The one-two punch of the Covid-19 pandemic and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s return to the national stage have revived the perennial topic of vaccine denialism. There are many reasons this skepticism remains so popular, some more understandable than others. A friend was recently freaking out about vaccines. She had just vaccinated her daughter, and now the kid was having some unpleasant symptoms. My friend was sure of two things: The symptoms were a reaction to the vaccine, and they were horribly dangerous, possibly lethal.
No, three things: that this was evidence she had made a mistake. Her kid was suffering, and therefore she should not have vaccinated her.
I know where she was coming from. My kids and I are all fully vaccinated with every recommended vaccine, and I have done enough research that I understand more or less how they work, what is in them and why they are so important. At the same time, I am old enough to see that just because something is backed by science does not mean it is infallible. What I am not old enough to remember is what life was like before vaccines. I have a single chickenpox scar on my chin, but I never saw mumps, never saw rubella, never saw polio. My childhood friends all survived childhood.
And it may seem, because of this basically healthy world we live in, that the choice we face is between deciding to take the risk of bad side effects or refusing to take that risk. But really, the choice is between taking the risk of massive suffering from horrifying diseases or taking the much smaller risk of much lesser suffering from vaccinating. That is the real choice.
But vaccines are the victim of their own success. Because they have been so effective, people forget what they are protecting us against, forget why they are necessary.
Salvation is the same.
If we have grown up Catholic, or even if our conversion or reversion was a few years ago, it is very easy to start taking salvation for granted. Even people who are not Christian themselves have been marinating in Christianity for so long, they don’t recognize it for what it is, which is the very air we breathe. Honest historians do know this and will point out just how much Christianity has permeated and permanently transformed the world we live in.
But because Christianity is so familiar, we simply see it as the norm rather than as something novel, amazing and transformative. This is partly because we don’t clearly understand what life was like before it—or without it.
Jesus Christ, too, is a victim of his own success.
Because we can’t remember or conceive of life without Christ, we may start to think a Christless life wasn’t so bad, that the real threat of entering into the waters of baptism are the side effects that may come along with it: things like the dullness of having to do all those churchy obligations or the embarrassment of living in ways our friends or family don’t understand or the real pains of self-denial. Or that you might have to make big changes in your life.
So is it worth the risk? Is it true that the immense benefits of being Christian outweigh its likely risks?
Before I answer that question, let’s return to the original analogy. I used to think that vaccine skeptics were just people who hadn’t done their homework or who did not understand very much history or science. Now I see that many of them landed where they did because someone treated them poorly in the name of science. Someone who claimed to be speaking with the authority of modern medicine scoffed at their pain or minimized their suffering or did them harm and insisted it was actually healing.
They, understandably, eventually soured on the whole enterprise and became Western medicine skeptics, if not outright deniers.
The same is true for many people who reject Christianity. Sometimes it is because they lack courage or they are in denial or they simply do not want to put up with even the minor inconveniences and trials that conversion brings.
But sometimes, it is because someone treated them poorly, maybe even barbarically, in the name of Christ. Someone who claimed to be speaking with the authority of Jesus scoffed at their pain or minimized their suffering or did them harm and called it healing. The conquistadors did it, and a mean catechism teacher might do it, and people insisting on making excuses for abuse are doing it right now.
The church may be divinely led, but it is still people, and sometimes people make mistakes, and sometimes they have bad motivations. This is just a fact that all adults must face.
I am not going to tell you that you will become grateful for Christianity if you just spend some time imagining how horrible life would be without it. It is helpful to know some history and to understand that concepts like the sanctity of human life and care for the poor did not just come out of nowhere. But the truth is, we do not know what the world would be like if Jesus had never come, and we don’t know what our life would be like if we had never been baptized. I feel confident in saying it would be bad; but this is probably not a mental exercise that will motivate anyone to change their hearts. It certainly is not going to generate any love.
And that is the crux of the matter. Salvation is not an intellectual matter. It is a matter of the heart.
I have compared health care to salvation here, but the truth is that salvation is not like anything else. All comparisons fail because the whole point of Jesus is that he is different. He is not a savior, he is the savior. He is not the best example of someone or something who can help us; he is help itself. He is goodness. He is truth. He is life.
He is the victim of his own success, but he is a victim who lives again, and changes forever what it means to be alive. His followers may just be people, but he is not. He is not only a real person but really God. He is unconquerable. His work cannot be undone.
How do we get our heads on straight? How do we avoid letting the minor and even the major side effects of Christianity dissuade us from enjoying the incomprehensible benefits of knowing Jesus?
The question gives the answer: by coming to know him more and more. Not by dwelling on how miserable we might be without him but by seeking out all the mercies and delights of being with him. The more we do this, the more apparent they become. The more you know him, the more reasons you will find to love him.
