Vaccines and Jesus: A less than serious homily

WWJD = “What would Jesus do?”

It’s a pithy maxim Christians (mostly of the low church variety) have been asking, wearing, or at least repeating, for the 120 or so years since Charles Sheldon’s folksy Christian socialist novel, In His Steps.

The first time I saw a WWJD bracelet on someone’s wrist, I swear I thought it was a website.

Whatever you think of it, WWJD has inspired much good, and much much bad writing. The acronym, you see, is supremely malleable for instructive variation or parody. Thus, the pious might answer the question with another WWJD: “Walk with Jesus Daily.” But as my impious seminarian roommate was apt to ask, “When will Jordan dunk?” Or more irreverently, “Who wants Jack Daniels?”

Listen Up TV’s Jeff Groenewald asks his own version in his “Would Jesus get vaccinated?” post at the National Post’s religion blog, the Holy Post (that’s three posts – no, four – in one sentence!). The implied answer, of course, is yes. Chalk one up for the greater good, etc., etc.

But I’m not so sure. It’s not that I’m a conspiracy theorist or anti-vaccination guy. In fact, I grant Groenewald his argument and am amazed folks avoid vaccines on religious grounds. But I’m just trying to picture it: would a first-century Jew in a kind of pushy Roman empire really be the first guy allowed in line for a vaccine?