At the Wednesday evening service this week, the pastor mentioned a magazine to those assembled, a magazine he had just read through — Frontline. This edition of the magazine was entitled “Biblical Counsel for Medical Choices.” Boy did that sound interesting! I am a total nerd for Christian topics and a total nerd for science, so I could not wait to read through it.
I researched quite a bit about religious exemptions a while back. I even attended several sessions with Matt Staver and Liberty Counsel on the subject. It is technically against the law for an employer to deny any religious objection (or claim) of its employees, the problem with the situation is that it has become regular practice for such laws to be ignored and subsequently not upheld in (mostly liberal) courts in the USA.
So, the recommendation was to have a more comprehensive and broad claim in your religious exemption (as I have done). Think about the situation in totality. Think about how, even if there were no fetal cell lines involved, you'd be participating in the repression of countless people. You would be part of the destruction of families, homes, relationships, livelihoods, and the irreplaceable development of the lives of children.
Imagine Jesus standing in front of you and you explain yourself about how you were willing to go along with that.
The merger of government and corporate entities, aka fascism, isn't something with which Christians should knowingly and willingly participate or support in any way. The last 3 years are ample evidence.
It's one thing when you cannot avoid its influence. It's quite another to elect to participate or directly support it. Like I told a good friend of mine, we don't willingly participate and then pray for forgiveness as a "get out of jail card". Rather, if you tried every possible thing and resisted with all your might and then could not avoid it. That's when we pray for forgiveness and strength.
If you write a religious exemption claim, it should really stand on multiple points. The overriding of God's will, the destruction, the misery, defiling of God's temple, and, yes, fetal cell lines every other God-forsaken activity engaged by these evil entities are clearly unacceptable.
The claim that you didn't research aspirin is a distraction. You should not of had to research every thing in existence. But, now that we know the general practice of Big Pharma, I think Christians need to realize the extent of the evil within it. A "come to Jesus" moment, if you will.
Ultimately it's between the individual and God. But it's clearly only possible to fool one of those participants.
The pastor writes “good-bye modern medicine” forgetting or maybe not understanding that vaccines should not be considered modern medicine. They are well over 2 centuries old if we go back only to Jenner. Most vaccines have seen the their time in the spotlight and are not the medical marvel they’re so often praised as being. Seems our pastor suffers from some idol worship putting vaccines ahead of nature (God).
Thank you, Allan, for writing this and for the rebuttal reference to Matthews’s article I will read that later.
I’m so weary of Christians trying to shame other Christians these last three years. Suddenly many pastors who never spoke loudly about plain moral issues like abortion and euthanasia suddenly became ethical experts about a(n allegedly) new virus and an experimental injection. How is that even reasonable?
I kept waiting for thoughtful Christians to discuss the examples of our spiritual forefathers during prior pandemics, the ways that believer’s courageously entered the homes of those dying with the Black Death and ministered to them. I don’t have examples of that happening, but surely, there are some?
I kept waiting for the Christian Medical and Dental Association to speak courage and compassion to its members, but instead saw them saying that, why, yes, perhaps we ought to stay home from church for awhile. And writing about the great weariness of healthcare workers, and how hard everything is “in the trenches.” But nary a solitary word at all ever about the courageous example of Jesus who brought healing to the lepers, or of the hope of early treatment, or of ways to minister to those in fear of this (allegedly) deadly plague.
Nope. It was all about the doctors and nurses living and working in fear.
Yes, at first it was scary. But is this not the sort of time for which our faith was given to us? Go, and be not afraid.
I could continue.
When a long time Christian friend suggested that my husband was in error for seeking a religious exemption for the shot, and she even sent me an article arguing that Christian’s should just “get over it” and stop using religion as an excuse to avoid the shot, well, obviously that altered the nature of our friendship significantly. Where I had hoped to have found solace, I instead found condemnation. I refused to read the article. I had read too many like it already.
Often I wonder at the providence of God’s grace that my husband and I another were given eyes to see from the beginning, or nearly so, when so many supposedly likeminded people did not, apparently, share that same visual acuity.
I researched quite a bit about religious exemptions a while back. I even attended several sessions with Matt Staver and Liberty Counsel on the subject. It is technically against the law for an employer to deny any religious objection (or claim) of its employees, the problem with the situation is that it has become regular practice for such laws to be ignored and subsequently not upheld in (mostly liberal) courts in the USA.
So, the recommendation was to have a more comprehensive and broad claim in your religious exemption (as I have done). Think about the situation in totality. Think about how, even if there were no fetal cell lines involved, you'd be participating in the repression of countless people. You would be part of the destruction of families, homes, relationships, livelihoods, and the irreplaceable development of the lives of children.
Imagine Jesus standing in front of you and you explain yourself about how you were willing to go along with that.
The merger of government and corporate entities, aka fascism, isn't something with which Christians should knowingly and willingly participate or support in any way. The last 3 years are ample evidence.
It's one thing when you cannot avoid its influence. It's quite another to elect to participate or directly support it. Like I told a good friend of mine, we don't willingly participate and then pray for forgiveness as a "get out of jail card". Rather, if you tried every possible thing and resisted with all your might and then could not avoid it. That's when we pray for forgiveness and strength.
If you write a religious exemption claim, it should really stand on multiple points. The overriding of God's will, the destruction, the misery, defiling of God's temple, and, yes, fetal cell lines every other God-forsaken activity engaged by these evil entities are clearly unacceptable.
The claim that you didn't research aspirin is a distraction. You should not of had to research every thing in existence. But, now that we know the general practice of Big Pharma, I think Christians need to realize the extent of the evil within it. A "come to Jesus" moment, if you will.
Ultimately it's between the individual and God. But it's clearly only possible to fool one of those participants.
The pastor writes “good-bye modern medicine” forgetting or maybe not understanding that vaccines should not be considered modern medicine. They are well over 2 centuries old if we go back only to Jenner. Most vaccines have seen the their time in the spotlight and are not the medical marvel they’re so often praised as being. Seems our pastor suffers from some idol worship putting vaccines ahead of nature (God).
Thank you, Allan, for writing this and for the rebuttal reference to Matthews’s article I will read that later.
I’m so weary of Christians trying to shame other Christians these last three years. Suddenly many pastors who never spoke loudly about plain moral issues like abortion and euthanasia suddenly became ethical experts about a(n allegedly) new virus and an experimental injection. How is that even reasonable?
I kept waiting for thoughtful Christians to discuss the examples of our spiritual forefathers during prior pandemics, the ways that believer’s courageously entered the homes of those dying with the Black Death and ministered to them. I don’t have examples of that happening, but surely, there are some?
I kept waiting for the Christian Medical and Dental Association to speak courage and compassion to its members, but instead saw them saying that, why, yes, perhaps we ought to stay home from church for awhile. And writing about the great weariness of healthcare workers, and how hard everything is “in the trenches.” But nary a solitary word at all ever about the courageous example of Jesus who brought healing to the lepers, or of the hope of early treatment, or of ways to minister to those in fear of this (allegedly) deadly plague.
Nope. It was all about the doctors and nurses living and working in fear.
Yes, at first it was scary. But is this not the sort of time for which our faith was given to us? Go, and be not afraid.
I could continue.
When a long time Christian friend suggested that my husband was in error for seeking a religious exemption for the shot, and she even sent me an article arguing that Christian’s should just “get over it” and stop using religion as an excuse to avoid the shot, well, obviously that altered the nature of our friendship significantly. Where I had hoped to have found solace, I instead found condemnation. I refused to read the article. I had read too many like it already.
Often I wonder at the providence of God’s grace that my husband and I another were given eyes to see from the beginning, or nearly so, when so many supposedly likeminded people did not, apparently, share that same visual acuity.