Tag: Christian Ethics

Should Christians Be Concerned About the COVID Vaccine?

Published on by nickcady3 Comments

With COVID cases and deaths surging around the world, several vaccines are ready to be released to the public. Moderna and Pfizer have developed vaccines in the US with the help of Operation Warp Speed, another vaccine has been developed at Oxford University, and still others are in the works in China.

Even if these vaccines are effective, many Christians are wondering if they are safe and/or ethical. For example, for those who work in the medical field, the vaccine will be mandatory. Other workplaces may ask their employees to get it as well. Can Christians take the vaccine in good conscience?

Earlier this year, I wrote a post titled “Could the Mark of the Beast be Transmitted Through a Coronavirus Vaccine?”, but other questions still exist, such as whether RNA vaccines change a person’s DNA, or whether these vaccines use cell lines taken from babies killed in abortion.

World News (a Christian news outlet) podcast had a great episode this week, in which they interviewed Dr. Charles Horton, a Christian doctor, who responded to the key concerns related to Christians taking a COVID vaccine. The audio clip is embedded below, but here are a few of the key issues:

Do RNA vaccines change a person’s DNA?

The concern here is that an RNA vaccine (which the current COVID vaccines are), cause a change in your DNA. To change a person’s DNA, this argument goes, is to change who a person is and how they were created by God, and is therefore possibly an affront against God, and a potentially dangerous prospect, that a person could be forever changed in their DNA by taking such a vaccine.

Here is Dr. Horton’s response:

DNA is the language in which God writes each person’s genetic code. Cells don’t make proteins directly from DNA, though. First they transcribe it to what’s called mRNA, for messenger RNA, and then they make proteins from the messenger RNA.

If you remember vinyl records—I know I’m dating myself here—DNA is like the aluminum master disc that they made with a lathe. Now, when you transcribe it to mRNA, it’s like making a vinyl record from that aluminum master disc. Using that information, then, to make proteins is like putting the record on a turntable and playing it. Here, we’re dealing with mRNA and leaving DNA out of it—so we can play the record, but you can’t make more copies of it. And that’s relevant here because it’s not changing your body’s genetic code, which is your DNA. It’s giving a new transcript. It’s sort of putting a different record in the player, if you will. And then when that RNA is gone, it’s gone. 

Changes to patients’ genetic code are one problem we don’t need to worry about.

Do These Vaccines Use Cell Lines Taken from Aborted Babies?

This is an ethical question for Christians. Here is Dr. Horton’s answer:

One of the unique things about non-replicating mRNA vaccines is they actually don’t have to use cell lines at all, whether ethically sourced or not. And according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, both of the leading mRNA vaccines—the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech one—are indeed produced without cell lines.

I do have to note here that the news is not as good for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson ones, which do use those unethical cell lines.

Incidentally, Sanofi/GSK and Novavax are also OK—according to the list that Charlotte Lozier Institute publishes. They use a cell line called Sf9, which is derived from insects. As far as inactivated vaccines, listeners in the U.S. aren’t likely to see those. They’re from China. But apparently all three of those use a cell line from monkeys—so our listeners overseas can keep that in mind.

Could This Vaccine Be Unsafe Because It has been Rushed?

Dr. Horton explains that vaccine makers have used the mRNA process before in the lab for a long time, but it has never been used in a market drug before. He goes on to say:

A lot of this relates to how the time frame for vaccine development had always worked up until now: things happen slowly and over a course of years. 

One of the advantages, though, of RNA vaccine technology is if this works, it will allow future vaccine development to happen much more quickly, and it would let us respond to future threats in a much more timely fashion. 

Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if you will take this vaccine when it becomes available, but hopefully this answers some of your questions about these issues and possible concerns.

Here is the audio of the interview:

Book Review: Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

Published on by nickcady5 Comments

Sam Allbery is an Anglican pastor from Maidenhead, England, who also works with Ravi Zacharias International Ministry (RZIM), Cedarville University, and writes for The Gospel Coalition. He is the author of a number of books, including Is God Anti-Gay?, and 7 Myths about Singleness.

I was introduced to Sam last year when he spoke at the Calvary Global Network conference. See: Sam Allbery on Sexual Ethics and Moral Intuition

One thing that is worth knowing about Sam is that by his own admonition, he has only ever had romantic desires and sexual attraction to other men, yet he has chosen to live a celibate life of devotion to God.

When I saw that Sam’s latest book “Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?,” was being released, I preordered a copy. Upon my return from my recent trip to Europe, I was happy to see that the book had arrived while I was away, and I used the first week of my quarantine to read it from cover to cover.

The Supreme Human Right?

Sam begins his book by answering the question in the title of the book:

Just fifteen years ago Christians like me, who follow the teaching of the Bible, would have been thought of as old-fashioned for holding to the traditional Christian understanding of sex being exclusively for marriage, but now, increasingly, we are thought of as being dangerous to society.

Who we sleep with is seen as a supreme human right. Anything that seems to constrain our choice in this area is somehow viewed as an existential threat.

God cares who we sleep with because he cares deeply about the people who are doing the sleeping. He cares because sex was his idea, not ours. He cares because misusing sex can profoundly hurt and damage. He cares because he regards us as worthy of his care.

Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?, pp. 9-10

Honoring Sacred Space

One of Allberry’s key points of argument is to show that the Bible does not take a low view of sex, seeing it as something dirty and unholy, but just the opposite: it takes a much higher view of our physical bodies and what we do with them than the secular world does, describing them as “temples” (1 Corinthians 6:19) and therefore sacred space.

It is precisely because of this high view of the physical body that God cares so much about sex, insisting that this powerful thing be used in the right ways, lest it cause pain and destruction.

He points out that when Jesus says that for a man to look lustfully at a woman is to break the commandment against adultery, Jesus is declaring that the sexuality of the person being looked at is precious and valuable: an integrity that deserves to be honored, and must not be violated, even in the privacy of another person’s mind, and to do so is to wrong that person.

Jesus’ teaching reflects something we see throughout the whole Bible: how we treat one another sexually matters a great deal to God.

Any sexual assault is a violation of sacred space.

The pain of sexual assault is not the pain of a grazed knee but the trauma of holy space being desecrated. Maybe our bodies are less like playthings and more like temples.

pp. 19, 20, 30

The reason our bodies matter so much is because of the Imago Dei (the Image of God) with which we are endowed uniquely as human beings. It is for this reason that we believe that all human life, regardless of physical ability or disability, income or education level, is equal in value.

There is something sacred about human life.

We [all] know that human life matters in a unique way. When someone treats a pet life a human, we think it a bit odd. But when someone treats a human being like an animal, we know deep down that it is terribly wrong.

When we fawn over a baby, we’re not coldly observing a mere organism. We’re beholding one who bears divine finger prints. And because a human being is the sacred product of sex, the sexual process by which that person is made is also sacred.

p. 35

Holy Fire

Sam Allberry describes the power of sex with the metaphor of fire: where you do it matters. In the fireplace of a house it can create heat and light which brings warmth and life. Lighting one elsewhere can be dangerous, destructive, and life-threatening. The context matters.

Furthermore, he points out that the purpose of sex is unification and giving. To use it in a way which does not serve these purposes is to take it out of the life-giving context.

Not Just Physical

God cares who we sleep with because God cares about us as people. Sex deeply affects the whole person: physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

When someone is sexually assaulted or when someone is sexually betrayed, it is not just their body that is attacked; they as a person are violated.

p. 51

Redemption

One of Sam Allberry’s emphases in this book is that while he wants to explain the biblical and theological reasoning behind the Bible’s sexual ethics, he also wants to communicate the Bible’s message of redemption for those who have fallen short.

He points out that not only are all of us sinners, all of us are sexual sinners – and the promise of the gospel is forgiveness, redemption, and new life in Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

This book is short, informative, and engaging. It answers several very commonly asked questions, which are only going to be asked more and more in the years to come, including questions about LGBTQ and co-habitation. Everyone would do well to educate themselves on the answers to these questions, and this book by Sam Allberry is an excellent resource for doing so.

Does Forgiveness Simply Mean Suppressing Your Feelings?

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In reading through some material for a class I’m taking on Christian ethics, I ran across an interesting discussion of the ethic of forgiveness, related to Jesus as Priest (part of that being that one role of priests in the Old Testament is that they were mediators of forgiveness between God and humans).

Here is the quote from Esther Reed in the book “The Genesis of Ethics”:

Christian ethics has much to share with – as well as to learn from – the survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence. A problem for both is that forgiveness is too often confused with passive acceptance of wrong, or the suppression of hurt and anger.

The supposed virtue of self-control, and the ideal of self-sacrifice or martyrdom, can lead women to believe that in accepting abuse and exploitation they are doing what Christianity, especially in its support for family values, requires. For neither, however, does forgiveness properly equate with sweeping wrong aside. Rather, it has regard for the specifics of a person’s situation and never trivializes any suffering endured. Anything less is what Bonhoeffer calls ‘cheap grace’, because there is no recognition of guilt and no call for genuine repentance.

I recently spoke about this very thing at White Fields Church – on the oft-missunderstood topic of ‘turning the other cheek’ and what that means, because it has often been taken to mean allowing people to walk all over you or permitting people to abuse you. I don’t believe that’s what it means – and I explained that in detail in a study titled “Loving Your Enemies” – the audio of which can be found here.