Vaxxed Behind Backs: A New Kind of Betrayal

“I got a letter from our insurance company today – it says my husband is due for his second COVID-19 shot.  He never even told me he got the first.”

“My sister just told me that my mom got her shot last Friday!  I saw her the very next day and she didn’t even say a word. She was trying to hide it from me!”

“My daughters probably got their shots already.  I don’t think they would tell me.”

“My husband is getting the shot no matter what I say.  What do you think I should do about it? Make him sleep on the couch? I don’t want him near me.”

“My in-laws got the shot. I don’t know if I should let them around my kids.”

“My best friend got the shot and she’s blasting it all over social media.  She knows how I feel about it.  She won’t even talk to me. It’s like she’s pretending I don’t even exist.”

IT HURTS. Lies hurt.  Lies of omission are no different.  Seeing a loved one – a close one – openly minimizing your concerns and acting against your wishes really hurts.  It’s natural to feel betrayed.

The divisive propaganda of the past sixteen months has created countless relational problems, successfully driving a wedge into friendships, families, and even marriages. I think that in order to figure out the next steps, we have to perform a forensic investigation of the scene of the destruction. 

Did these social and political situations create problems, or just expose them? 

What I’m about to say might be hard to hear, but this blog is entitled “keeping it real”, so I’m not going to fluff things up or blow any smoke.  Making people look squarely into themselves to the point of discomfort is kind of what Jesus was about. He knew that in order to heal our wounds, we have to first open them up and take a hard look inside. And if we want to achieve some serenity in this life, which we all desperately need, we have to “accept the things that we cannot change”, as the famous serenity prayer wisely says, and one of those things that we cannot change is other people. Jesus wants us to see the faults inherent in our flesh, our sin nature, and ask Him to supernaturally remove them, so that we can become more conformed to His image.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

 In Jeremiah 6:14 we get the obvious reminder that, “You can’t heal a wound by saying it’s not there!”

So let’s take the hard look in. (Don’t stop reading – the tools you need for healing are just below! Stick with me – it will be worth it!)

In my years working with addicts and families of addicts, I’ve intimately navigated relational chasms and deep pain resulting from lies and betrayal. I have learned proven strategies that can heal these wounds.  Though the details of the hurts we are addressing in this post are different, the overall situation is similar to those experienced by the families of gamblers or alcoholics.  You can apply the same steps that have recovered millions of relationships over the last century to heal the hurt you are experiencing now.

I’ll refer to the specific scenario of concern to us here as “medical betrayal.” It may be a new tool in the enemy’s strategic implementation of “medical bondage” (more on that in future posts), but it is not a new tactic. The emotional fervor of the vaccine confusion has enabled this latest iteration of his never-ceasing assault on God’s people and God’s divine institutions of  marriage and family.  As he has expertly done since the beginning of humanity, the enemy of our souls is exploiting a weakness that he has uncovered in our flesh. Once you discover the weakness in yourself that is being exploited, you can bring it to the Lord who bears our burdens and heals our wounds, and He will set you free. 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

I’m guessing that you’ve probably read horrible, scary, theories and predictions about the COVID-19 injection. You found them to be credible, rational, and worthy of investigating, so you shared the information with your loved ones. Perhaps repeatedly. I have no doubt that it was indeed all those things, and that sharing the information was necessary in order for you to avoid the regret that could come from knowing someone made an uninformed decision because you chose not to inform them.  But, after learning about it and sharing, did you seek out more of the same scary information?  Perhaps you checked your social media feed daily for additional information about these threats.  I understand, because I started down that path myself, but I took a step back when I realized the destructive habit that was forming. I’m sorry to say that, without training in this area, it is likely you did not notice the destructive nature of the path you were going down, and inadvertently made yourself vulnerable to fear programming.  Yes, even you may have fallen prey to this fatally effective and pervasive weapon of our enemy – the addictive nature of fear-based media. 

So many of us thought that we were resisting fear when we chose to continue living our lives normally for the last 16 months, unaffected by the culturally promoted worry about sickness or death. We did not conform to the patterns of this world, and we continually renewed our minds with truth and faith.  But, when the COVID-19 vaccines came on the scene, the fear marketing took a new direction, and previously unaffected groups were lured into the fear trap. We had conditioned ourselves over the past year-and-a-half to believe ourselves to be the only people still thinking rationally, and perhaps that is partly true.  But is that still true for you today? If we aren’t vigilant in resisting the enemy’s attacks every day, we become vulnerable.  It’s that fast.  A couple of wrong clicks, and before we even realize it, we have a shackle on our own ankles. 

Many doctors and scientists in the vaccine risk-aware community as well as mainstream medicine have come out with dire predictions about the potential effects of this shot. And while your ears were open to hear it, the majority of Americans had already been completely hijacked and programmed to welcome this injection as a kind of savior for the world. Articles and commentary on the effectiveness of the programming liken it to a religious belief, sometimes even cleverly referred to as “Scientism.” In most minds, there could be no questioning of this long-awaited savior. The collective desperation that resulted from a year of predatory media messaging created an ocean of eager followers.  We shouldn’t be surprised that people close to us fell victim to the most calculated, coordinated, well-funded, and psychologically advanced propaganda campaign that has ever been unleashed on humanity. These programming tactics have been expertly honed for decades.  

So now, maybe you’re living with one of these victims. Maybe you’re the parent of one of these victims, or the child, or the best friend. You’re frustrated because your rational arguments cannot break through the intricate web of groupthink that is covering the minds of these victims. They don’t believe you, and that hurts. 

But, how different do they feel? You don’t believe them either. You both think that the other is being lied to. 

The natural tendency is to want to fix this by continuing to present information that backs up your pre-existing belief.  Rather than being a helpful endeavour, however, a pursuit of information on the never-ending worldwide web leads you down a rabbit hole further and further away from your loved one. Maybe you have gone so far down the rabbit hole that even your spouse can barely locate you.

2020 was definitely eye-opening. An appropriate mimicry of “2020 vision,” the events of our world had a way of magnifying everything that was already fractured, creating chasms between people who were once just steps away from one another. And maybe this is you. Maybe 2020 roared through a close relationship of yours, pushing both parties so hard that the small space between you became a 6-lane highway with non-stop traffic, full of noise and completely blocking your view of each other.

If this person is your spouse, it is especially expected that you would have a visceral response to the results of this division – a “punch-in-the-gut” kind of feeling. I mean,according to the Bible, you are made “one flesh” with your spouse.  What do you do when the person who’s flesh that you are joined with does something secretive that affects that flesh? Something the conjoined partner explicitly asked them not to do? Like take an experimental drug injection? 

The thing to do now is to find a way back. Back to the point where the divide began, and start making repairs.

If you want to get close to the person on the other side of the highway, you’ll need to come out of the rabbit hole then start building a bridge. In Biblical words, you’ll need to die to yourself and take up your cross. And you will need to submit this whole situation to the Lord – repeatedly – keeping in mind the healing mantra “one day at a time.” Remember, our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with the powers and principalities of evil in this world. It is natural to want to hurt the one who hurt you, or to grow bitter and resentful, which leads only to greater destruction.  You must keep reminding yourself that you are not against your loved one, and they are not against you.  You are in a fight with the devil, who wants to exploit all of our weaknesses in his mission to steal, kill, and destroy. He is the father of lies and the author of fear.  

Fear can only result when faith is faltering. If you fear for your loved one, you need to ask yourself where your faith is weak right now, and how it got that way. Are you doubting that God has a plan for your loved one?  Or for the world as a whole?  You may be surprised by all that is going on, including the fact that your loved one now has a genetic experiment taking place within their body – but God is not surprised.  He knew all of this was coming, and He knows the outcome.  He loves us so much that He shares this comforting knowledge in His word.

If we think we can control outcomes for ourselves or anyone, we are fools. Security will never be found in this depraved and sinful world.  It is only found in the realm beyond this world – the promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ.  The book of Revelation shows us how the people of God do eventually win the battle:

“And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony. And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.” Revelation 12:11

Is there a fear of death still in you? That is the weakness that Jesus came to overcome. 

Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us that Jesus became human so that he could die, and through his death: 

“he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” 

Fear is mental and emotional slavery.   Maybe you did not fear COVID-19, but you still fear death. For yourself or your loved ones. I’m sorry to sound like a harsh big sister here, but you must check yourself. Since that is the only thing you have the power to change, it’s the smart place to start.  If you have let fear get a grip on you, then you have walked into the devil’s shackles, and a shackled person has no chance of bringing anyone else to freedom.

To find solutions, start by asking yourself:

• Have you been spending more time reading about vaccine risks than about the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit? 
• Are you spending hours on end engaging in discussions with people who cosign on your newfound fears, but no time talking things over with your heavenly Father? 
• Has your entire social circle become a fishbowl of like-minded people who affirm your beliefs, influencing you to further alienate yourself from those who think differently?

Many things that are helpful in small doses become toxic, even lethal, with over-consumption.  I will continually remind my friends and readers what Peter reminds his:

 “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8 

Are you consuming toxic amounts of negative media about vaccines?  Did you take in what you needed in order to make your own informed decision, and then continue to feed on the negative, fear-based predictions and events?  Did you fall into a fear trap? 

You can’t win a battle if you don’t know who you’re fighting and you don’t wield the right weapons. Once you recognize what you are dealing with, you can effectively overcome it!  The instructions and tools you need to get free are available to you at this very moment!

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  2 Corinthians 10:3-5

This passage describes just how powerful the spiritual weapons of prayer and scripture are at overcoming the enemy’s devices.  I love the word “demolish” here.  But notice something else about the passage – it doesn’t say “you” or “I”, but “We”.  The battle we are in is real, and it’s fierce.  It needs to be taken seriously.  We cannot fight it alone, but must join with the body of God’s people who are dressed and equipped for the battle. We are wise to seek out those who have notches of victories marked on their belts, and to follow a leader who already has a winning record. Together, then, we take up our weapons daily, demolish strongholds (such as fear), and protect those things in our lives that God holds dear – the family unit, the bonds of marriage, and the body of believers. We must not let human, worldly influence, begin to tear apart what God has joined together. 

In the eternal view of things, it doesn’t really matter who is right about the vaccine. What matters to God must matter to us.  God can heal the vaccine-injured, He can make bodies expel toxins or even rewrite their genetic code to align with His design, or He can allow people to suffer the consequences of toxic injections.  The results are in His hands, and we can daily choose to trust Him with all of it.  Then we are freed to do what we are called to do – to love people and do our best to be a light in this dark world, allowing Christ to show Himself through us. No one, no matter how smart or rational their choices, is guaranteed tomorrow. We must not let the distractions of the world divert our eyes from the will of God, to love one another deeply, to bring ourselves and our thoughts into obedience to Him, and to use the authority given us as His people to fight in the spiritual realm so that others may be set free. 

If you’ve not yet secured your own eternal life, why not do it right now? If you are in agreement with the things written here, and you want the peace that passes understanding, the freedom from fear, and the hope-filled life lived with Christ, all you need to do is ask. Pray this simple prayer:

“Dear Jesus. I know I have sinned. I want what you have to offer, even knowing that I don’t deserve it. Please forgive me and show me how to live your way. Be the Lord of my life. Amen.”

If you prayed that prayer, welcome to the extraordinary journey of doing it different and following Jesus! Please drop me a message so that I can personally pray for you and welcome you to the family of Christ!