The controversy does not center on whether they work or not. Vaccination works. The odd increase in disabilities and ailments over the last 100 years is what causes so much tumult, in the public square, at the mention of vaccines. ADD, auto-immune, and neurological disorders have been on a steady rise as the commonplace usage of vaccines have risen. Many nations who do not have common vaccines have other problems, however; they deal with measles and whooping cough, problems much worse, often fatal, and significantly more dismal then the possible side effects of immunization.
However, there is another element often overlooked. Though epidemics are frightening and deadly and possibly apocalyptic, they do not surmount the threat of unbridled power. Power is a disease which makes a healthy society sick and infused with death. Power can be wielded in such a way that a human life is but a cluster of digits representing a heartbeat. When the rights over a human person is stripped from an individual at birth, the sickness, like an epidemic, spreads ever more rapidly.
Within the Nazi German rule, in less than 20 years, we saw Eugenics eradicating an entire continent of particular races, dysfunctions, lifestyles, and creeds. Similarly, after the Russian empire fell to the bloody Bolsheviks, the deadly epidemic of power started with one family and ended 80 years later with a nuclear explosion in Chernobyl. Certainly, the bigger issue is not biological or microscopic or scientific; the issue is personal.
Yes, epidemics arrive without notice and they kill and scar humanity. However deadly they may be, personal freedom to choose what enters one’s own body, or the bodies of his or her children, is eminently more important. Personal liberty, beginning with rights over one’s own body, is the first step toward fettering power that descends like a plague within moments.
Comments
I must say, I don't see physical liberty is a by-product of faith, at least not faith alone. Nothing in 2,000 years of Christian history would convince me of that conclusion. Spiritual freedom, however, is another story.
Also, running on the platform "If you have faith in Jesus, you will have liberty" would not be very attractive or wise. I would not vote for anyone offering that promise, as though Faith and Jesus are vending machines; insert quarter, turn nob, get prize.