Love is greater than a vaccine mandate – Pastor

Love, specifically one’s love for others, should serve as the greatest compulsion to become vaccinated against COVID-19.

This position was expressed last Sunday November 7, by Pastor Douglas Neverson on WEFM, as he expressed his views on the vaccine mandate that will come into force on November 17.

“There is a greater compulsion than mandatory vaccination, a greater and higher and loftier compulsion than anything else. It is the compulsion of love. We could all be authorised and mandated to do a vaccine. I think higher than all of that, however, is our sense of responsibility to each other because we love each other,” Neverson said while speaking on the “Issues at Hand” radio programme.

The pastor of the Kingstown Evangelical Church cited 1 John 4: 20-21, which speaks to persons saying they love God though they cannot see him, but cannot love their fellow man.

And he said that an individual would be expressing their love for others by taking the jab because in this case, they would have engaged in an act “to make sure they are safe, to make sure that they don’t die willy nilly, to make sure that they have what is best for them”.

The pastor said: “surely we have our own freedom to function and do what we would like to do, what we please to do, and all of that. All that is great. The Lord does not have to mandate you to take a vaccine if you are truly Christian in your behaviour.”

“It is a matter of doing unto others what you would like to have them do unto you. It is a matter of loving them at a level that is God’s love. So maybe you are free, maybe you think it’s lawful. That’s ok. But the question is, is it profitable to the rest of the people in this country,” Neverson questioned.

The pastor added that, “if we love each other and if we care about each other, and if we are concerned about the welfare of each other, and if we know that there are others who are weaker than us, who may suffer and die, and if we know regardless of what we think we know about the COVID and the vaccine and all that; if the evidence is true, that unvaccinated people are dying far more than unvaccinated people, if it is true that vaccines are helping to prevent the spread of the disease, if it is true that along with the other protocols, vaccines will make a difference, then the question I ask to all of us, everyone of us is, Is my freedom, as I see it, greater than my concern for other people?”

Persons who have so far resisted taking the available COVID-19 vaccines have proffered a variety of reasons, including one that falls within the mantra “my body, my choice”.