If you ask most people what they would have done if they had lived during historical times of great evil, segregation, and persecution of a minority, they would assure you that they would have been one of the “good guys”. They would have been an abolitionist in the American South. They would have been a member of the resistance in Nazi Germany. They would have hidden their Tutsi neighbours during the Rwandan genocide.
And yet, this flies in the face of logic and human nature. We laud the examples of courage during those historical periods, and those are the people who are remembered; but the reality is, they were very few. The vast majority of people, even if they did not enthusiastically take part in the prevailing evil, apathetically went along with it.
Human nature does not easily stand against the tide of prevailing opinion. We want to be liked. We want to fit in. We want to live a peaceful life. We want to keep our jobs. We don’t like to be ostracized. We don’t like to suffer. We are lazy; fighting evil takes a lot of effort. We fight discouragement: after all, will it really make any difference if I stand up? I’m only one person. I will likely suffer the consequences of my actions without making any meaningful difference at all, and in the end, I will have only my regret.
Standing up is a gamble. We risk everything by taking action. We are likely to lose in the short term, with no guarantee of winning in the long term. History may finally judge favourably those who stand for what’s right, but they often don’t live to see that judgement.
I’m fighting this battle right now. I work as a contractor, and I recently told the company I contract for that I would not provide my services to a potential client which boldly announced on its website that it discriminates against unvaccinated job applicants. This particular company also recently fired large numbers of its employees for refusing to accept COVID vaccination.
That’s a red line for me. I cannot and will not be complicit with this type of evil. I told my employer so. I prepared to be metaphorically shown the door.
That didn’t happen. My employer was respectful of my convictions, at least outwardly. I think it’s mostly that they really need me, although I’d love to be wrong about that.
However, I’ve run into the problem again. Today I began work on a different client’s website, a Canadian municipality. As I reviewed the site, I ran over and over again into their discriminatory policies: a seniors’ program which excludes elderly people who don’t wish to or can’t be injected with the COVID biological product. Skate nights which exclude children 12 and up whose parents wish to protect them from the potential harms of a “vaccine” which provides no protection from a disease they are at no risk from.
And I can’t do it. Again. I’m going to have to tell my employer I can’t do this job, and I am also planning to write to the client from my personal email account explaining my reasons.
It all seems so dramatic and awkward, and I’m dreading it. I don’t like causing problems. I like fitting in. I like doing my job. I like continuing to make money. I like living a peaceful life. I hate drama. I hate conflict and confrontation. No part of me wishes to deal with this.
And yet I can’t do otherwise. What would I tell myself, how would I live with myself, if I looked back later in life knowing that I could have done something, that I should have spoken up, but that instead I went along because money and keeping myself out of trouble were more important?
If we’re honest, often saving ourselves pain and inconvenience and loss are really our highest moral values.
But that wouldn’t be loving my neighbour.
Then the whispers of “but what difference will it make” begin. After all, everyone is doing this. This evil has spread like a noxious vapour cloud all across Canada and the world. My little bit of resistance isn’t going to stop it. And really, what does it matter in the grand scheme of things if an unvaccinated person can’t go to a concert?
But then I think, well, that would be exactly like going along with the prevailing evil at other times, like in Nazi Germany. “Everyone” was going along with that, too. We all think we would have stood up. But in reality, it would have been difficult and awkward and life-threatening, and far, far easier to just do what everyone else was doing. With the clarity of historical hindsight, I know that would have been wrong; it’s just as wrong now.
I struggle with discouragement, quite frankly. I struggle with feeling any kind of optimism at all that this tide will turn, when everywhere in Canada the news is almost uniformly bad to worse. In the face of that, I wonder what standing against it will do; I feel like a piece of straw trying to hold its ground in front of a hurricane.
But one thing I can do: I can stop the evil at me. I can keep myself from becoming part of it. I can ask for God’s grace to keep from being infected with the real virus, the hatred, fear, and persecution of the current “enemies of the state”, the unvaccinated. I can be a tiny point of light in the midst of a sea of almost overwhelming darkness.
I can, as Jesus put it, lose my life in order to save it.
This verse brings me some encouragement today:
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)
I have to believe that in the face of the world’s hatred and whatever negative consequences may come, doing the right thing matters to God. I have to believe it will have some ripple effect for good here on earth as well, even if maybe I don’t see it.
I couldn’t like this post any more. I’m in Australia so I feel you in Canada. If only everyone thought like this the world would not be in the situation it is. We each have to live with ourselves and our own moral and personal decisions and “just following orders” doesn’t cut it. I admire your stance and you are not alone 🤗
Beautiful. Thank you.