vaccinations

I work at a hospital, and there is hospital policy that all employees get vaccinated for the flu every year. That makes sense. I work in a building that is full of sick people. I should take every incentive to protect myself against influenza.

The deadline for getting vaccinated is the end of the year. If an employee doesn’t want to get the shot, he has to sign a waiver and complete a computer based learning module on vaccinations and the flu. Or he could just not do either, and then lose computer access and not be permitted to come into work, and subsequently lose his job.

What is the motivation for the vaccination? Is it to avoid taking an online quiz? Is it to avoid losing my job? Or is it to avoid getting the flu?

It seems obvious that avoiding the flu should be the clear cut answer. As an employee of the hospital, it’s free, so nothing is stopping me from walking into employee health services and getting the needle. 

Considering my work environment I should really take advantage of the vaccination. Still, the email reminders I get every week place a greater emphasis on potential disciplinary action I could receive if I don’t get the shot then on the whole avoiding being sick thing.

I have little interest in getting the vaccination. I have faith in my superior immune system. I drink lots of orange juice and wash my hands all the time. But the fact remains that day after day I walk into a building with the distinct possibility of touching an infected door knob or pass by a sneezing patient.

The idea of sin being a virus, a sickness, a disease, is nothing new in Christian circles. (I even wrote about it once before here) There is a world of sin all around us. We put high stock in our own ability to avoid sin and temptation. We think we will not make the same mistakes again, that we have learned from the past, that we have been to enough church services and Bible studies, and know all the verses to combat sin. Our confidence is in ourselves to beat temptation, and that rarely yields positive results.

We have Christ as our “vaccination” against sin. We are confident of our position before the Father if we are in Christ and know that sin has no power against us. Still, Christ is used simply as our reason to not “get fired” from heaven, all the while forgetting that Christ gives strength for today to actively fight sin.

“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” Romans 8:11

We need Christ because he gives us life in dying, infected world. Just don’t forget that not only does it give us the benefit of living with God forever as some abstract idea in the future, but that it gives us hope and strength for life today in the very present. Sin isn’t just conquered in the future when Christ returns, but it is conquered today.