There are a lot of arguments for and against routine childhood vaccinations. Our own decision not to routinely vaccinate our children is founded on a number of factors, but the biggest one is this: we believe God knew what He was doing when He designed our bodies.
See, vaccines administered to infants fundamentally alter the development of the immune system, so that its mature form is completely different than that of an immune system that matured without the influence of vaccines. As with everything else in modern society, we like to think that we can improve on God’s design, so this “redesign” of the immune system is viewed as a good thing. But isn’t that a humanist perspective? Can we really improve on the design of the Creator of the universe? Do we really believe we’re smarter than He is?
Yes, vaccines may prevent certain acute illnesses — ‘though reading their own literature will tell you that their consistency in doing so is less than stellar — but we seem to have traded in acute illnesses (which in most cases are harmless and simply uncomfortable for a few days or weeks) for chronic ones, like rheumatoid arthritis. An article in The Journal of Autoimmunity stated that “some autoimmune phenomena are clearly related to immunization.” Did you catch that? Clearly related. We’re not just talking about guesses. They know that vaccination can cause autoimmune problems.*
Real food is a similar issue. We think that we can do better than God at creating “butter,” so we make margarine and shortening and tell people they’re healthier. Then we wonder why heart disease rates rise. We take apart God’s foods and use their little tiny pieces. We synthesize things and consume chemical cocktails — and then we wonder why, as a society, our health is falling apart. Why do we have a huge rise in asthma and autism? I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet it’s related to some area where we thought we could do better than God — our food, our technology, etc.
Unfortunately, there are some things we just cannot control. We live where we live and when we live, and we cannot avoid environmental toxins, overload of electromagnetic fields from all of our electronics, etc. If we live in the city and we’re not well-off, we can’t help but consume the chemicals they add to our water. But we can choose to eat real food (at least to a degree; some of that is restricted to those with big bucks, too), and we can choose to let our children’s bodies grow and develop as God created them to.
*Please note that this does not necessarily mean that all autoimmune disease is a result of vaccination, and I’m not trying to say that it is.
Great post! My thoughts exactly! 🙂
Great post. Thanks, I needed confirmation today.
Does this mean we also shouldn’t take medicine? What about surgeries and things like that? So if we get sick do we just let it run its course and leave the outcome to God? Genuinely asking
It means we have the wisdom and common sense to recognize the difference between tampering with a healthy body, already functioning as God designed it to, and working to support a sick body to get back into proper working order.
(Although in a lot of cases, letting a sickness “run its course” is actually the healthiest approach! We’ve been trained to fear things like fever — which are not actually illness, but the body’s tools for fighting illness. So most of us have actually been trained to fight the body rather than help the body fight the illness.)
Oh that makes sense. So taking medicine or having a surgery is okay because its getting back to health. But a vaccine is putting something foreign into a body that is already healthy. Thanks so much for taking the time to reply!
Exactly. This idea goes together with the other post that you were commenting on: in the one scenario (taking care of the sick), we’re aiming to restore things to the way God designed them to function. In the other scenario (the vaccine), we’re essentially saying God’s design isn’t good enough; we have to rework the immune system according to our own design.