“I do think God calls all of us to do what we can to try to optimize the health of ourselves and our neighbors as part of this requirement that we have to love each other, and that God blesses that. I think God blesses the advances in medicine by making it possible through the tools of science for us to make discoveries that God knew all along, but we get the opportunity to do in a laboratory, which can also be like a cathedral if you want to think about it that way.”
“I would say the vast majority of changes [in recommendations] have happened because we learned more about this virus, and we’re going to learn more again. So don’t be surprised if the recommendations change again in the future, because that will be what we then believe is the right thing to do.”
“You know, if you were investing in the stock market and somebody told you to buy this week and to sell next week, would you say, ‘Oh, you’re just flip flopping?’ No. You’re responding to change in the information, the evidence about the time. We have to do that in science too.”
“Isn’t that what we’re all called to at a time where we’re losing 1,500 people a day, many of whom didn’t need to die because they didn’t have the right information, they didn’t get vaccinated, and now it’s over for them? This is a terrible tragedy and even taking some risks in terms of sharing the information, becoming ambassadors for the truth seems like something we should all be doing.”
“It’s probably not a surprise to any of us that all human institutions have flaws. And that certainly applies to government institutions and churches as well. They’re created by human beings. We have this incredible wisdom that is poured into rusty vessels and it doesn’t always come out quite the way you would like.”
“If the truth is what we need to set us free, well, the alternative is not a place that is going to have a future.”
“I think people respond to stories. I think we probably haven’t done a very good job of that. I’m talking to myself here, that we quote statistics. We say, ‘OK, 99 percent of the people who died from COVID last week were unvaccinated. Shouldn’t that get your attention?’ And it maybe just causes people to tighten up. Why are we not telling the human stories, the heartbreaking ones or the stories of triumph of people who escaped this because they did the right thing? There’s plenty of those out there.”
Mentioned in the Show
Curtis Chang’s videos
GetVaccineAnswers.org
National Institutes of Health
We Can Do This website
Follow Dr. Francis Collins on Twitter
Amplify Outreach
Back to Church Sunday
Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are Confronting Coronavirus Cases. by the New York Times
Dr. Francis Collins on the Stetzer Leadership Podcast
Supporters Boo Trump for Endorsing Vaccine As Another Preventive Measure Rolls Out in FL
