One of the weightier objections to the COVID-19 vaccination concerns the obligatory mandates that some countries and companies have instituted.
I consider it weighty because there are increasingly credible studies that have mounted up evidence that suggests that natural immunity is just as effective if not more so than vaccine-induced immunity.
So just as a vaccine certificate proves vaccine-induced immunity, there could be an equally viable and valid scenario where individuals can have an option to prove their natural immunity as well. Yet somehow policy makers seem reluctant to consider this route.
There is of course nothing surprising about this seemingly ominous stance by policy makers. Policy determination in our world systems is rarely about what is fair or just, but rather what is convenient and profitable for sustaining the status quo.
So what are we to do with such a cavalier approach to policy making? Resist and fight or submit and comply? This is the epicentre of the vaccination schism.
Throughout the history of humankind, socio-political landscapes have been characterised by these dual responses to hegemonic powers.
The most fascinating non-binary if not transcendent approach to engaging hegemonic powers came from a young itinerant teacher from a relatively small Jewish nation that had suffered centuries of unrelenting colonialism from the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and, during His time on earth, the Romans.
Born to a poor family in the rural village of Galilee, in the greater scheme of things, not much would ever have been expected from the mostly peasantry kinship of these villages.
Yet this young Rabbi, as some came to endearingly call him, offered a hitherto unthinkable approach of engaging hegemonic powers.
Against the backdrop of the majestic Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that the self-imposed King of Judah, Herod the Great, had repaired, creating a paradoxical pride among the Jewish faithful, some of the ruling elite confronted Jesus, asking whether it was lawful to pay colonial taxes to their colonial masters.
This question was, of course, uncanny. It was basically seeking Jesus to bind Himself to a binary narrative of the time. Do we submit and comply (that is pay taxes) or do we resist and fight (that is refuse to pay taxes at the risk of incurring the mighty wrath of the colonial masters)?
In a way, the vaccination schism resembles the dilemma that confronted the Jewish faithful.
Jesus’ answer was seminal, dare I say, even for our time. “Render to the Emperor what is the Emperor’s and to God what is God’s,” He answered to their utter astonishment. Jesus refused to be bound to the binary narrative the Jewish nation had created.
Just prior to His astonishing utterance, Jesus asked them to give Him a coin used for tax. They gave Him a denarius coin with the Emperor’s head at the back.
So transposing this dilemma to our times, the world systems are the de facto Emperor. So the question is: What belongs to the world systems and what belongs to God?
The world system determination is to impose the vaccine mandates, just like the Emperor of Rome imposed the tax mandate. Jesus’ majestically nuanced response was to separate what was the Emperor’s from what was God’s.
So what is God’s in our time? Let me venture to submit that what is God’s is representing the heart of God in all affairs of humanity. What is the heart of God? That we love God with all our heart and our neighbour as we love ourselves. Yet as the Scriptures exposit, no one can claim to love God when they can’t love their neighbour.
What is to love? For God so loved the world that He gave… that He gave… that He gave what was most precious to Him. That we too may give to our neighbour what is most precious to us, that they too may experience the love of God.
So what is God’s in our 21st Century Empire? Then render to God what is God’s.
Back to the vaccination schism. Much, if not all, that is at the heart of objections to the vaccination has nothing to do with what is of God.
Jesus refused to be entangled in the binary narrative of resist and fight or submit and comply. Rather, He challenges us to focus on what is important to pursue what is of God; to represent the heart of God to the desperate and dying world.
The question is therefore not whether to vaccinate or not, but rather pursuing what is of God’s, loving our neighbour as we love ourselves, thus rendering to God what is of God’s.
