The Federalist: Dying of COVID is good, actually

MAGA truly is a death cult, though it’s rare for anyone on that side to admit it outright. Enter The Federalist, which today published a piece by its executive editor with the utterly un-ironic headline “For Christians, Dying From COVID (Or Anything Else) Is A Good Thing.”

And she means it.

Dismissing those pushing vaccination as “pagans,” Joy Pullmann — not only an editor of The Federalist but also the proud mother of six — declares bluntly that “God Decides When We Die, Not COVID.” She continues:

life and death belong entirely to God. There is nothing we can do to make our days on earth one second longer or shorter: “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be,” says the Psalmist.

If your death is preordained, then presumably everything else in your life is as well. If you’re not supposed to take the vaccine because, I guess, God wants you dead, why not just go hog wild and do whatever you want whenever you want because it’s all God’s will.

Then again, maybe Pullmann is wrong about the vaccines. Instead of being a challenge to God’s omnipotence, what if the vaccines are part of God’s plan? Couldn’t God have created the vaccines in order for us to use them to protect ourselves and others?

If we follow Pullmann’s logic and reject a vaccine that will almost certainly do us a great deal of good, why shouldn’t we adopt that reckless attitude when it comes to everything else in the world that can help keep us alive — like seat belts or bicycle helmets. I’m rather doubting that Pullman demands that her (six) kids eschew seatbelts or helmets. What makes vaccines different? Or are there other safety precautions that are, like the vaccines, an affront to God? Does Pullman tell her kids to go run and play in traffic because if one or more get hit by a bus, well, that’s the way God wanted it to be? (I doubt it, but it would be consistent with her logic if she did.)

Her take on COVID is certainly as reckless as telling children to play in traffic. Not only does she mock the vaccines as “pagan”; she’s also convinced that churches should reopen even if they have no way to enforce social distancing. Because God hates Zoom. (I mean, we all sort of do, but it’s safer than sitting in a packed church surrounded by people who think vaccines and masks are tools of the devil.)

But she, she suggests, if Jesus can die on the cross for us,

we can go to our safe [sic], air-conditioned churches and worship. We can even go to the hospital rooms and bedrooms of those dying with infectious diseases and love them to the end, like the imitations of our Master Christians have boldly shown themselves to be for centuries, putting pagans to shame.

I’m not sure what happened with that last sentence in the quote there; I think Satan might have been copyediting it.

Anyway, if Christ can make the ultimate sacrifice, so can we. And we’ll even be rewarded for it!

[F]or Christians, death is good. Yes, death is also an evil — its existence is a result of sin. But, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ has redeemed even death. In his resurrection, Christ has transformed death into a portal to eternal life for Christians.

So get out there and catch some COVID for Jesus, I guess.

The Christian faith makes it very clear that death, while sad to those left behind and a tragic consequence of human sin, is now good for all who believe in Christ. A Christian funeral is a cause for rejoicing, albeit understandably through tears from those of us temporarily left behind. …

This is not a small or unclear doctrine. It is repeated over and over again in scripture. It flatly rejects the heathen idea that death is to be avoided at any cost.

Damn those heathens and their attempts to not catch a deadly virus. Such a heathen thing to do.

Christians are explicitly called to spurn pagans’ approval, advice, and beliefs for the sake of our souls.

So go ahead and spurn the vaccine too; it’s guaranteed to trigger the heathens. And if you ultimately do die of COVID, you’ll get to hang out with Jesus in the afterlife, and the two of you will laugh and laugh at those misguided pagans who had the temerity to try to save their own lives and the lives of others.

It’s almost as if The Federalist is funded by Big Death.

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