Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 360 | Scientism, COVID & the Vaccine

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

It's time to pay attention! We're not supposed to know about the politicization of lockdown policies, vaccine distribution, schools reopening ... and we're not supposed to say anything about any of it, but this is the time to be watching and taking notice more than ever. -- Today's Sponsor: Patriot Mobile has just expanded their coverage making it even easier for Americans to dump the big name carriers who charge way too much & then donate money to leftists. This month get free premiere activation — and a special gift! Visit PatriotMobile.com/Allie & use offer code 'ALLIE'. -- Sources: WHO: The Moderna COVID-19 (mRNA-1273) vaccine: what you need to know https://bit.ly/3r1FNuM  The Guardian: Single Covid vaccine dose in Israel 'less effective than we thought' https://bit.ly/36i78AM  CNN: Merck stopping development of its Covid-19 vaccine candidates https://cnn.it/36jJ00C  NYT: Why Vaccines Alone Will Not End the Pandemic https://nyti.ms/2MvOMp4  Al Mohler: Vaccines and the Christian Worldview: Principles for Christian Thinking in the Context of COVID https://bit.ly/3iXWPXy  DesiringGod.org: Can I Take a Vaccine Made from Aborted Babies? https://bit.ly/39pgXio -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Thursday. So I regret to inform you that I actually will not be talking to Alex Brinson today. And I'm super, super sad about that because I was really looking forward to that conversation. But we had some technical difficulties and some miscommunication. And unfortunately, it just fell through and we're having to reschedule. So I'm really sorry because I know that you guys were looking forward to that. And I was excited about it too. But I am going to still talk about. the vaccine, the COVID vaccine and some of the things that are going on surrounding COVID, but I won't just be talking about that. I'll be talking about a couple more stories that I want to bring to your attention as well. And look, I know you guys, a lot of you have told me, look, I'm so tired of the news. And I get it. I get tired of the news too. And I don't want to talk about stuff sometimes. But, and, you know, I don't think that you should make the news in idle. I don't think that you should be spending all of your time on Twitter or Instagram. or any of that. But remember, this is not the time to look away. This is when Biden is signing 30 plus

executive orders, the highest number of executive orders that a president has signed in this short period of time that are not in line at all with the expectation of moderation and normalcy that people thought they were going to get by voting for Biden. This is not the time to not pay attention. It's not the time to not pay attention to the curriculum that is being implemented in your child's school. This is not the time to look away from what's going on in the news. And while you can't make everything that's going on in the news and idle and your hope and your rest and your peace, of course, does not rest upon what's going on in American politics. And we understand that God is completely sovereign and totally on his throne. We are still in this world. We still do have to pay attention

to the problems that we're facing. And like I always say, politics matter because policies matter, because people matter. And so in order to care about people, there are many ways that we can care about people. And I certainly don't think the primary vehicle to caring about people is politics. Certainly, I don't believe that. I would say many people on the left believe that. I don't believe that politics and voting for politicians is our primary vehicle to care for people, certainly.

But it is one of the ways that we care for people because the policies that are implemented by politicians that we hear about through the realm of politics. politics and that we know about through the realm of politics and that have influence through the realm of politics, they affect the most vulnerable people. They affect children. They affect poor people. They affect our neighbors. And so if we care about the future generations, if we care about the most vulnerable, if we care about our neighbor, one of the things we have to care about is politics. And that means paying attention to the news. A lot of you guys ask me, how do I make sure I'm getting accurate information? And unfortunately, that's really hard. One of the things I always encourage you to do on

on this podcast is to not just listen to me. I do not pretend to be the arbiter of truth. I always strive to be as truthful as possible and to tell as much of the story as I can. But I also tell you that I'm coming from a particular perspective. Everyone is, by the way. But I'm honest about it. I say I'm a conservative. I'm a Christian.

That's the worldview that I've got. That's going to color the conclusions that I come to and the moral implications that I draw out of particular stories. You guys know where I stand on stuff. if you want to hear a different view, sometimes I have opposing views on my podcast. A lot of times I do. But also, you can listen to the other side. When I'm looking at one story, I read the Washington Post, I read the New York Times, I read CNN, I read National Review, I read The Blaze, I read The Daily Wire, I read Fox News, and you almost have to look at every angle of just one particular story to know

really what's going on. I follow a variety of commentators for that reason, so that if something sounds really bad because one side is saying it's really bad or one side is saying that something's really good. My question is always, well, what's the counter to this? What's the argument? Why are other people mad about this? Is one side misinformed? Either the side that's saying it's good or bad or is it just partisanship? Like what's going on? We just kind of have to ask discerning questions. We have to dig beyond the headline, which is something that I tried to do from a conservative Christian perspective, but look, you got to fact check me. You got to look to the original documents. If it's a bill that's being passed. If it's a court decision that's been decided, you can always read the original

text online, and you can look at what different experts are saying who typically have their own biases on it. But you got to do your research yourself. And understandably, that's hard for people to do and we're tired and we're busy and we don't want to do it. But my point is that this is not the time to be apathetic. This is not the time to be ignorant. This is not the time to look away. That's exactly what this administration and the Democrats in Congress would like you to do, because a lot of you voted for this administration based on what you thought would be normal and decent and equitable and, you know, all those buzzwords. And you may be realizing, maybe not, but you may be realizing that some of the executive orders that have been signed and the policy proposals that have been put

forth in the past few days do not align with all, at all, with any of your purported values. And so it's starting to pay attention. Care about your kids? Care about your neighbors? We got to pay attention. One thing that we're also not supposed to pay attention to is COVID. We're not supposed to pay attention to the fact that CNN took down their death ticker after President Biden became inaugurated. We're not supposed to pay attention to the fact that per day, California has more cases and more deaths than they did when they originally closed down restaurants and outdoor dining. And yet now they're opening up outdoor dining. The same thing is happening in other Democratic states like Michigan. We're not supposed to pay attention to that.

we're not supposed to pay attention to the fact that the New York Times, the CDC has been saying President Trump has been saying for a long time, pediatricians who came on MSNBC has been saying for a long time that, hey, it's safe to open schools. And yet the teachers unions and the public education system said, no, we're not going to open our schools. We don't want to, we don't want to infect the teachers. We don't want the teachers to die. They had all of these demonstrations and these protests and all of these demands the teachers' unions to make sure the teachers, didn't actually have to go to school, even as private school educators were, many charter school educators were. Many public unions and some public school teachers decided that they didn't want to do

their jobs in person for fear of the virus, even though we have heard thousands of times that that's not where the virus is spreading, that it's actually very difficult to transmit the virus between children and also between children and teachers. It's just not happening. It's just not happening very much and there's actually a very low risk, but there's a very high risk for kids not to go to school. The suicide rate has skyrocketed among kids. The mental health problems, even for kids as young as five, has skyrocketed. Hospital visits for mental health problems. For young kids is skyrocketed in the past year because kids aren't supposed to be isolated because they can't learn in front of a screen. So kids are falling behind. Not every parent has been able to

stay home and to quit work and to teach their kids while their kids are remote learning. The kids need their friends. They need their teachers. And while I wish everyone would homeschool instead of sending their kids to public school, that's just not the reality for some people. And so we're just creating more inequality. We're just creating more injustice and more kids falling behind. But we're not supposed to pay attention to any of that because we were told while President Trump was president that if you wanted to open the economy at all, that you were a grandma killer. Even while we had people in, for example, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Governor Cuomo who sent COVID positive patients back into nursing homes, even though we have heard

physicians who speak to the New York Times saying, oh, well, we don't need to prioritize people over 65 more than, you know, other Americans because people over 65 are predominantly white. But everyone who wants to open up the economy, we're the grandma killer. even though elderly people in some cases in some states for the sake of, quote, equity, that word that we talked about yesterday are being passed over. It's crazy. We're not supposed to pay attention to the fact that Amazon, this is a story that just came out, may have purposely delayed their announcement of being able to deliver vaccines for the government until Biden,

until Biden became president. We're not supposed to think or we're not supposed to know that so much of this virus, the lockdowns, the policies that were enacted, the news surrounding the vaccine distribution, that so much of it was politicized and so much of it had to do with making sure that Trump didn't become president to make sure the employment rate was high, to make sure the economy was crashing, to make sure that people were disgruntled, to make sure that people were isolated and sad and wanted to change,

and to make sure that normalcy was presented in President Biden. I mean, you were gambling with people's lives for the sake of the election. I mean, we're not supposed to know any of that, or we're not supposed to say it. And we're not supposed to pay attention to the ever-changing narrative on vaccines. So obviously in the beginning, we knew 15 days to slow the spread. that's how this whole thing started. And President Trump, being the positive and optimistic person that he is, being the salesperson that he is, said that we were just going to have a few cases and then it was going to go away. Well, unfortunately, that's not what happened. And then we were told that,

okay, it's not just 15 days to slow the spread. So just three months to slow the spread. This is, we're just going to have to wait until we have a vaccine and we don't know when the vaccine is going to happen. President Trump said, we're going to have a vaccine by the end of the year. We're going to do Operation Warp Speed and we're going to incentivize these vaccine manufacturers to make a really good, effective vaccine in the quickest timeline possible. And that happened. We were told it wasn't going to happen. Trump's critics said that he was lying. There's no way that it was going to happen. And then it happened. And then Pfizer said, oh, this had nothing to do with President Trump. This had nothing to do with Operation Warp Speed. But it absolutely did. They were

were guaranteed, I think it was a billion dollars if they were able to produce this vaccine. So, of course it has to do with Operation Warp speed. But again, not supposed to pay attention to any of that. President Trump, we were supposed to blame every single COVID death on President Trump while Joe Biden was tweeting, oh, I'm going to stop the virus. And because the narrative had to shift away from, okay, once we have a vaccine, things will go back to normal because then we started to have a vaccine. It was given credit to President Trump. And then we had to hear what we're hearing now is even if we have a vaccine, we're still going to have to wear masks. We're still going to have to say inside.

We're still going to have to socially distance. And we're also seen from Joe Biden. He tweeted that, you know, I never said that I was going to, I can't do anything about the virus continuing to spread for a few months. Hang on. That's exactly what you campaigned on. That's what you campaigned on. You campaigned on stopping the virus.

You said, I'm not going to shut down the economy. I'm not going to shut down the world, but I am going to shut down the virus. Through what? Distributing the vaccine? that President Trump helped develop or his administration incentivized to develop quickly and had already distributed it was like a million doses a day and then Biden takes office and he says, oh, we don't have any plan for distribution because the past administration wasn't doing anything. That's not true.

Millions of doses a day were being distributed under President Trump's leadership. But once again, you're not supposed to pay attention to that. What you're supposed to pay attention to is that President Trump, was just incompetent that he killed tons and tons of people and that he lied in the economic problems and the public health problems were all because of President Trump. And the more pro-lockdown you were, the more you stayed inside, the more masks that you wore over your face, and the more you chastise people for not wearing masks and for not staying inside and for sending their kids to school, the more righteous you were. And finally, we have this savior in Joe Biden. And he's going to

make things normal. And eventually he's going to take the virus away because he's going to take this seriously because he's going to force you inside your house and he's going to force you to wear masks. And this is exactly what we need. And he's going to be the one that's actually going to harold the vaccine. We're just going to ignore the fact that it had anything to do with President Trump. It's going to be his administration and his solid leadership that is going to make sure that we finally end this virus. Even while it's weird because we're getting the conflicting narratives, even while we are, we're being told, okay, yes, this is very, very serious. We don't know when things are going to end. We don't know when things are going to go back to normal. We're going to get a worse strain coming from the UK and March. Simultaneously, we have states like California, reopening things back up, opening their economy. Again, not due to fewer numbers because the numbers aren't getting better in places like California and other places that are opening up like D.C. But apparently they're opening up because they want the economy to be better. they want to play into this narrative that Joe Biden is here and saving the day and everything is better.

So things are kind of conflicting if you look at this political scene when it comes to when it comes to COVID. And in particular, when it comes to this vaccine. So we're simultaneously hearing that it's very trustworthy and that if you don't want to get the vaccine or if you don't get the vaccine, then you are crazy anti-vaxxer. If you have any questions at all, you shouldn't even be wondering about the trustworthiness of it. You shouldn't even, you shouldn't even be doubting it at all, despite the fact that Kamala Harris, just a few months ago, before she was elected, said that if this was developed under President Trump, then she might have a problem with taking it. She said that just a few months ago. But now people who still have hesitation, who are still wondering, hey, you know, we've never had this kind of RNA vaccine before or, hey, you know, this happened really fast, who just have questions, who aren't anti-vaxxers, who might get. every other vaccine but may have a question or may have hesitation about this vaccine, we are being

told, wow, you're so stupid, you backwood person who gets your information from molly's anti-vax house.com. You are being castigated. You're being chastised. You are being thrown to the side for having any questions about it whatsoever because it's totally trustworthy and you're supposed to trust science and you're supposed to trust medicine and this White House trust science. But also, we're hearing at the same time from the WHO. On the one hand, we heard from the CDC, pregnant women should, actually, they use this stupid phrase, pregnant people should get vaccinated. If you look at the CDC website, pregnant women should get vaccinated. People or women who are breastfeeding should get vaccinated, even though they say there's been no long, there's been no studies on pregnant women

who have gotten the vaccine or breastfeeding women who have gotten the vaccine and the long-term effects of that. There's been there's been no actual study of that. but they are using deductive reasoning to say it's probably fine. But then the WHO, if you go to their website, they are actually recommending that pregnant women not get the vaccine, which I think is interesting. And so we're seeing another conflict there. So the WHO website says this, while pregnancy puts women at a higher risk of severe COVID-19, the use of this vaccine and pregnant women is currently not recommended unless they're at risk

of high exposure, which is weird. because if it poses a risk to pregnant women, then does it not pose a risk to pregnant health care workers as well? Are you just saying that the benefits outweigh the risks? So it's a little bit odd, kind of the conflicting information that we're hearing about pregnant women when it comes to the coronavirus. And also we're seeing some weird things around the world when it comes to the vaccine. So over 2 million Israelis have had their first vaccine shot,

but their COVID numbers keep climbing. The Guardian said this single COVID vaccine dose in Israel less effective than we thought. So according to CNN, Merck also announced this past week that it's discontinuing the development of its COVID-19 vaccine candidates. After early studies showed immune responses were inferior to natural infection and other COVID-19 vaccines. Merck said it plans to submit results from phase one trials of its vaccine candidates, known as V-590 and V-591 for publication and a peer-reviewed. Journal two COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have already been authorized for emergency use in the United States by U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Both are about 95% effective after two doses. But I thought it was interesting that Merck said, and they admitted, which honestly, this should give you more confidence in vaccines in general, that they said, look, we're not even going to keep going with this because it's not as effective if someone actually getting the virus. Now, that apparently is different than Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine. But a lot of people, people were saying that in the beginning. A lot of people were saying that, well, couldn't it be better just to get natural infection for people who are at low risk of getting a very severe

reaction to COVID-19? And again, people were told, no, no, no, no, no. Now, I understand. I don't think it's better for everyone to just get sick and to chance it rather than to get the vaccine and not get it. But again, people were kind of bringing this up. What Merck is saying, and they were shut down and told not to talk about it. But again, going back to Israel, so surge in infections dampens optimism over the country's advanced immunization program, says the Guardian. Israel's coronavirus czar has warned the single dose of the Pfizer biointech vaccine

may be providing less protection than originally hoped, as the country reported a record 10,000 new COVID infections on Monday. And similar things are also. happening in the UK that the vaccine is being distributed and then people are taking a second look and wondering really how effective it is. The New York Times wrote that why vaccines alone will not end the pandemic. The arrival of highly effective vaccines in December lifted hopes that they would eventually slower stop the spread of the disease through the rest of the population. But vaccines alone are not enough, the model shows. And if precautions like working remotely limiting

travel and wearing masks are relaxed too soon, it could mean millions more infections and thousands more deaths. I would love to see the science behind that because you guys know I'm not some anti-masker. I wear a mask everywhere that's required of me to wear a mask. I'm not going to put up a fight about that. I'm voluntarily going into a business. If they require me to wear a mask, I'm voluntarily writing on an airplane. If they require me to wear a mask, then I am voluntarily choosing to meet their particular guidelines. So I'm not an anti-masker, but I also have not seen the science that shows that COVID cases go down at the time of mask mandates or that COVID cases are decreased at all by mask mandates.

People have been wearing masks pretty pervasively in this country since June. And apparently, according to the numbers, it hasn't really helped. Remember, in March of last year, crazy that that's almost a year ago now. Dr. Fauci said, please don't wear masks. The surgeon general said, please don't wear masks. And we were made to feel so stupid for going out and getting a mask. Now, I secretly, we kept our masks because we had some surgical masks because I'm even, you know, I'm worried about the flu and I didn't want to get the flu while traveling and all of that.

I don't even know if the mask protects you from the flu. But we had masks. And I remember thinking, well, I don't want to give it these masks because it kind of seems like maybe it could possibly help if this is like a respiratory thing and it passes through large droplets. wouldn't it maybe help if we were wearing masks and they basically made us feel guilty for even thinking about wearing a mask. I remember I had to travel during this time like right before everything got shut down and I wanted to wear a mask on the plane after hearing about all of this and I didn't because I felt bullied by people like Dr. Fauci and the Surgeon General last March and I didn't,

I was embarrassed to wear a mask and now of course people have been saying since June wear your dang mask and you're a grandma killer if you don't. And now just the other day, Dr. Fauci came up and came out and said, it's just common sense. Just two masks is better than one mask. What? And I saw on CNBC, I thought it was hilarious. They said three masks, of course, is going to give you, is going to be even more effective. Show me the study.

Like, show me the study. If this really does pass through large droplets, okay, sure, maybe. I could see how three masks is going to be more effective if you're trying to spit into someone's face than one mask. But show me the data that says if people wear three masks, the COVID cases are going to go down. Is that common sense? I don't think it's common sense at all. I mean, it wasn't common sense back in March when Dr. Fauci said basically you're an idiot if you even wear a mask. But now we're being told to layer up on masks.

I am excited for when they say that we need to sleep in masks or when we need to wear a plastic bag over our heads before we step outside and just breathe deeply. That's probably going to be the next step in all of this just to make sure we don't spread the virus. We have lost all attachment to reality, all attachment to science, all attachment to data in all of this. Everything has just become a political symbol. I'm not saying masks have no effect. There was a big, I think it was a Danish study that was looking at the effectiveness of masks. And they basically said, look, it's not going to protect you to wear a mask. And it might not slow the spread that much, but it might protect you if you have it from giving it to someone else.

And so that's kind of what we've known for a long time, that if you have it, maybe even asymptomatically, if that's another thing we don't know, how really pervasive is asymptomatic spread. That's another thing everyone's gone back and forth on and we don't really know. But if you do have it and if you can spread asymptomatically, then wearing a mask could possibly stop you from spreading the virus. That's the extent scientifically of the protection that masks wear. So people who are wearing masks when they're in their car are wearing masks when they're walking by themselves.

Now, if you're wearing a mask in your car because you're trying to be extra precocious or extra cautious because you are delivering someone's food or something, I appreciate that. And I understand. But people who are just wearing masks in their car are wearing masks when they're on a walk, wearing masks when they're outside by themselves, wearing masks when you are a far distance away from everyone, that has no scientific grounding at all. And so I'm so tired of people saying that we're following the science, that we're following the facts. No, we're not. We're not. Not on any of this stuff. I am very happy for, for the development of the vaccine and how quickly it came about.

Obviously, there was a lot of science and a lot of innovation, a lot of capitalism that played into that that I think is a testament to the power of the modern mind and modern technology that I'm very thankful for. And apparently it does work in making people who get asymptomatic. But they're saying it doesn't actually necessarily stop the spread of anything. And so a lot of people are like, well, then why are we even, why are we even doing any of this? If that's not the thing that's going to end all of our social distancing and end all of our remote learning and end all of our mask wearing, then what is? Because viruses are going to virus.

Like the flu evolves. It changes into different strains every year. And we have to deal with it every year. People die from the flu every year. People die from a variety of viruses every year. So what's going to stop it? Are we just going to have to live with it? If that's the case, if we're just going to have to eventually live with it and understand that not everyone's going get the vaccine, some people are going to get the vaccine, but even if people do get the vaccine,

that it's still going to spread. We're not going to wear masks forever. Like, I know that people do that in some Asian countries, but we're not some Asian countries. Like, we're not going to do that forever. Kids can't remote learn forever. We can't be isolated forever. You can't go to church virtually forever. Once again, progressivism and progressive policies get human nature wrong. You are a whole person. That's what I've said from the beginning. You are an entire person. You're not just a body. While I do want to protect people from getting sick as far as we can, I know people who have gotten COVID and it's been very serious, that they've almost died. They've been on the verge of death. They've had to go to the hospital. They've been hooked up to

or actually, I don't know anyone personally that's been hooked up to a ventilator, but they've gone to the ICU. They have been released and they've gotten worse and they are on betterest and all of the stuff. I know people who have gotten it really, really bad. I know people who have had really mild cases as well. But I'm aware of how severe it can be and I want to protect people from that. I don't want old people to get it. I don't want immunocompromise people to get it.

I don't want anyone to die from this. And of course, I'm going to be as respectful and as loving and as sympathetic as I possibly can and take any reasonable and data-driven scientific precautions that I can. to protect other people from that. But people aren't just a body. There's a reason why suicides are so far up, why overdoses are so high up. There is a reason why kids are struggling mentally and emotionally right now.

There's a reason why people are struggling spiritually and mentally right now. Because we're not just bodies. We're not just these materialist beings as secular humanism thinks. Like we have souls, we have hearts, we have minds. We have a million different needs that we have to, cater to that are only found sometimes through in-person fellowship and community and time that spent with family and friends in church and counseling and school and all of these things that make society survive and thrive. We can't survive like this, especially not in America. We're not the

same as Asian countries. We're not the same as other cultures. We have our own culture. And part of that is community. And people will take the precautions that they need to take to protect the vulnerable people around them. But when we are constantly seeing competing narratives about lockdown, and school closures and wearing masks and the effectiveness of vaccines. And when things are so politicized and they're not driven by science from the White House to the media to Dr. Fauci, of course, you're going to get a lot of frustrated people. You're going to get a lot of conspiracy theories, unfortunately. And it's going to be very counterproductive if our goal is actually to keep people healthy

and to keep society going. Now, I want to talk a little bit more about this question of vaccines because I've been getting a lot of questions from you guys. When am I going to talk about this? When am I going to talk about the, what am I going to talk about whether or not Christians should get this vaccine? And here's the problem. Well, here's why people are asking that.

It's not just because of vaccines in general. Okay. So people who are listening to this, I'm not talking about anti-vaxers, people who are against vaccines in general who think all vaccine manufacturers or. out to get them and are filling their bodies with poison and are causing all kinds of mental disabilities and fetal, you know, deformities and things like that. I'm not talking about those people. The people who are asking me if Christians should take the vaccine are okay in general with vaccines. They're okay with modern medicine. They're not non-medical interventionists,

but they're looking at some of the stuff and they're asking some questions, which I think is good. Like isn't that part of being pro-science is asking questions? Like, can we honestly say that the medical community has always gotten things right? No, of course. Of course not. I mean, we know that for a fact that some vaccines we thought that would work and then they caused adverse reactions that were really bad and it was pulled off market. There have been several vaccines in the past 30 years, or I would say a couple that I can

think of off the top of my head, three that I can think of, that off the top of my head where it had to be taken off market after it was realized that. that people were having very adverse reactions. There was the original rhodovirus vaccine, which was really not that long ago, about 20 years ago, it was causing problems like intestinal blockage in the infants that were taking this vaccine. And so they had to reformulate it.

They had to take it off the market. The same thing with a certain kind of detap vaccine. I think it was in the 80s and 90s. And then before that in the 60s and 70s, it was, I think, a kind of flu vaccine that was causing a lot of Bell's palsy that had to be taken off the market. And so it's okay for people to ask questions, like to just look throughout history and say, okay, there's been some problems. There was one point that people were saying that it was fine for women who were pregnant to drink alcohol and to smoke cigarettes.

Like, there was a time that, you know, we didn't have sunscreen because we didn't know that UV rays could be damaging to your skin. There have been times, and if you know anything about the history of birth in the United States, you know how many times people have been wrong. The medical community has been wrong. For example, women who had V-backs in the late 90s, so that is vaginal birth after cesarean. In order to induce their labor, they were given something called sight attack. Well, side attack, you're not, now we know, you should not be given if you are trying to have a vaginal birth after a cesarian delivery because you, it increases your risk a lot of having a uterine rupture during birth.

That was happening in the late 90s. That's not even that long ago. And so the medical community had to realize, okay, we were wrong on that. We didn't test that correctly. We had a false hypothesis or whatever it is. And now we changed it. So the advancement in modern medicine have not been hindered by curious people, have not been hindered by people's skepticism or curiosity.

about what the medical community has said or even about vaccines. It's actually a bit advanced that way. That's good. Like we should be asking questions. So please don't shut down questions, real legitimate questions about things like vaccines. That's why I talked to two people. I talked to Paul Offutt a couple years ago and I also talked to Dr. Bob Sears. And I asked them about both sides of the vaccine debate, not from a Christian perspective,

but just in general about the efficacy and the safety of vaccines. And they had two different approaches. And I wouldn't say Dr. Sears is an anti-vaccine guy, but he's more vaccine hesitant and is more sympathetic to people who are anti-vaccines. And of course, Paul Offa is very pro-vaccine, has helped in the manufacturing or in the, not the manufacturing, but the research and the development of vaccines. So I wanted to give two different sites to that because I think there are quite a few sites to it. And I just hate that this is yet again, one of those conversations that we are being told in so many circles, not to pay it. attention to, that we shouldn't ask questions, that we shouldn't talk about it at all, that we should just nod our heads and accept whatever Big Brother says in regards to COVID, in regards to the

lockdowns, in regards to what the politicians say, in regards to the vaccine, in regards to what Biden says. And I'm just saying, I think it's okay for us to approach things critically. And I don't like conspiracy theories. I really don't. And I try my hardest on this show to stop conspiracy theories before they, before they, you know, grow wild or while I still can. I don't have all the power in the world to do that. But so I'm not talking about conspiracy theories. I'm not talking about going off the deep end. I'm just talking about thinking and speaking critically about this kind of stuff. So from a Christian perspective, the COVID vaccine. Now, the reason why people are talking about the ethics of this and the biblical morality of this is because the vaccine structure, relied upon the cell line of H.E.K. 293, which originated with an aborted baby. Now, this was an a baby that was aborted back in the 1960s, I believe, in the Netherlands. And so there are Christians who are saying, yes, it's totally fine to get the vaccine and they're Christians who are not. So I want to read you two different sides of this argument from two people

that I really, really respect, two Christians that I respect. So Albert Mueller, he argues in his podcast, the briefing, is he argues that, yes, it is okay for Christians to get this particular vaccine. This is not the only vaccine that was derived from fetal cell lines. So he says, he says on his podcast, a horrifying wrong was done in using, obviously, the fetal cells for the development of vaccine. but he says that does not mean that good cannot come from harm, even as it is good tainted by the realities of a sinful world. This idea is expressed for Christians as the doctrine of double effect.

Some actions have more than one effect. For Christians, the primary intention must aim at virtue and good. The intention behind an act must never seek harm or evil or any moral reality and outcome against God's will. We must never be complicit in intending sin, and certainly this applies to every dimension of abortion. But Albert Mueller says, the Christian also acknowledges a potential double effect. For every moral act can lead to consequences not intended but unavoidable. If the abortion of even a single human baby was required for this vaccine, or if abortion-derived materials were included in the vaccine, Christians would be rightly outraged.

But this is not the case with the COVID-19 vaccine, he says. The vaccine can be taken by pro-life Christians with legitimacy. So he says Christians need to understand that no step in producing these vaccines had any direct involvement in an abortion of a single child. There is also the issue of proximity. The further you go in history, the harder it is to keep a clear line of culpability in morally significant events. That said, the good news about the COVID-19 vaccines is that even these cells, most importantly, from H.EK-293, were used to create the basic shape of the vaccine. No fetal tissue was actually used. So he's saying that, yes, it uses this line from the 1960s in the Netherlands.

and yes, we oppose abortion, but there was no actual fetal tissue that was used in this particular vaccine. And I think he also goes on to argue that while the act of an abortion was wrong and using the cells from this aborted baby was wrong, there is good that is now able to come out of this several decades later and that Christians are able to take the vaccine with integrity because of that. we are removed from the original act of abortion, the more difficult it is to make the case that someone is actually morally responsible for actually taking the vaccine. I don't know if he would also argue, but it sounds like this is where he could possibly go that there is something

redemptive and there is actually something good that is coming and something life-saving that is coming from an act, abortion that we see as egregious, that we know to be murder. And so that, I think, is what he is saying in double effect. Now, John Piper, someone else, I very much respect, would disagree with this. He says that we should not take the vaccine that was derived from those fetal cell lines because, number one, we should never do evil that good may come. He cites Romans 3.8. Some of Paul's adversaries accused him of doing evil that good may come.

Paul responded to this that it was a slanderous charge. So it's bad to do evil, just that good. good may come. Now, I think Albert Mueller would probably say that someone is not actually doing evil by taking this vaccine, but actually that God is making something good out of something that was originally sinful. John Piper goes out to say, or goes on to say, we value Christ in his kingdom more than security or health. And he says, we testify to the sanctity of life. He also says God blesses principled action in his name. So he says, look, people aren't going to understand why you're not taking the vaccine, but we can have no part in what Ephesians calls the unfruitful

works of darkness. Like, we can have no part in any kind of industry or any kind of process that props up the abortion industry or seems to sanction abortion or seems to justify abortion or say that abortion was a necessary evil for the good consequences that came. That is John Piper's argument. Both of these are solid Christian men. They're solid Christian intellectuals. They've thought a lot about this subject, but they land in different places. Whereas John Piper would say it doesn't matter the effect of something like the vaccine. If it was derived from fetal cell lines, then Christians shouldn't have any part of that because we shouldn't have any part of evil. Whereas Albert Mueller, I think, I hope these are accurate summaries of their arguments. He would say, look, I mean, it's a

gracious blessing that something good is coming out of something that was derived from a baby that was evilly and tragically aborted. I understand both arguments very well, and I know you guys are dying for my opinion. You guys ask me about my personal opinion on this all the time. I will refrain from giving it, and I would, I'll put these two articles in the description of this episode, because I do think that it's something that you need to think through yourself. And just one thing I would encourage you, once again, is to not feel bad for asking and not feel bad for thinking and not feel bad for using your brain and doing your research. Now, again, we have to be careful.

Don't go down the, don't go to either extreme. One of conspiracy theory and the other side, which just refuses to ask questions or even open the hood to look beyond what we see. again, there is a temptation in all of this crazy time to not pay attention to things, to just look away, to not ask questions, to not know what's going on. But for the sake of our neighbors, for the sake of our kids, for the sake of ourselves, we have to pay attention and we have to ask questions. And I know that I barely scratched the surface of what's going on on this podcast.

And that's why I don't think I should be your sole source of information, that you should go beyond this podcast and you should think for yourself. That's what I hope that I empower and encourage you to do is to think and to ask good questions. And for us all to critically think and for us to help each other as we navigate through this crazy post-truth, contradictory, chaotic world. Thankfully, Christ is our anchor and his truth is our anchor in all of this. Okay, thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back here on Monday.