The Adventist Review published an article on Friday by James Standish.
The article reminded me of a casserole created by tossing everything on the third shelf of the refrigerator into a 9 x 13 dish and baking until immolated. Such culinary disasters are usually best disposed of, and we recommend that—after we have analyzed the incompatible ingredients in this ‘stew.’
To begin, Standish tells a meandering story about a friend attending a class reunion, the punch line being that one of her classmates “died a horrible, lonely, and completely unnecessary death.” He was killed by lies, according to Standish. He wasn’t vaccinated, thus the victim of a lack of truth.
He goes on to say that there is a dividing line in Adventism, namely Covid vaccination. That much is true.
It is also true that Standish implies—if not outright states—that since we don’t allow people who smoke and drink to be baptized members, we shouldn’t allow the unvaccinated. His words,
Something needs to change.
We are a church community who won’t let people join until they stop smoking and drinking, but today we have people taking over entire churches and spreading a strange teaching that is directly responsible, at the time of writing, for roughly 2,000 unvaccinated Americans dying every single day.
With much hyperbole, he accuses people (Seventh-day Adventists) who question the efficacy of the Covid Jab of being good old fashioned murderers. As if that isn’t enough he goes on, digging the hole deeper.
In a manner reminiscent of Bill Knott’s 2015 sour grapes Time to Marginalize article, Standish summons the church to deal with these medical miscreants (hereafter referred to as the un-vaccinated).
The time for polite platitudes is well past. It’s time to stand up clearly, strongly, and completely unambiguously for the Adventist health message when we need it most. And to take on the challenge of the non-Adventist approach to faith and reason that is driving this schism in our church. Adventists have been a global driver of responsible vaccination.
Translation. Pro-Jab is Adventist. Standish says so. Non-Jab is un-Adventist. Don’t be like the un-Jabbed masses. Star-bellied Sneetches are in, plain-bellied Sneetches are OUT.
He then recounts some of his childhood experiences from the mission field, no doubt many of which are pleasant. He says Adventists are pro-Jab because he “saw it firsthand”, generously appropriating to himself the authority to speak for all of us in the church. Sorry, I don’t believe that being a mission kid qualifies a person as an expert; it certainly does not bequeath the power to speak for everyone else in the church on matters of conscience.
He cites an extreme example (progressives love to do this) of eight doctors who died. On February 24 the world learned that eight health workers vaccinating children for polio were assassinated in Afghanistan by Islamic extremists. Questions: Were they killed because they were pro-vaccination? Or because they were infidels? It doesn’t matter, the implication is that Islamic extremists are an example of non-Jabbers. Notice that he doesn’t refer to the Amish—who reached herd immunity quite on their own thank you—or the troubling VAERS reports of vaccine injury and death. That doesn’t fit the narrative.
I agree that murderous Islamic extremism is bad, even worse than torturous articles suggesting that non-Jabbed plain-bellied sneetches are suffering from an overdose of non-Adventism. Saith Standish,
As I write, however, the anti-vax extremism killing the most people isn’t among traditional healers whose place in society is threatened, nor is it among Islamic extremists in faraway lands. Today the extremism has infected our church, and it is spreading one social media post at a time.
The brave Standish is exposing an evil among us, worse than Islamic murders. The un-Jabbed masses. You know who you are.
When it comes to conflict of opinion, a good idea is “Don’t watch what I say; watch what I do.” When it comes to COVID vaccines, in 2021, 96 percent of American physicians were already vaccinated, as were 88 percent of American nurses. Nearly all politicians are vaccinated. I live in a neighborhood full of professors, federal government employees, lawyers, senior military officials, and health-care workers. When the vaccines came out, all the talk on the neighborhood listserv was how to get the vaccine the fastest. These are the people with access to power, people with the ability to parse the data. People at the top of the food chain. They were scrambling to be first in line. That should tell us something.
It does tell us something. It tells us that most of these people have television in their homes and were piping the Covid narrative non-stop into their living rooms (like many Americans). This assumption of mine is just as anecdotal as Standish’s, by the way.
The AMA article that Standish cites from Politico, comes from a small sample of 301 doctors. Hardly a wide cross section of the medical field. That said, a profession where employees could be fired for being un-Jabbed IS likely to have a higher compliance rate then the general population, even if grudgingly. It’s good practice for getting a mark on your hand, if you get my drift.
Questions: How many of your neighbors are polilibs like yourself? You live in one of the most liberal areas of a blue state. Might that have a bearing on an issue that was eagerly politicized by the 2020 opposition party? See if you can figure it out, and report back to us.
Summary of Standish’s Position
Not being Covid-vaccinated is un-Adventist. Dear Standish, how about you mind your own business on this matter? You want the Jab and its endless boosters, be my guest.
Not being Covid-vaccinated will lead people to die horrible, lonely, completely unnecessary deaths. Or not. Many studies suggest natural immunity has superior resistance to Covid.
You can’t be a member if you smoke or drink (perhaps a few slip through the cracks, eh?) so maybe you shouldn’t be a member if you are un-Jabbed.
Un-Jabbed people are pretty much killers. That gives him the high moral ground and the un-Jabbed no ground at all, unless they are buried under it. The assumption is that the Jab = life. Not according to Vaers, Sir.
Smart people get Jabbed, so you should too.
Medically trained people who eloquently debunk the Covid narrative data are quirky.
If Loma Linda and Advent Health and Mayo Clinic push the Jab, we should take their word for it. Yeah, because Loma Linda and AdventHealth are paragons of moral authority.
“As Adventists, we’ve always followed a very careful approach to study. We compare source to source, we combine reason and inspiration, we search for harmony between the spiritual and the natural world.” My thoughts: Objective study is admirable, but when Facebook and Twitter accounts are being suspended for positing an alternative viewpoint, how is that objective? It isn’t—it is the opposite of free speech and the legitimate sharing of ideas. It is medical tyranny disguised as virtue. Anything that strays from the dominant narrative is unacceptable information to these heavy-handed technocrats and their shock troop army of fact checkers.
“The anti-vax virus that’s infected our church comes out of a very different approach.” My thoughts: In many cases it is anti-coercion, not antivax. One can be opposed to the Covid-Jab without being antivax in general (like myself), and one can be pro-Covid Jab without becoming a super salesman for it, or giving mob support to vaccine mandates. Ahem.
Observations
So Jab hesitation is a denominational error that must be opposed, and dare I say, mandated away? My dear Standish, if they are THAT good, why don’t we make vaccination a fundamental belief? Go ahead and introduce the idea to the Church manual and Fundamental Beliefs committee.
Medical autonomy is not only a cornerstone of medical ethics; it is also one of the most basic building blocks of freedom, guaranteed by our Constitution. If you own yourself, then you have the freedom to make these personal intimate decisions. Otherwise you are not truly free to exercise any of your other rights.
There’s a long line of cases that supports this notion of medical autonomy. The Supreme Court has recognized one’s right to refuse life-saving treatment and unwanted bodily intrusions, as well as one’s right to care for one’s own health and seek out the doctor of one’s choice. Lower courts have followed suit, even recognizing one’s right to choose to cut their own hair.
Unfortunately, government has largely grown to ignore these decisions, increasingly prioritizing the preferences of public policy decisionmakers or scientists at the expense of every person’s right to shape his or her own destiny. This is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of freedom and human flourishing, both of which ARE Adventist principles. After all, Revelation 13 still looms ahead of us.
Medical paternalism treats individuals as children who should be protected from making the “wrong” decisions. But free people must be free to make bad decisions—and enjoy the rewards or suffer the consequences. Otherwise, they are not free. Historic Adventism understood this, including the often lauded ex-Adventist AT Jones.
In summary, something did die a horrible, lonely and unnecessary death in Standish’s article. It was Standish’s objectivity, followed closely by his agenda.
Now we can toss the casserole out.
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