A discussion with an atheist on Christian beliefs that Using aborted fetal cell vaccines is sin.
One of the discussions that takes place in the religious vaccine exemption debate is the insistence by some non-believers that because Jesus does not say explicitly that abortion is sin in the New Testament that Christians cannot justify their refusal to take aborted fetal cell vaccines, or any other vaccines, on religious grounds. I am engaged in such a discussion with an Atheist, Canadian MD on X who asks the question, “Can you point to where in the Bible where it explicitly forbids abortion like thou shalt not or is it your interpretation?”
Yes. “Thou shalt not murder.” – Exodus 20:13
This answer often comes the typical questions from atheists or pro-choice or pro mandated vaccine individuals.
“But where does it say that you can’t kill a fetus?”
To which the following short responses are appropriate:
“But where does it say that you can’t murder a child?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder a child with Down syndrome?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder a child you don’t want?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder boys?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder blondes?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder blacks?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder Nazis?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder Jews?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder old men?”
“But where does it say that you can’t murder your enemies?”
Scripture is clear that no humans are to be murdered. The Bible, end to end, is clear there is no distinction in God’s eyes between any of the above listed subsets of individuals and the inherent value of their lives. All human life is sacred and has value. Christ died to save all humans from condemnation. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” – 1 Peter 3:18
And there is no distinction in scripture between a fetus and a child outside of the womb other than their location, and that has nothing to do with their humanity. The child born at noon was the same person in the morning as they were in the evening.
The only difference between a fertilized egg on the day of conception and a five year old, or a 20 year old or an 80 year old, is time and nutrition. All humans procreate humans. My sons were not a different kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, or species than me during their gestation, and no woman has ever given birth to a duck.
At this point in the conversation we have to stop and look at the gospel as it is the context for interpreting everything in scripture, and every choice that a believer has to make.
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ in four parts:
- We have a Holy, creator God who is perfect, just, and loving.
- We are fallen, broken, sinful, self-serving, deceitful, and have wicked hearts. Because of that we are doomed to be separated from God.
- Despite our unworthiness, God pursues us until our last breath, becoming a man, walking with us on earth, living a perfect life in service to us, dying for our sins, and resurrecting Himself to show us that He has conquered sin, death, and hell itself, simply because of His love for us.
- When we turn from our sin and selfishness, accept God’s grace, and give our lives to Christ, we are forgiven by God. Not only for our individual sins, but our sinful nature. This results in a life of obedience and repentance, being joined to God for eternity, and His promises to live with us and make Himself known to us.
This is the context in which Christians have all moral and ethical conversations. For atheists who do not live inside this paradigm, and do not use it to make choices, it can be difficult for them to understand why we are compelled to do the things that we do. It is a long conversation to try to explain why a Christian could not in their conscience before God allow them to take a vaccine, and want that Christian to explain the logical steps on how they get from A to Q. I will attempt to do so here, however; how do you explain to the satisfaction of an atheist, the conviction of the Holy Spirit that he does not believe exists?
Adding to the difficulty of the conversation is the need to address the differences between the New Testament and the Old Testament. I feel like this is an important context that non believers need to understand. It is said that the Old Testament is the story of a faithless people, rebelling against their faithful God. And the New Testament is the story of the faithful God saving his faithless people. It can be said that the entire Old Testament was only written to make the point that people are horrible. That both Jews and gentiles are a damn mess. That it exists to set up for the New Testament in which God becomes a man in order to save them from themselves, and for him.
The OT makes the point that God loves all people regardless of the fact that they are imminently unlovable. Again that God saves men not because they are lovable, but because he is loving, regardless of the sin that the sinner has or will do. It is the macro understanding of GRACE, deserving the death penalty and being adopted as a Prince by the King himself instead.
Until one understands the unfailing love of God, in response to the constant failures that we are, it’s tough to understand the choices of a Christian.
And it’s tough to distinguish between Old Testament law and New Testament commands. One of the topics that has come up in this conversation on X.
Old Testament law, the“shalls” and “shalt nots” and all that follow, ultimately exist, not to set a standard that man can attain. The purpose of “The Law” is to show man that perfection is unattainable. That they cannot become worthy of God through their own works. It serves to condemn all souls to eternal separation from God. No one can even get past the first one, love and worship God only? HA! Show me the mortal who was able to, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” for more then an hour. He would outshine me by 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
Romans 7 is a brilliant example of Paul’s struggle, and failure, to fulfill even the parts of the Law that he really wants to obey. Ending with the declaration, 24 “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
But he then exclaims in verse 25, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” and takes us into Romans 8, one of the most jubilant expressions of the joy of being a freed slave that there is. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
And Christ himself said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
So do Christians HAVE to follow the law TO BE saved? No.
Christians WANT to follow the law BECAUSE they are saved!
Good works do not bring salvation, they are proof of salvation! I don’t HAVE to Love the LORD my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength, I WANT to Love the LORD my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength.
Now that I am no longer condemned under the law, I am now free to go and learn how to obey the law as best as my meager abilities allow me. The law is no more A deadly mountain that will kill me trying to climb, it is my training ground and I have a “tether to heaven” that will keep me from plunging to my death no matter how badly I fail at my attempts to leap between cliffs.
An important thing to take into consideration about “The Law,” is while we can never achieve full obedience to it, it it is still a pathway to understanding the mind of God. I have been a Christian since 1979 and reading the law since I was 10 years old. I do not understand why God has commanded everything that he has commanded.
But I learned that obeying God is how one comes to understand God.
John 14
“15 If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16 I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; 17 the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.
18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. 19 After a little while, the world no longer is going to see Me, but you are going to see Me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you. 21 The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) *said to Him, “Lord, what has happened that You are going to reveal Yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will follow My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him. 24 The one who does not love Me does not follow My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me
25 “These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you. 27 Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor fearful. 28 You heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in regard to Me, 31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let’s go from here.”
This is the context in which doctor Ken is asking all of the questions about why I cannot participate in the abortion industry. In the soaring gratitude for my salvation, and love for God and in the understanding but God gives us our children as gifts to us and forms them in our wombs, Why would I ever want to do anything that has anything to do with the harm of the most innocent among us?
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
“13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.[a]
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
Psalm 139:13-16
The Bible describes the reaction of John the Baptist to meeting Christ himself when both were still in their mother’s wombs. They were first cousins and they were Jesus and John when they were still in the womb.
Luke 1
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
When this is the way the Bible discusses unborn babies with such recognition, reverence, and tenderness, can you see why it is ridiculous to Christians when you ask, “well did God command you not to have an abortion,” “not to use aborted fetal cell products,” “not to get a vaccine,” “not to eat your baby for if you’re starving,” or is that “just your interpretation?
Doctor Seuss was writing a completely biblical argument in his pro-life tome, Horton hears a who, when he penned, “a person’s a person no matter how small.”
When I use the word anathema, which means complete separation from, can the atheist understand that abortion is the complete opposite of Christianity?
End to end in scripture, children are beloved people from conception until they breathe their last breath. They are sacred, and so valuable, that God himself died for them.
So Christianity, for Christians, does not look at scripture as a list of “have tos,” but as a list of “want to’s.” In fact, that’s how I decide what I do on Saturdays.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” – Exodus 20:8
I keep Saturday Sabbath, and Sabbath was created for man to rest and decompress from the stress of life, so in deciding what is “allowed” and what is “not allowed” I ask myself, do I feel like I have to do this, or do I feel like I want to do this? And only things that I “want tos”are “allowed.” No “have tos” on Saturday.
And finally, We reach the discussion of the Holy Spirit. That as Jesus described in John 14 that when he ascended to heaven after the resurrection that he would be sending the Holy Spirit as our guide that would help us discern which way to go in life. To say to an atheist, “well I have God living inside of me telling me what to do ,” is not necessarily something an for which an atheist has experiential context.
But Scripture has made clear that when we believe that we should or should not do something, whether it is our reasoning or the leading of the Holy Spirit, that we must obey that conviction.
James 4:17 “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
For example, neither drinking nor gambling is not called sin in the Bible. Jesus drank wine.
But if an inveterate gambler and an alcoholic come to Christ, each can be convicted that their former destructive vice is wrong for them. If so drinking or gambling becomes an actual sin against God for them individually, But neither can say it is a sin for the other person. The alcoholic can gamble, and the gambler can drink wine, and neither is in sin.
And this is more akin to what the religious exemption laws in America are about. One does not have to be a Christian, or in any specific religious sect, to exercise their right to a religious exception to vaccination. If it is an offense to your conscience, for whatever reason, Americans have the right to obey their religious conscience, and no one can prevent them for the free exercise of that religion.
This discussion can branch out in many ways, ad infinitum. But I will leave it here until further elucidation is warranted. If you would like to go further down this rabbit hole I recommend you read my my summation of a discussion I had with a British Pastor and Doctor on why he believed that I was compelled by God to take the COVID-19 vaccine. It is a lengthy post and goes deep into both Christian theology and secular philosophy.
