beast.  Nothing about this shot is preventing anyone from buying or selling.  But even if that comes up, if some crazy law comes along that you can’t enter Walmart without showing your vaccination card, that still does not make this the Mark of the Beast, because there is nothing about anyone or anything being worshipped involved with getting this shot.  You can get the shot and say, “Praise Jesus.”  

I do think the shot will allow me to see some things return to a more normal way sooner.  Things like seeing extended family, hugging folks at church, and grabbing lunch with someone.  Those days can’t come soon enough.