Doubting the Bible Has A Lot in Common With Doubting the Vaccine

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Two different people reached out to me. I don't want to give their names because this isn't to shame them. I just think if two different people reach out to me at the exact same time, more of you may be wondering about this.

Follow along with me here. I'm going to use the Bible because pretty much every one of you, whether you are a believer or not, is familiar enough with the Bible. Multiple gospel accounts have the story of Jesus casting Legion out of the possessed man. Specifically, you can hear this account in the Gospel of Mark, and it is a man.

Now, in another gospel account, it's two men. There's a contradiction there. If you read the Gospel of John, the account of Lazarus is there. It's not in any of the synoptic gospels. Why is that? It's such a powerful story. In fact, John says it is the reason that the Pharisees plotted to kill Jesus ultimately was because of the raising of Lazarus, and yet it's not in the other gospels. If it was the reason, why isn't it there?

If you read the Synoptic Gospel accounts versus John's account, it reads very much like John is suggesting that Jesus' Passover meal with the apostles was on a different day than in the other gospels. In some gospel accounts, like with the Centurion and the person who grabs Jesus's garment, the orders are reversed. There appear to be two different times or different events where Jesus fed the crowd. Why are the gospels different on those things?

In every single one of those perceived contradictions, there are legitimate, reasonable, and widely accepted explanations. There are 2000 years of orthodoxy on why those are the case. In many cases, the reason that things are in different order is because of who the targeted audience is. If you know about Greek literature, for example, you know that if you were talking to a Greek audience, your emphasis is on certain details and your chronology and everything based on telling the story to the Greeks.

For example, John, in a very Hellenized society, makes sure to have Peter and Judas regularly appear in the book of John. You learn more about the interactions of Judas with the apostles in John's story because John is writing to a largely Greek audience and the Greek audience is a very character-based audience. In being a very character-based audience, essentially John is telling the story of two people who are both friends of Jesus and makes the point to be like Peter, not like Judas.

There's a redemption story at the end of John's book but it's the redemption story of Peter, not of Judas. It's because he's writing to a Greek audience. The same with the other stories as well. It depends on who the audience is. If you are writing to a likely Jewish audience like Mark, you want to cut out as many unnecessary people as possible. When you've got the possessed man, you're focused on one person, not two people, because Jewish literature of the time was very specific and very focused. Ancillary details were tended to be left out. There are a lot of reasons for the variations in scripture.

Now, that being said, if you listen to or read a lot of the critical scholarship on the Bible, you would come away thinking it's a bunch of hooey. Whether it's Bart Ehrman or others who are critical of scripture and don't believe it's the word of God.

They will twist it. They will emphasize the disagreements, and they will downplay the 2000 years of Orthodox. One of the most prominent questions that Bible skeptics will ask is, “Why isn't the story of Lazarus in the rest of scripture? Why is he only mentioned in John's account?” When John is very, very specific, it is that particular incident, the raising of Lazarus that caused the Jews to want to kill Christ. Well, the answer is because John was written late in John's life, well after all the other gospels had been written.

It is exceedingly likely that you had to wait for the reveal of Lazarus until Lazarus was dead, like naturally dead, or the Romans who had exterminated Jesus would have probably done the same to Lazarus's family. John and the gospel writers were doing a big favor to Lazarus's family in not bringing him up until late in John's life when he writes the gospel of John.

Emphasizing the doubts

If you listen to the critical theorists and the critical literary scholars, they will emphasize and elevate the doubts. Now I'm not just talking about the Bible here. It's a perfect segue to explain to you what's going on.

If you focus entirely on the critical scholars, if you focus entirely on the doubters, you come away thinking the doubters are winning the argument. You need to spend some time with 2000 years of reasonable orthodoxy to understand there actually are answers to all of the questions. If you never do that, if you decide they're BS, if you decide they're not telling you the truth, if you decide, well, they have an interest, they have an interest in this, then you're probably not going to read them.

That gets me to the vaccine. Two separate people reached out to me today, both citing Dr. Robert Malone. A lot of you have cited Dr. Robert Malone, who claims to be the inventor of mRNA. He's actually been called out on that and has walked it back but his original claim was that he invented a technology involved in transporting mRNA. It's well settled on who the inventors are and it's not in dispute.

There are a lot of people who are spending so much time on the doubts raised by people like Dr. Malone and giving full veracity to them; they're very much like the critical literary scholars in scripture who cast all sorts of doubt on scripture. You spend all of your time there, guess what? You're going to elevate the doubts above the truth as well.

You spend all of your time there and you decide the pharmaceutical industry has a vested financial interest in getting me to have the vaccine and the government has a vested financial interest in trying to force me to get it as a matter of elevating their control and setting precedents. You're going to focus on the doubters. You're going to elevate the doubt. It is true, the vaccine is not 100% effective. It is true, there are people who have had health side effects.

In fact, there are people who have had health side effects of every medicine known to mankind. I mean, have you ever listened to the Viagra commercial? If it lasts more than four hours, you go to the doctor. How do they know that? Well, it probably happened to somebody and they had to go to the doctor. Does it happen to everybody? No. Does it happen to most people? No. Does it happen to a large minority? No. Does it happen to some? Yes.

If you elevate the doubters and give them sanction to inform your worldview, your worldview is going to reflect the doubters. Whether it's about scripture, whether it's about the vaccine. You can say, "Well, what about the other side?" Well, why don't you listen to the rebuttals? Not just the rebuttal of one person. Listen to the overwhelming number of rebuttals.

The overwhelming preponderance of science and data is that yes, there are some problems for some people with vaccines, just as there are for some people who can't eat peanuts. They have a deadly allergic reaction. Do we stop everybody from eating peanuts? No. Now you're saying, "Well, it's peanuts. They're trying to force us to get the vaccine." Yes. They also do that with the MMR, if you want to go to school. We know, in fact, there is a vaccine registry of people who have been paid claims, because the MMR has had a negative side effect against them. It is hundreds of people out of hundreds of millions who have gotten it.

Now it is true. The mRNA vaccine has more people respond negatively to it. It is also true that, for example, they put a pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to the potential of a blood clot. You're more likely to get that same blood clot from taking birth control than you are from the Johnson and Johnson vaccine if you're a woman. Yet we elevate the blood clot concern of the vaccine when it's actually far less likely for a woman to get that than they are to get a blood clot from birth control. Yet birth control is easily accessible.

All I'm saying is that there are reasons to be concerned, but overwhelmingly most of those reasons have a scientifically Orthodox response.

If you spend your time overwhelmingly with a group of people, you are more likely to become like that group of people. If you spend your time engaged and focused on the criticisms and concerns of the vaccine. Guess what? You are going to wind up criticizing and having overwhelming, perhaps debilitating, concerns about the efficacy of the vaccine. You are what you put into your brain. That doesn't make you wrong or bad. It's not to shame you. It's just to say, there are real explanations for a lot of this stuff.

Just as there are 2000 years of consensus on the scripture and the consistencies there that explain away the inconsistencies. There is a lot of scientific consensus on vaccines, and a lot of the stuff that circulated out there is misstated or simply not true We live in a postmodern world, and in a postmodern world, the doubts are elevated to the rule. The rules are degraded to the exception. I don't think we should fall into that.

I can't say this any other way. Don't send me hate mail because you're mad at me. I know you will anyway. I just want you to be mindful of the fact that if you spend all of your time following along with the critics and you shut out the overwhelming global scientific consensus and you decide, "Well, of course, they would say that. They're getting paid to say it," or, "They want to increase their power." I think the problem is not with the scientific consensus of the vaccine, but probably with the way you're thinking about things in life.