Vaccination or Not—Legal and Religious Perspectives

³For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. 

⁴No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity. 

⁵They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; whoever eats their eggs dies, and the crushed egg hatches out a viper. 

⁶Their webs cannot serve as clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. 

⁷Their feet run to evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways. 

⁸The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths. Their roads they have made crooked; no one who walks in them knows peace.

⁹Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 

¹⁰We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead. 

¹¹We all growl like bears; like doves we moan mournfully. We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. 

¹²For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions indeed are with us, and we know our iniquities: 

¹³transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning away from following our God, talking oppression and revolt, conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart.

¹⁴Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter.

¹⁵Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. ¹⁶He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him. [New Revised Standard Version]

   Another Hebrew prophet analyzed the problem in words that, although different, are similarly indicting:

Micah 2:1-11

¹Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. 

²They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance. ³Therefore thus says the Lord: Now, I am devising against this family an evil from which you cannot remove your necks; and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time. ⁴On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you, and wail with bitter lamentation, and say, “We are utterly ruined; the Lord alters the inheritance of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our fields.” ⁵Therefore you will have no one to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord. ⁶“Do not preach” —thus they preach— “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.” ⁷Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Lord’s patience exhausted? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to one who walks uprightly? ⁸But you rise up against my people as an enemy; you strip the robe from the peaceful, from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war. ⁹The women of my people you drive out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my glory forever. ¹⁰Arise and go; for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a grievous destruction. ¹¹If someone were to go about uttering empty falsehoods, saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” such a one would be the preacher for this people! [New Revised Standard Version]

Politicians in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and elsewhere oppose vaccine mandates knowing that such mandates are lawful. They know hospitals in their states have intensive care units filled with unvaccinated and intubated Covid-19 patients. Those politicians are now planning lawsuits and other maneuvers to challenge vaccine mandates. They are designing and fabricating public appearances where they falsely blame vaccine mandates for vaccine hesitancy. And they are doing it, as Micah observed and as Boesak emphasized, because it is in their power.

Likewise, so-called Christian conservative religious leaders oppose vaccine mandates knowing that religious exemptions are provided, knowing that the option of weekly testing for Covid is an alternative to being vaccinated, and knowing that employers are obligated to make reasonable accommodations for persons who object to being vaccinated on religious grounds. As with the politicians, those religious leaders oppose the vaccine mandates and foment opposition to efforts to encourage compliance with the mandates because it is in their power.

The conduct of those politicians and religious leaders goes beyond being simple, scornful and foolish. It is more than hypocritical, more than hubristic, and more than arrogant. It is self-righteous, self-serving, and self-worshiping. Simply put, it is diabolical.

It is the special work of prophetic persons to say so. Courts and judges can declare Covid-19 vaccine mandates lawful. Physicians and medical researchers can attest that vaccines for Covid-19 are safe and effective. Physicians and nurses can administer the vaccines. But the work of exposing, denouncing and condemning the diabolical conduct of politicians and religious leaders who are falsely opposing vaccine mandates belongs to prophetic people.

Hence, Allan Boesak draws our attention to the repeated denunciation of hypocrites by Jesus in Matthew 23 where one reads these words:

Matthew 23:23-33

²³“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. ²⁴You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! 

²⁵“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. 

²⁷“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. ²⁸So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

²⁹“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, ³⁰and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ ³¹Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. ³²Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. ³³You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? [New Revised Standard Version]

Boesak, a prophetic scholar, preacher and activist, observes that,    therefore, such hypocrisy is never “harmless,” and reminds us: