The conversation about vaccines is getting brutal.
In my personal circles, I have friends and family who are both unvaccinated and vaccinated and it’s been disheartening to witness the harshness with which people can address one another. It’s especially bad on the internet. The comments section can be vicious. Disagreements concerning the Covid-19 vaccines are often a loveless affair.
Amid this societal divide over vaccines, it seems that agreement is a prerequisite for love.
“I will love you, but first you must agree with me on this issue.”
“I will treat you with dignity, but only if we are like-minded.”
As a Christian, I’ve had to ask myself, is agreement actually a condition of loving someone? Did Christ reserve love exclusively for those who “agreed” with him?
I don’t think so.
Even a cursory review of the Gospels reveals a Christ that went out of his way to offer extraordinary love to people who did not share his perspective or who were even outright seeking to do him harm.
When in the hostile land of Samaria, Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman who, by Jewish standards, he would have been expected to ostracize. Instead, he treats her with the utmost respect and invites her into conversation. I find it interesting that he treats her with love even before she accepts Christ as the Messiah.
Surrounded by hostile Pharisees who were leading him to his death, Jesus reached out and healed the wounds of one of his enemies, after one of his disciples violently attempted to thwart the attempts to arrest Jesus (Matthew 26:47-56).
Even though Jesus knew that his disciple Peter would betray him, Jesus did not retaliate or attack Peter. He did confront Peter about the impending betrayal, and he didn’t “excuse” the idea of betrayal. However, even with the foreknowledge of Peter’s betrayal, Jesus still treated Peter with love. He doesn’t reject or disparage Peter. Instead he says to Peter, “ I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:31)
But if we’re talking about Scripture, there are also many cases where Jesus speaks rather harshly to individuals who he believes are in grave error or who are hardening their hearts against truth. He literally called the Pharisees vipers!
Amid the conversation about the pandemic and specifically the vaccine, many of us have strongly opposing views. Maybe, at times, we are feeling attacked.
Jesus approached disagreement with love and dignity, but he also demonstrates that it can be necessary to approach great evil with bold and justified anger.
So does that mean that if we believe a certain position regarding the vaccines to be connected to evil that we can treat someone who holds this view in the same way that Jesus treated someone like the Pharisees?
The Pharisees had evil intentions regarding Jesus and he was denouncing their machinations and calling them to repentance. When you are having a conversation with someone who disagrees with you regarding a vaccine-related topic, are you facing someone with evil intentions and a hardened heart? Or are you facing someone who cares for the welfare of people just like you, but disagrees with you on how to achieve that welfare? These are hard questions and at times they require prayerful discernment.
However, regardless of what kind of disagreement we are engaging with, there is a principle from which none of us is exempt:
When we are engaging with someone with whom we disagree, we cannot lose sight of our first calling as Christians: the calling to love, before all else. St. Paul reminds us that we can speak all the truth in the world, but if we do not have love, “we are nothing.” (1 Corinth 13)
Certainly, love can look like a lot of different things, and sometimes love can be “tough love.” However, according to the Gospels, love in its greatest form is the love where one “lays down his life for the sake of his friends.” (Jn 15:13) This kind of self-sacrificial love is radically focused on the good of the other person. It is a love that does not lose sight of the precious humanity of whoever we are encountering in disagreement.
Here are a couple practical ways that we can make sure that love is at the forefront of any any disagreement, especially in regards to vaccines:
Speaking to one another as the children of God that we are, both in front of our faces and behind each other’s backs.
We are all made in the image and likeness of God and therefore we all have inextricable dignity. Even in disagreement, our tone and words should convey that we see the dignity of one another.
If you do believe someone is in grave error or danger, prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to engage in conversation.
Especially when we are facing disagreements where the stakes seem high, we can find ourselves communicating out of a spirit of fear, hatred or prideful judgement.
When Jesus called out people who were in error (including his own disciples), we can trust that he was not doing so out of fear or hatred or pride. As Christians, we believe that Jesus spoke out of an anointing of the Holy Spirit, who inspired when and how he spoke to people.
In this time of grave division, we must stay especially close to the Holy Spirit. We must all pray in humility that we would only speak how and when the Spirit directs us too. Arguments fed by vice, rather than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, will only serve to create more chaos.
Disagreement - even intense disagreement - will always be part of the human experience. And love will always be our primary calling as followers of Jesus.
Agreement is not a prerequisite for love. Love is the prerequisite to everything.
