Re: Al Mohler on the Covid Vaccines

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Hello and welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I've been asked to respond to a article that was put out on the 14th by Al Mohler on the

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COVID -19 vaccines. And I'm not gonna give this a very long treatment.

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I just wanna respond to, I think there's seven arguments that Al Mohler makes here, really in support of taking this vaccine.

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And so I wanna just respond to each one of them individually, give you a few things to think about because I don't think his argument holds water.

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And like I said, I was asked about this by some people who are close to me who were sent this and it was kind of disturbing to them because they're not planning on taking the vaccine, which

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I believe is just fine. It's okay if you don't wanna take the vaccine. Am I allowed to say that? I hope I'm allowed to say that.

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I hope YouTube doesn't ban me for saying, it's okay if that's the way you feel about this. And I think there are some good reasons some people feel that way.

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And so we'll get into it a little bit. Quick announcement, for those who ordered

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Social Justice Goes to Church, I have a copy of it somewhere around here. Here we go. For those who ordered this,

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I did on, I think it was the 16th and the 17th, I had said, if you order it those two days,

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I'm gonna send you a copy of Scott David Allen's book, Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice.

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And for some of you, you may have already even received it. You have a package or it's on its way with those two books included.

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For many of you though, that is not the case. You have a package on its way, but it only contains my book.

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And you will be getting Scott David Allen's book and as soon as I get an order in from him,

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I'm gonna send them out to you. So you're gonna get two different packages. So I need to make that clear because I know some of you are gonna be emailing me, hey, wait a minute.

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I was told if I order it on these two days, I'm gonna get both books. You will get both books, but they're gonna be coming separately just because I was overwhelmed with orders a little more than I thought.

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And so, and that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. By the way, you can still get Social Justice Goes to Church.

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I don't have the special deal running now. And obviously you're not getting it in time for Christmas, but you can still go get that.

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Go to socialjusticegoestochurch .com or I think worldviewconversation .com

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and go get it there as well. So that's my little announcement. Now let's get into this situation with Al Mohler and his argument in favor of COVID vaccines.

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So I pulled some of the quotes from this because I think he makes, if I'm not mistaken, it's seven arguments. Yes, seven.

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And we're just gonna go through each one. I put, as I was reading through his article, I just put little notes and I'm gonna read for you some of those notes.

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So here's his first argument. Christians do not believe in medical non -interventionism, which is true, right?

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We believe, obviously we believe that there is a place for medicine.

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In fact, we find this in the law, in the Mosaic Law, we find the priest actually even served in this kind of a function.

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But here's the thing, and I think this is the thing that needs to, Al Mohler needs to address or anyone who's really pushing this.

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Christians also do not believe in a totalitarian medical priesthood. Let me say that again.

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Christians also do not believe in a totalitarian medical priesthood. So yeah, of course we believe in medicine.

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In fact, there are many doctors, thousands of doctors. In fact, there's a declaration that was signed and I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but a bunch of doctors came together and said that these reactions to the

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COVID -19, quote unquote pandemic, the closing businesses, lockdown, masks, the whole nine yards,

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I'm not sure if they've talked about this vaccine yet, but they said, we don't believe in this.

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We don't think it's actually good. Actually, people probably should be getting outside. They should be in the fresh air. There's actually healthy ways and there's preventative measures that can be taken.

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Getting people to coop up in their houses is not the way to do this. So I know there's disagreement in the medical community.

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So when we say medical non -interventionism, well, which doctors are you referring to?

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What kind of medicine? It's the medicine. It's the science of medicine itself that we believe has some good qualities that can help humankind.

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This is part of God's providence to us. We don't believe in a priesthood of doctors that just because they have a

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DR by their name and they are graduated from medical school means that they are somehow superior and they get to rule the rest of us and the government just needs to implement whatever they say, especially when there are other doctors and many of them who disagree.

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So this is kind of the issue. And I think this first point sidesteps that issue.

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It's almost a straw man. Of course, we believe in medicine. I mean, who doesn't believe, even if you're for alternative kinds of medicines and treatments, et cetera, who doesn't believe that in God's providence, he has put things on this earth that can help heal humans.

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I mean, maybe there's a few people out there, but Al Mohler's not talking to probably the lion's share of his audience.

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And this is probably his best argument because it's true on a certain level. It just misses the point. Secondly, he says, we must consider the derivation of the vaccine itself.

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And this is what he says, in most of the major COVID -19 vaccines, there was a huge, there was a use of fetal cell lines, fetal meaning baby, cell lines, which are known as HEK -293.

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Christians need to understand, Al Mohler goes on to say, that no step in producing these vaccines had any direct involvement in an abortion of a single child.

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Okay, well, here's the response. Yet the cell lines were, this is my words, yet the cell lines were from an aborted fetus.

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So there was technically, and I should say baby, honestly. I don't know why, I think I was just responding to him and I wrote down the word he used.

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So there was technically a step taken at some point in the development of the vaccine, which involved taking human life.

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So this is kind of, it's deceptive. It's like, I'm not sure what exactly, why would he would say this other than he just really wants to promote this vaccine?

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Or maybe he's just honestly, I mean, I don't know. This makes no sense. How do you reconcile these two statements?

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The COVID -19 vaccines, most of the major ones, there was the use of fetal cell lines. And then he says,

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Christians need to understand that no step in producing these vaccines had any direct involvement in an abortion. Okay, well, maybe not technically the steps in producing this specific vaccine, but if you trace it back, they're working off of steps that were taken, which did involve aborting, killing a human being.

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They are working off that. That is a step in, you trace it back, that's one of the steps.

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So I don't know, this is, on a moral level, I don't think what Al Mohler's saying makes a lot of sense to me.

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Al Mohler goes on, he says, 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.

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Now, this is interesting to me because what he's essentially saying is, what if we're 100 years in the future?

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The people involved in killing this child who was used, cell lines were used in our inoculations, et cetera, those people are gone.

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They're getting their judgment from God. We can't do anything about it. But think about this. Just, what was it, two months ago,

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Al Mohler and the Board of Southern Seminary were talking about, well, we need to have this scholarship fund for black students, specifically because of somehow it's tied to what's happened in the seminary's past and barriers that existed and exclusionary policy, et cetera, that we're gonna somehow write or address or,

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I don't know, make up for in 2020. And oftentimes, when you hear social justice warrior evangelicals talk about the church, they go back to the time period that they've been taught in church history in which the church was horrible or bad or was an error.

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So right now, we're talking about Christian nationalism a lot. So they act as if sometimes we're living in a time of the

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Crusades. When it comes to if ever slavery is brought up in the American context, chattel slavery, they wanna go back to 1860 or 1830 or 1810 and say, the church in 2020 is just like that.

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We're living off of that legacy. And they do this with other issues as well, depending on the flavor of the month.

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But what they do not do is what Al Mohler does here. They don't say, well, the further you go back, harder it is to, you just can't keep a clear line of culpability.

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I mean, who's really to blame? Who can we really punish for these wrongs? Well, they punish themselves.

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Or they punish, really, to be more accurate about it, they punish everyone else and they try to gain some virtue by giving the impression that they're punishing themselves.

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And this is the game that kind of, in my opinion, it is a game that gets played.

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And there are others, one of the huge differences between these two things is that, let's say in the case of Southern Seminary, they had some kind of exclusive barrier that existed before.

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Well, now what they're doing is they're, they for a while changed that so that the school is accepting of everyone.

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I mean, this is my understanding. They're accepting of everyone. And anyone can come to, it's a private institution, it's their property, and they're making the choice now.

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Hey, we're gonna accept everyone. And I don't know if they accept specifically females into certain degree programs.

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I don't really know enough about it. I went to Southeastern and I kind of know more about what Southeastern is like, but I'm assuming

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Southern's similar to this. So at least on an ethnic basis, they're not making, of course, they're not making any kinds of barriers.

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Except now, if you are not black, you don't have the benefit of having this extra scholarship fund.

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So that's, if you wanna call that a barrier, I guess you could try to make that argument. Is it an overcorrection?

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What is it? Well, the reality is they stopped doing the thing that they considered to be wrong.

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They stopped. Hey, we're creating barriers for these kinds of students. We're not doing it anymore. Everyone can come on in, get an education.

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You can pay us, we'll give you an education. You can, we'll market our product to you without discriminating.

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Your money's as good as the person who's a different ethnicity. This is different, guys.

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This is different. And one of the reasons it's different is because we're still using the stem lines or the cell lines from these aborted fetus, this murdered human being.

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We're still using this. This isn't like, it's not like we've stopped anywhere along the line.

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So here, this is the contradiction in a way that you can have these more evangelical, socially justice -leaning leaders who would never make this kind of an argument about anything the social justice movement cares about, even if it's stopped, even if there's no separate drinking fountains, none of that stuff exists, but they will still use this because that's the critical race theory stuff.

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That's all that's just embedded in the culture of our institution, et cetera. You can't see it explicitly, but as Matt Hall said about Southern Seminary, it's really white.

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It's such a white place. It's so horrible. So that's what they do. But when it comes to something like this, when it comes to using actual cell lines from a murdered human without their consent or anything, no, it's hard.

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That line of culpability is just so hard to find out. And I would also suggest, perhaps more importantly than everything

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I just said, who cares? Who cares if that...

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I guess what Elmo was trying to say is you're not really culpable, and it's so hard to really tell who's culpable.

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If your conscience bothers you about this, if you say, man, this is stealing the flesh off of someone, murdering them, incentivizing a murder of someone.

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I mean, I'll be honest, this is how I feel about this. My conscience won't... I just, I don't wanna do this. This is not something

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I feel comfortable with at all. And the reason for it is because I feel like culpability does not have a statute of limitations.

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And I think the source of this cell line is known. It's not like there was something stolen that was stolen by someone else that was stolen by someone.

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And you can't figure out, you can't get to the root. We know exactly where this cell line came from. There's no question about it.

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And I would think that I'm incentivizing. I'm putting a stamp of approval in some way on this if I were to take it, to participate in it.

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I don't even like the appearance of evil. Now that's my conscience speaking about this.

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I do think that I would bear some kind of culpability if I knowingly went into it like that. At the very least, at the very least.

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And there's nothing wrong with a Christian thinking that. And this kind of an argument, don't let this ease your conscience.

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I don't see this as a valid argument at all. And the people promote,

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Al Mohler doesn't see this as a valid argument when it comes to other things, that practices that actually have been ended.

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So let's keep going here. He says, the vaccine's structure relied upon the cell lines of HEK 293, which originated with an aborted fetus.

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This is a tragedy of history. A horrifying wrong was done, but that does not mean that good cannot come from that harm, even as it is a good tainted by the realities of a sinful world.

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Now my response is, this sounds like an appeal to moral pragmatism. Let me flesh that out. Al Mohler's right in this sense, because Joseph said it,

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God can bring good out of evil. Joseph said to his brothers, you intended evil, God used for good, right?

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That was when he was enslaved in the most unjust way. And that's what he told them.

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He didn't say to them though, well, keep doing what you were doing to me, because good came out of it. Maybe good will come out of it again.

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He didn't say to them, go invest in a company that does this, because participating in this could bring about some good.

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There's nothing wrong with that. He just forgave them. And I'd like to suggest that's the big difference here.

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For those who have a conscience which is bothered by this, it's because they think they're directly participating in it, because the

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DNA from that individual who was murdered, and I don't know the details.

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I don't know if the intent was, I probably should look into it more, but if the intention was, we're gonna murder this person in order to advance medicine, or this is already something that's planned, but we're gonna, hey, look, we get to advance medicine by this planned murder, premeditated murder.

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There's something morally wrong with that. Thou shall not kill. So it's pretty cut and dry. And the DNA from that person is still being perpetuated.

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It's from those cell lines that this vaccine is developed. And so this is a quandary for those who feel as though not indirectly, but actually directly, they feel as though they're directly participating in something that is evil.

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Al Mohler doesn't touch on that. He assumes, his very statement here assumes that the wrong was done in the past, that the culpability doesn't exist.

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This is just the reality of a sinful world, but the culpability isn't on those who would participate in incentivizing a vaccine like this.

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Now, I wanna point out one thing, again, hypocritically speaking, Al Mohler would not, and look, someone can go look this up for me if they want, but in the last two, three years,

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Al Mohler's not gonna be coming out with statements using this argument about something like slavery, let's say. Booker T.

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Washington said something similar to Joseph. He said, I don't like slavery, but I'm really glad I was raised in a country where I heard the gospel.

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I wouldn't have gotten it in Africa. That's what he said in his autobiography, Up From Slavery. Al Mohler wouldn't be able to say that.

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Social justice -leaning Christians would not be able to say that kind of thing, even though it's true. In many circumstances, it is.

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That's what Booker T. Washington said. Hey, look, there was some wrong that was done, but look at what's happened as a result, and I'm grateful for some of these results.

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God's providence was seen in this. The difference is, though, Booker T. Washington, like Joseph, isn't going and saying, hey, let's bring it back.

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Let's keep doing it, because you know all those people over there in Africa, they really don't have the gospel, and so we need to continue this, bring back the international, or the transatlantic slave trade, and go try to purchase from slave markets on the

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Ivory Coast. He's not saying that. He's, and that's where I think the difference lies.

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That is where the difference lies. And that's where also the hypocrisy lies. So let's keep going here.

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We're still on the second point. We got seven to get through, but this is the most involved. He says, if the abortion of even a single human baby was required for this vaccine, or if abortion -derived materials were included in the vaccine,

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Christians would be rightly outraged. This is not the case. Really? He says, the vaccine can be taken by pro -life

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Christians with legitimacy. Now, here's my question. Why would the organic material in a cell line not be considered abortion -derived materials?

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That's what I don't get. I mean, if you understand how this works, even on a rudimentary level, those would be abortion -derived materials.

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So this is inherently contradictory, and this is, it's a word salad. Al Mohler, I mean,

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Russell Moore's the worst at this, but I mean, I feel as though he just is a replica of Al Mohler.

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He just does it, he doesn't do it as well. Al Mohler does it better, but it's still a word salad.

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This isn't getting to the bottom of anything. It's inherently contradictory, and it raises more questions than it answers. He says, the third moral principle, here's number three,

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Christians must consider deals, oh, let me redo this, hold on.

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The third moral principle Christians must consider deals with efficacy and safety of the vaccine.

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Okay, now, and this is a very simple response. It's hard to know that in this early process.

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I'm not sure exactly how we're supposed to, I mean, this is kind of how I feel.

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I don't necessarily trust something that's only been out there for a few weeks. I mean, this was,

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I mean, I know, I get it. Trump's saying, hey, warp speed, we did a great job. Yeah, but you've done it so quickly, it's very hard to have confidence.

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What kind of, there haven't been enough trials done for most of us, and then as we get news coming out of hospitals, and I mean,

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I've gotten a bunch of these things sent to me where, look, nurses have Bell's palsy, or there's someone, four people had a seizure, or what's the one that I saw the other day?

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It was a nurse talking about the vaccine, and she just passes out. Okay, we're not quite comfortable with this yet.

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So you can show us all the studies you want. We haven't had enough time for many of us to trust this.

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The fourth issue, he says, is whether or not a medical treatment is made mandatory by a governing authority. Guys, this one, this takes the cake.

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He says, the federal government has authority over interstate commerce and transportation, including who rides on trains and who flies on planes.

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Thus, there are some massive areas where the federal government could effectively enact a mandate for vaccination.

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Okay, let me read for you, this is from the 10th Amendment Center, and this is a summary of kind of what the founders would have thought about the clause he is referring to, interstate commerce.

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The original intent of the Commerce Clause was to make normal or regular commerce between the states. Thus, it was designed to promote trade and exchange, not restrict it.

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Further, it was specifically aimed at preventing the states from enacting impediments to the free flow of commerce, such as tariffs, quotas, and taxes.

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The Interstate Commerce Clause has been stretched to its limit in ways that are frankly terrible.

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This is, it's the common good, Interstate Commerce Clause, these general things that are appealed to that had nothing to do with the intention of the founders.

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And Al Mohler is perpetuating that here. No, if we're gonna buy this logic, then

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I guess that's a blank check. What can't the government effectively enact? What can't they mandate?

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I guess they can mandate anything they want, because if you can make some kind of an argument by two or three steps that'll affect interstate commerce, there you go.

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The fifth principle for Christians thinking about vaccines deals with the common good, the issue of love of neighbor. Okay, this is a weasel word because this is used so often by the left, because whatever their issue is, is always the common good.

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It's always the one that promotes quote unquote human flourishing. Here's my question. Is it loving to force someone to take a vaccine they and those around them have a remarkably high chance of surviving?

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Is it loving neighbor to ask someone to violate their conscience? Is it loving neighbor to incentivize the use of fetal cell lines?

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Now, let me flesh some of this out for you as well. That second point, is it loving neighbor to ask someone to violate their conscience?

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Have you noticed that when masks were the big issue, and they still are, but in June when the

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Gospel Coalition was putting out their article on masks and other Christian leaders were chiming in, it was always the weaker brother who we needed to pay attention to.

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We needed to put the mask on for the weaker brother. Even if we didn't have a conscience that told us we should have a mask, they did because it's obedience to government.

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So therefore we don't wanna tempt them to sin, right? I think that logic is ridiculous. I think I've talked about it before. Not the time and place right now, but that was a logic employed.

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Notice now that logic is not employed. What about the weaker brother who has a moral problem with taking the vaccine or just doesn't trust it?

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Aren't they the weaker brother? Maybe you should not take the vaccine so as not to tempt the weaker brother. That would be parallel logic with the logic we were given for masks back in June.

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Absolute contradiction, absolute hypocrisy, absolute ridiculousness.

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And I'm gonna call him out for it because this is stupid on such a basic level.

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I'm just saying, if you're gonna use one argument, don't, and I believe Al Mohler did, if I'm not mistaken.

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He did kind of come out for the masks. Now, did he use the weaker brother argument? I'm not exactly sure.

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I'm just giving you kind of a general assessment of the discourse that I have noticed online lately.

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The weaker brother argument has been dropped. And I'm not saying that's even necessarily a legitimate argument.

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I'm just saying this common good principle is ignoring the fact that, what about those who do have actual reservations?

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And how do you know this is actually going to promote the common good? How do you know this is actually love of neighbor?

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So let's keep going. The sixth principle pertains to the integrity of the family and the authority of parents.

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We ought to be wary of any government or other institution, intrusion, I'm sorry, into the family structure. In this case, we should stand against government policies that give vaccines to children and adolescents over and against, or without the knowledge of the convictions of their parents.

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Here's my response. How is this consistent with the principle of loving neighbor and appealing to an incorrect understanding of the

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Interstate Commerce Clause? What about the government intruding into the realm of healthy adults capable of risk assessment?

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You know, when I was a kid, which wasn't that long ago, you could go to many parks, state parks in the state

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I was raised in, and you didn't have to wear a helmet when you rode a bicycle. Now, you can say whether that's stupid to not wear a helmet.

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There were times I did not wear a helmet. In fact, actually to this day, and I am not telling anyone to copy me on this.

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To this day, when I go cycling, I generally don't wear a helmet. Now, if I'm gonna go crazy mountain biking or something,

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I probably will. That's me. Wearing seatbelts, same thing.

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I remember when those laws were going into effect. Many states still didn't have those laws when I was a kid.

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That wasn't that long ago. I had been in situations where I needed to unbuckle and unbuckle quick to get out of a vehicle that was going to get into trouble.

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There was a time I actually jumped out of a vehicle once, which is a story for another day.

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Now everyone's curious. But that would, did I violate the law?

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Oh my goodness, was I violating Romans 13? That happened actually a few weeks ago. I was driving in the snow on a mountain, and sheer cliff, and I decided to unbuckle my seatbelt because just in case things went south quick,

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I wanna bail. Yep, I violated the law, I guess. But it was for the actual purpose behind the law, which is to protect human life, and that's why

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I did it. To protect my own life, in that case. Now, this whole argument, you see, it just, it exposes everything else in my mind.

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Because why carve out this exception for the family? The interstate commerce doesn't give authority?

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What about, I mean, doesn't that apply to children as well as adults? Apparently not in this case. What about adults?

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If it's not good for children, why should adults have to follow this mandate if it becomes a mandate?

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There was a time in this country when adults were capable of making adult decisions. And that was one of them.

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Risk assessment, health concerns, those kinds of things. In fact, the flu shot was never mandated.

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I was always, my doctor always wanted me to take it. For the last few years, I haven't done a flu shot.

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And actually, I'll be honest with you, and again, you don't have to follow my example in this. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a flu shot. But there were times

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I took the flu shot and I got sick. And the last, what, five years, I haven't had a flu shot.

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I have not gotten the flu in any, I haven't gotten the flu at all. I barely ever get sick, barely ever.

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Except last late December, when I was traveling, I was in New York, right where the virus came, and I got a terrible flu for a few days.

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And now I'm looking back, wondering if it was COVID. But yeah, in general, I didn't take the flu shot.

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I'm an adult, I'm an adult. This is my decision to make.

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And the assumption here, you hear this often, well, you do it for your elderly relatives or something.

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Yeah, but that's their decision, that's my decision. We work that out in the context of a family.

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The one, the family that Al Mohler's championing here, that's where you work out those kinds of decisions. If they're uncomfortable, then you don't have to go to their house during the pandemic or maybe you do,

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I don't know. Maybe you can get a vaccine that doesn't have that fetal cell line, or maybe, you work it out, is what

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I'm saying. And your elderly grandparents are also capable of making adult decisions.

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Now, if they're not, if you're taking care of them, then it's your decision to make. What's the best thing? And if you wanna put something that's fairly untested and new into them to protect them, that's up to you.

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But not everyone feels that way, and that's an okay thing. It's okay, you're not crazy for thinking that, guys.

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So I think this is just inherently contradictory because it violates the whole, okay, now it's fine to violate loving neighbor, now it's fine to violate commerce clause because, hey, parents have authority over their kids.

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But what about self -government, what this country was founded on? Okay, all right, let's keep going.

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The seventh and final moral principle has to do with access and priority, which is perhaps the easiest of the seven to understand.

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Those who are at greater risk or serving on the front lines of this pandemic ought to be the first in line to receive the vaccine. In general,

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I'm in agreement with the principle behind this, absolutely. I think he's right on this. This is the one that I'm like, yeah, you're right on that one,

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Dr. Moeller, I agree. But I would say, who determines this? Because oftentimes, those who are on the front line of this have been exposed and have probably gotten it at some point, they've gotten

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COVID. And they would actually be probably the least, they would need it the least, a vaccine, if they've already had it.

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I don't think I need a vaccine, I think I've already had it. But there are those who know that they already had it. So, kind of a hole in that, in my opinion.

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Now, here's just some problems, final thoughts for you. So, to summarize, the fetal cell lines, that's one issue.

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Exodus 20, 13, you shall not murder. Many Christians are concerned about incentivizing murder and using unjustified as the means pragmatism.

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And what I mean by incentivizing murder is to put their stamp of approval, to say this is okay, and it's okay for us to continue this kind of thing.

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To, I mean, at least with like harvesting organs, we have the decency to get that person's consent.

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You put it usually on your license, driver's license. It's okay to harvest organs from me. But this isn't the case when it comes to murdering someone and then not even having their consent, taking their

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DNA and developing these cell lines from it. And then social control is the other concern.

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Is this also being used for the purpose of social control and oppression? And I just wanna point out one thing to you. Alternative, this is from the

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Washington Times, July 3rd, 2020. Go to like DuckDuckGo, don't go to Google. Go to DuckDuckGo and type in hydroxychloroquine.

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Just type it in and see what comes up. Alternative effective treatments were banned.

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A peer -reviewed study published Thursday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found that 13 % of hospitalized patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died of COVID -19 compared to 26 .4

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% who died who were not treated with the drug. Now, there is a mountain of information now that seems to suggest at the very least that this is effective.

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And I actually know some people who I will never say who they are who have used this treatment and it has worked out for them very well.

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Why in the world was this basically effectively banned? Why can't you even go in many places?

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You can't go to like a CVS and even get this cheap kind of medicine.

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Why not? Why is this? And there's many doctors who still prescribe it who have come up with their own cocktails and things that help treat

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COVID -19. Do these people who are behind this vaccine, who are the medical establishment,

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I don't mean actual people who know science, those who are in government, do they really care about people or do they care about something else?

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And this is the question. Are they about lining their own pockets and exerting control over you for a virus that has an incredibly high survival rate if you are in a demographic like I'm in?

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Are they actually concerned about you or do they wanna exert control, make you dependent on them? You have to close your business and now, oh good, you got 600 bucks from the government.

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Yippee. I mean, is this about effectively changing this country, making it ready for something like the

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Great Reset? Go to the World Health Organization, or not the World, well, you could go there as well, but go to the World Economic Forum.

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Type in some of this stuff. What are they saying about COVID -19? What are they saying about travel cards and needing vaccine travel cards?

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You know, in the future, we'll just need our digital travel card to, I mean, is this where things are going?

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And if this is where things are going, at what step in the process do you say no? I say it's now. That's where I'm at.

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I say no. I'm smart enough to see the intention behind some of these things. I'm not saying everyone who's administering it is evil.

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They're not. But I'm seeing where this is going. And somewhere along the line, someone's gotta put their foot down.

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We are adults. We are capable of making risk assessment decisions for ourselves. Our grandparents are capable, and if they're not, we are capable of making it for them if we're taking care of them.

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This is, this whole appeal to the common good, et cetera, is basically an appeal to the nanny state.

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It's saying that you do not have the wherewithal to make actual rational decisions. You need the government. You need these medical professionals.

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Oh, and not those medical professionals who have great arguments for using something that actually can effectively treat the virus.

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No, our medical professionals whose solution is more mandates, more state control, and more making you slaves of the civil government.

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No, thank you. Not into it. Is it necessary? Last question I have. Matthew 9, 12 says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

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Those who are sick. Those who are at risk of getting sick, we can include that in there. I think the principle would hold.

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Those are the ones that need the treatment. But those who aren't really at risk here, like someone in my demographic, no, we don't need it.

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Sorry. You don't need the vaccine. Honestly, what you need is some exercise, eating healthy.

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And if you do get it, maybe taking some hydroxychloroquine or some of the basic things that we all take when we have issues.

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And I do have some preexisting conditions, by the way. When I got this, and I do have some, but if you have serious preexisting conditions, that may be a different story for you.

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But for those who, for the vast majority of the population, this is not something that is actually necessary.

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It is those who are sick who need a physician. So that is my response to Al Mohler's statement there, and more broadly speaking, my response to the argument that we're being here, that is being passed around all over the place.

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And this is being promoted by pastors, by church leaders. And I understand some of this is out of ignorance, but you gotta think through this, guys.

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I mean, look, I didn't spend much time. I read the article. I maybe spent 20 minutes just thinking through each step.

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And that's what I just ask you to do as pastors. Spend just a little bit of time filtering these things before you send this off to your congregation.

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Think through it, because this is not a good argument. These are not good arguments, I should say. And we need to be careful of that.

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So anyway, hey, look. On a lighter spot, I hope that you all have a very

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Merry Christmas. And I don't know where you all are gonna be, whether there are mandates and lockdowns and all these kinds of things, but I hope that you can enjoy it with your family and celebrate the birth of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the Christmas holiday, Holy Day, is about.

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And don't let, and these political things, I know that it'll be the discussion at my home in some ways.

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We're gonna talk about some of this stuff. But don't let those things suck the focus right out of Christmas or the significance of the event.

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I hope you all are able, maybe even if you get up early, if you, whatever the case may be, whatever your situation is, you're able to read the

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Christmas story, you're able to meditate on the Word of God, and you're able to be grateful that God himself penetrated this world, became a human being so that he could save humanity.

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Those who are sick need the physician. And we are all sick with one particular disease that no amount of medicine can get rid of, and that is the disease of sin.

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We all violate God's law. We are all in need of salvation. And that's why Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost.

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And so he gave his life, ultimately. He came to die. He was born to die.

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And we celebrate the fact that he made salvation possible. He chose those who are in him, those who have repented and put their trust in him, he chose you before the foundation of the world.

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And this is a, his first coming, what we're celebrating, this is a glimpse into what his second coming is gonna look like, what the kingdom is gonna look like.

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And we can rest assured there is coming a time. Jesus healed people during his first coming. Well, during his second coming, he is going to wipe away every tear.

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He is going, I mean, we have a new heavens and we have a new earth coming. And that's what we're celebrating.

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And it's just a matter of time, guys. And that's a comfort. And that's what Christmas ultimately is about. The government, it says, shall rest on his shoulders.

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Prince of Peace, mighty God, everlasting father. These are victorious things.

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And so I just wanted to leave you with that note, rather than the down note of reading this ridiculous