These days, critical thinking can get you in hot water, especially if you question certain issues. Just ask Jordan Peterson. He felt he had to resign his full-time teaching position at the University of Toronto over his comments about the ongoing implementation of diversity, inclusivity, and equity mandates which, in plain language, means that hiring is less about qualifications and more about fitting into the institute’s Woke ideology. Tara Henley, a former CBC producer, said that her employer, churned-out news stories mostly contoured around their own radical political stance, and less concerned about being a source of trusted news. Sharyl Atkinsson, a five-time Emmy Award winning investigator journalist and host of the TV program “Full Measure” in Leesburg, Virginia, reported that former president Obama during his time in the White House had expressed his feelings about how the news had to be curated. More and more, news networks began to use terms like “fake news” or “misinformation” whenever they chose to gag other sources not in line with their ways of thinking. They culled their reporting on what they felt should and should not be heard by the public and spliced in their own conclusion. Media control on what you hear and how you hear it is not a conspiracy theory but alive and well in our world. For reality to be known it must come objectively and finding truth is hard to come by these days. A voice of authority comes to us from the book of Proverbs. It teaches us that, for you to think rightly, you must thing objectively and to do so, you must get information from both sides, before deciding a matter.
“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Proverbs 18:17
To learn all you can on a matter before rendering a decision is certainly wise. To hear the first version of an argument alone may be compelling, but you need to hear the other side of the story as well, especially knowing that most people will cast themselves or their argument in a good light and may twist the facts just enough to gain support. That would be true for most of us. To stay objective, we need both perspectives on any given issue before we can be fair and objective. Regarding COVID, scientist and medical professionals from both sides of the argument must be heard before forming an informed opinion, which in all honesty has not been the case overall. The respected commentator Mathew Henry says that God gave us two ears, one for each side to hear both ends of an issue before a decision is made. Proverbs 18:13 says:
“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”
Coming to an informed decision on whether or not to take a vaccine has been challenging. The comments below are from a concerned Christian who is wanting objective reasoning on the matter at hand.
“Hi! I am unvaxxed. I am not anti-vax although I support people’s right to be. I was planning to get the COVID vaccine when it became available to me but as events unfolded in my life, it worked out such that I didn’t have the vaccine yet when the talk of mandates and passports began. And that is when I decided that I would wait as long as legally possible to get vaccinated, which could be a long, long time because I am self employed and stubborn enough to give up going to restaurants and gyms and I don’t have money to travel now that groceries cost about a thousand dollars a week. So I am doing this purely as a protest. If choice had remained a thing, I would have gotten the jab awhile ago. I want Canada to go back to being a free country where people can make their own decisions. I think it’s ridiculous for us all to be acting like we are contagious at all times when it’s just not the case. I think it’s outrageous to compel people to take an experimental vaccine, particularly children. I knew the vaccine would most likely have a certain percentage of adverse events and yet I was and still would be comfortable taking it for myself. (I’m not afraid to die from COVID, but I’m not afraid to die from the vaccine either. I’m good either way.) However, I think it is terribly wrong to minimize and not properly record the adverse events, which does seem to be happening around us. I think the argument of needing to take the vaccine to not be selfish and to protect others is impossible to evaluate until we have a true recording of vaccine side effects and an acknowledgement of natural immunity. I’m comfortable sleeping at night believing that if I get COVID, I will be contagious for a few days, during which I will be careful to avoid people and then my immunity will protect me and others and that used to be how we all thought. I support the truckers’ call to end all mandates because omicron is not a serious illness, while the mandates themselves are serious and devastating in some cases. I saw terrible mental health consequences in a couple of my children during all this. So I do feel strongly that continuing the mandates at this stage would be horrible and wrong and needlessly hurtful. Yes, even masking needs to end. It may have been logical at a certain stage of all this, but it is not acceptable to keep living that way for a long time. I think everyone knows on some level that having faces covered and not seeing the emotions is hurting society in some ways and we will have to repair the damage later.”
So there you have it. We are starting to see that the “small fringe minority” isn’t so small and I hope people reading this will agree that our views aren’t “unacceptable” either. We are regular Canadians who have our thoughts and are doing what we believe is right. There needs to be room for differences of opinion in a free country.
Having “everyone” vaccinated is not the way out of the pandemic as Trudeau says. Having the original roughly 80% who chose to be and were not compelled to do so was a good tool but to have everyone vaccinated would mean we would lose our country in the process.
I’ve seen a few pics lately of wartime liberation claiming to depict “real freedom convoys.” I propose to you that may be true but the truckers also have a real freedom convoy. It is most definitely a convoy and they most definitely are protesting for all our freedom.
Please share your story if you are part of the fringe. I know some of you have been vocal all along which is great, but now I think it’s high time the rest of us speak up.
