Marin Voice: On vaccinations, masks and Christian response to COVID
As a pastor, it is my charge to help people understand what it means to love God and neighbor.
I believe one of the best ways we can love God is by loving our neighbor. One certainly need not be a Christian or be religious at all to love one’s neighbor, nor to recognize the value of caring for neighbor in community life.
I am not a doctor, so I do not give out medical advice, but I do know what doctors, infectious disease specialists and health officials have said. They have made it clear that vaccines are safe and effective. Furthermore, vaccines are a critical tool in us overcoming this pandemic. I encourage you to speak to your physician directly if you have questions.
Because sometimes religion has offered a problematic, even dangerous, voice in scientific and medical matters, I feel compelled to offer my voice in supporting vaccination from a theological perspective. One hears a lot of talk about “freedom” these days, but it is clear this talk is working off a definition of freedom that is frighteningly narrow and self-concerned. It does not represent at least the best of what Christianity has to offer.
In the wider culture, freedom may well have come to mean freedom from imposition or even inconvenience, freedom from having individual choices impacted by communal decisions.
For the Christian, however, freedom is not primarily freedom from, it is freedom for and freedom to. In Christ, we are free to live for our neighbor. We are free to serve one another. We are not free to live in a way that endangers others; that is putting the self above others, something against which the Scriptures and tradition warn us continually. For Christians, sacrifice for others is not an infringement to avoid; it is an opportunity to embrace and a spiritual discipline to cultivate.
Sacrifice may carry baggage in the Christian world, so perhaps a fresh way to think of it is by making an offering. We are called to make offerings of ourselves for the good and protection of others. Afterall, that is precisely what Jesus made of his life, a holy and sacred offering.
One of the many tragedies of this time is that seemingly everything has become politicized, and responses get put in one of two neatly defined camps, ideologies or affiliations. The problem is that life is more complex, issues are more nuanced and people are more diverse than this simplistic binary thinking.
People ought to be able to have differing views on whole hosts of policy issues and still agree on something so central to our shared wellbeing such as vaccines without being afraid of the repercussions. A functional society must be able to agree on certain basic facts as a common ground on which different perspectives can come to meet. Then society can earnestly deliberate to come to decisions for the common good.
As a leader of people seeking faith, I hope we can all be constructive participants in our shared world, both by our individual actions and by engaging in the public sphere, holding leaders accountable for governing in good faith. The tradition to which I belong calls us to have particular concern for the vulnerable in our midst. I fear that if we do not employ the tools so valiantly developed, such as vaccines, we will have failed to answer that calling.
A vaccination and a mask are offerings we can make for our neighbors, if not ourselves. They are ones I have made and will continue to make.
Rev. Robert McClellan is senior pastor and head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Strawberry.