These past months have been strange. More than once I have felt like an outsider looking into a world gone mad with fear.

For much of that time I have tried to avoid mentioning the c-word. We’re seeing and hearing the word everywhere, so I hoped to provide a reprieve, especially in my writing. I have, however, written on related themes of human dignity and God-given rights. In times of emergency, that very dignity and those rights should be treasured and protected all the more, since when else would it be important to safeguard them? Some people have been upset by what I’ve written, which confirms that fear has taken hold.

Alas, there are now things that I feel a need to say and that some will not want to hear.

“Anti-vaxer” has become a quick, “flat-earther” kind of put-down used to make someone easy to mock and dismiss. I am not an anti-vaxer, but I am also not “vaxer” enough for many, and so they dismiss me.

I know that fear leads all of us to do and say things in anger. I remind myself of my own tendency toward anger, to label and dismiss, forgetting the imprint of God’s finger on other’s souls, and it is humbling.

Although I am happy for people who feel a sense of peace after getting the shot, I am surprised at how few of them seem to experience that peace. I wish they could respect those who believe they likewise will not receive peace from the vaccination and so make a different choice.

Critics acknowledge that while people may have freedoms, there is no reason to exercise them. They concede that people (vaccinated included) who feel vaccine passports disturbingly resemble the tyranny our country’s leader has unashamedly said he admires might technically have autonomy over their bodies, especially when it comes to experimental drugs, but there is no reason to exercise the right. If mandate opponents cared about the “common good,” they would line up and do their Christian duty.

These commentaries make many of us sound like egotists who just want to stomp our feet like rebellious toddlers, not caring about the health of the people we claim to love.

I get that, but I won’t accept it.

We take the virus seriously. I have someone I love very much who could be seriously harmed if he catches the virus. Yet, at least for now, he remains unvaccinated. So, he has been labelled and dismissed by people he loves.

His reasons are his own. He does not need to convince others of their validity, but he would if only they would listen in love. And that is where this column comes in.

My loved one would probably say that the morality of vaccines created with fetal tissue troubles him. He’s been told this is not something to be considered problematic. But he struggles knowing that there are barrels of aborted babies being sold to pharmaceutical companies for experiments and “medicine” all the time. And this will continue until we draw a line in the sand.

A Vancouver surgeon told him that she herself would resist the shot as long as she could. She and her colleagues know there are safer, effective alternatives, but they are not allowed to prescribe them. If they did, the vaccine would lose its emergency status and authorities and drug makers would be liable for all of the side effects.

 Some other reasons he has for concern:

  • Four teenage girls in my goddaughter’s class had their periods stop after their shots. 
  • A friend woke up bleeding clots.
  • Another friend’s elderly parent broke out in a rash and was told by a health-care worker they should still get the second shot. After this person’s neck and leg opened into bleeding wounds, the health worker insisted, too late, “Do not get the second shot!”
  •  Yet another friend asked for prayers for her dying brother who had a severe reaction following vaccination – praise God, he recovered – as well as for a teenage boy who suddenly had to have his gallbladder removed.
  •  A nurse who was dealing with a vaccinated patient’s brain bleed called the drug manufacturer and learned the condition had happened “a few times,” enough times that they knew what advice to offer. But that information had never been shared in advance to those giving or receiving the shots.

 Honestly, I could go on. Something is not right. My loved one has taken other vaccines and would be perfectly happy to take one that made sense. He has done all the research he can. He has more reason to than most people. It has led him to make a choice, his choice. And that choice matters. He should never be coerced, bullied, or punished for it. But fear has stopped many from hearing, or from asking.

What’s more, all his serious concerns are not the point. 

As Saint Thomas More says in A Man for All Seasons, “What matters is not that it’s true, but that I believe it; or no, not that I believe it, but that I believe it … And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?” 

Loving people can form their consciences on unresolved issues and somehow come to different conclusions. All that you and I are ever left with is our conscience and God’s charge that we not be afraid. That is worth safeguarding. And let us never stop praying for one another.