If vaccine is God's gift, is Covid-19 divine punishment?

They also got blamed because they got less plague because they kept the ritual law that happened to be strongly prophylactic.

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Rinsing of hands is not an all bad idea (not to mention quarantine, etc.).

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I think we still pass each other. I stay that view in which God not punished anyone by Covid-19, is much more “pleasant” view of God than God who use Covid-19 to punished at least part of mankind. I think everyone agree on that.

Also, about my views of Jesus, dismal or not, for me true question is: is any basic in New Testament for that? Not only in Gospels, but whole New Testament. And Revelation is quite unsettling book, full of wars and plagues.

If abortion was universal considered a crime, this would be good argument, but it isn’t. This is a problem.

Look at this otherwise. For American use, let consider that murdering person with black skin is not a crime in country X and he/she organs are give to hospital for transplantation. Would I have moral problem with taking organ acquired in such way, even if my own heart is felling? Yes, because my action supports such hideous law, because I benefit from it.

I once hard that during Black Death pope declared “Jews have nothing to do with plague, because there is plague in England and there are no Jews there”. Here is my source.

This is not sick thinking as such, this is just Biblical faith. It can be abused, but what can’t be abused? Probably nothing in this fallen world.

You once said “We have Jesus” so I was thinking you respect New Testament, but now you words implies that you not. As such, it is quite hard what your words really means.

This assumes a motivating link between the two actions or that the law is “all black people who are legally killed will have their organs donated.” It’s not parallel. No babies were killed in order to donate their tissue, nor does the legality of abortion affect the legality of parents choosing to donate the tissue of their offspring to science. The abortion and the donation of tissue and the acceptance of donated tissue and the use of donated tissue to grow or test vaccines and the acceptance of a vaccine are separate events, each of which has its own independent multi-faceted moral dimensions. If people want to consider the unfortunate origin of the fetal tissue when they evaluate the moral dimensions of accepting a vaccine, that is understandable. But if they use the fact that at one point in time someone made a decision they consider immoral (and that set off a chain of separate events) as an excuse to ignore the MANY other even more pressing moral considerations involved with the protection of lives in the here and now through vaccination, that’s a moral reasoning failure.

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That is true, but the people blamed the Jews anyway. My source is an article in Natural History magazine I read long ago. I can track down the exact reference if you will promise to dig it up and read it. You will need a good library and/or Academic Search Premier. Anyway, the pope and the Catholic people were sometimes at odds. For example, during Holy Week, people would savagely attack Jews for crucifying Jesus (actually the Romans did the deed). So the pope would order the Jews to stay inside during Holy Week to protect them.

And in our own day, Pope Francis has endorsed vaccination while some right wing Catholics have opposed him on this (and other things as well).

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As @Christy said, you are making an illogical link between the motivations of discrete actions.
 

That is like saying you support the murder of the son in my analogy because you benefitted from the organ donation.

Jesus is the only lens for looking at the OT, but it’s easy to interpret Him badly too. I put no limit whatsoever on what the label says on the tin. Saviour. The Chosen in whom all are.

He is also the lens for looking at the NT, the Chosen in whom all are not, as he himself said.

 

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
 
Matthew 7:13

Jews would be surprised to hear that. :wink:

Aye T, if I may use your first name. Jewish cultural, historic and linguistic input is essential for understanding the OT, including from religious Jews, but that gives infinitely less warrant for believing in the possibility of God than Jesus. His relationship with the OT is one of arrogation, whether He was God incarnate or not: taking and claiming without immediate justification from the text. Yet, at least humanistically - which is in the trajectory, the evolution of the text - and possibly transcendentally ontologically, He was fully justified.

That lens.

This is at least doubtful. I still don’t understand the whole history videos of Planned Parenthood workers sealing human tissue, what is true and what is lie. Trustful sources said that after that sever medical companies stop taking tissues from PP, which still make me wonder: what is going on?

If we talk about organ harvesting from adults, we probably wouldn’t nuanced it in this way. I understand that one may think that fetus is not human, but I just can’t. If we considered it a human, that probably would be born and grown to health adult, which again, people can have different opinion, making such moral distinctions is probably just impossible.

I don’t like this argument, because it is intellectual unsound and also contrary to Act of the Apostles.

22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves know; 23 him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay: 24 whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.

37 Now when they heard this , they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? 38 And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

To the original question.
In the sense that God deliberately let lose Covid 19 on us I would say no, it is not a direct judgement in that way. However it could be a natural consequence of human misuse of creation. The two theories of of origin, either something related to a wildlife market or accidental release from a laboratory, are both related to carelessness and then the subsequent cover up and then heedless inaction and denials of the problem that made it spread to our nations and within our nations (I am in the UK). It is then a natural "judgement " from the world. I think there is evidence that some other newer viruses (including HIV, that are from monkeys) in the last century, can also be traced back to misuse of the environment and natural world

By the same token, we have developed the sciences and technologies to make vaccines that were not available previously and this is an indirect gift from God who has given us such a knowledge of the world to do so.

The world with its natural systems of biological relations can inflict harm on us when misused but our knowledge of the world can also perhaps help save us from our selfishness and neglect.

Climate change brought about by negligence of the effects of burning fossils fuels may also be another case in point, with our current knowledge increasing of developing alternatives, also a gift of God.

The tissue was donated back in the 70s, long before the time period covered by any of those expose videos. (Here’s a fact check from Congress on the most widely viewed one: https://oversight.house.gov/planned-parenthood-fact-v-fiction) People have at times uncovered some terrible things about individuals breaking the law and there was a crackdown and people went to prison. I know some people who have worked at Planned Parenthood clinics (doing vasectomies and well woman check ups, not abortions) and there simply is not this coordinated official effort to harvest baby parts and sell them illicitly.

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It happened anyway. You don’t think Christians do bad things?

Because they are humans, fallen creatures and Satan is working, Christian do bad things. Moreover, we all, you and me, do bad things, often with feeling of moral superiority.

But this argument is also unsound and probably no one can live according with these reasoning. If something was abused and lead to bad action, we need to reject it. Fine, but this mean we need to reject everything in the world.

Medicine form the time to Alexandria when they sections of living slaves (according to sources left by historians from this period) to this day, make truly evil things. Today due to development of medicine we have organ harvesting. By this kind of reasoning we should reject medicine or even more specific transplantation?

I’m don’t want to be rude, but at the same time, I so often see very selective using of some principle, to reject only the views that we see as unpleasant, that I’m very tired of it and can’t find to much energy to discuss all inconsistencies of all such viewpoints. If you say that we should reject A because it lead to bad consequences, this implies that we should reject medicine, which probably no sane person will do. For such reason this argument can be taken serious only if it is spoken by person that reject modern medicine. I’m sorry, but I can’t find energy to care to much and I can’t see a reasons why I should take seriously such opinions.

If you think such implication doesn’t hold I’m open to listening.