When some random stranger decides not to get vaccinated against COVID for less than rock solid reasons, any response that strikes your fancy seems appropriate (even those that are provoked out of less than rock solid motivations). When the person is not random or a stranger, the question of what is appropriate has to be taken more seriously. I had occasion to ponder the appropriateness of a response recently when I found myself conversing at an outdoor gathering with the daughter of family friends whom I hadn't seen in a while. A lot had happened to her since our last conversation-- pregnancy, marriage, conversion to a particularly fiery brand of Christianity. She first entered our lives fresh from a Russian orphanage when she and her brother were adopted as young children by our friends a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Though she was raised in a very East Coast American urban secular way, the way she spoke about her relationship with Jesus was very reminiscent of the memories I have of my most ancient immigrant female relatives from childhood. I wanted to ascribe her evangelism to genes, but I remind myself that she and her brother were not infants when they were adopted, so her full throttle embrace of Christianity could well be a rediscovery of what could have been for a very small child who finds herself in a Russian orphanage a necessary wellspring of strength. Facing the challenges of special circumstances, let alone of young adulthood at the end of history, it was certainly that for her now.
Always a bit of an unfiltered open book (bless her heart), she brought it up. She had probed me first, to see if by any luck I was a brother in Christ, and when that turned out not to be the case, to be sure I wasn't too in the pocket of Satan. Satisfied that I was benign at worst, she confessed to being unvaccinated and explained that it was her decision to trust in Jesus above the vaccine. She admitted that she was equally afraid of taking the vaccine, given her pregnancy and her distrust of the medical establishment based on some bad experiences with it, and of not taking it. To her mind, both were equally dangerous propositions, likely to give her and her unborn daughter lethal cases of COVID. Even so she was determined to forgo the vaccine and let Jesus handle it (she pointed to the sky as she said this). This was causing her agony as she was getting grief for it from the vaccine friendly world of her parents (my world) as well as from the Jesus centric world of her husband for entertaining doubt about the power of Jesus.
My first instinct when a grown up person is talking to me directly is to outwardly respect their viewpoint regardless of what's going on with me inwardly. If I have a relationship or history with the person, especially if it's a younger person, I'm inclined to accept their agency in their own life. But for some reason it occurred to me that since there was an opening for being reasoned with about the vaccine-- which her obstetrician after all was urging her to take-- I could at least voice support for the safeguard of getting it. As I debated the wisdom of this, I thought to myself, "what if your words make the difference?"
I wanted to remind her (for she had surely heard everything) that millions of people had taken the vaccine by now, and that it has had demonstrable results in preventing the spread and in diminishing the effects of the virus for those who have contracted the Delta variant of it. I said, why not get the vaccine and put an end to your agony over it? She countered that as a person with some rheumatoid arthritis she would have to get periodic booster shots. What's more there would be other variants-- the spiral of vaccination was potentially never ending. Better to let Jesus inoculate you for good. But the Delta variant is much more contagious. Wasn't she afraid of being around so many unvaccinated people? Everyone she knew was vaccinated, she said, even her husband who was opposed to it on religious grounds but whose workplace required it. By her being out on a limb with it, her circle had created a bubble of immunity around her. But what about those outside her circle in her church? Weren't they potential sources of the disease that her lack of immunity would make her vulnerable to? She preferred to put her faith in Jesus rather than the vaccine. Having gone down the road I had to say it: Was that not an unfair burden being placed on Jesus? What if in spite of her faith, she got COVID because she didn't get vaccinated. She could pass it on to others including those she loved. I could not bring myself to say out loud the implications-- would it mean Jesus failed? Or would it mean that she had failed to get Jesus's protection? Was there not some religious obligation to not put Jesus in that position? But of course the ability to ask the question is a demonstration of one's lack of understanding of faith. Still, it was clear from her response that she was in agony over the possibility.
In the end, as it turned out, I had not pushed her over the line on vaccination. But it was also certainly true that I would not be the last person to proffer an opinion on her choice, and her heart was far from at ease on the question.
Her posture is very familiar to me. You make a decision-- to keep smoking; to quit school or a job; to get back with someone no one thinks is good for you; to associate with bad elements-- for possibly less than stellar reasons -- fear; stubbornness; weak but compelling issues of character or principle or desire for belief; simple willfulness; to be blunt, bad faith and rationalizations-- and the tenuousness of it guarantees that it remains unsettled and that you'll have to explain yourself perpetually to every schmo who wants a crack at knocking sense into you. The truth is, the decision is made. It may be an objectively bad decision, but there will be no going back on it, because it has been decided. If it is wrong and you pay for it and live, it will be a lesson. But what if, by luck or by some miracle it turns out as you hope and pray it will, to be right?
What could I do but wish her the best?
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