Metropolitan Nectarius of Argolida of the Greek Orthodox Church warns us how dangerous are people who dress their ideologies in a religious cloak. There are religious sects under the guise of Christianity that misinterpret the Bible and preach views that are dangerous to human life.
We periodically hear about the followers of a certain sect who refuse to transfuse a sick person. For many people, such inhuman treatment raises questions. Why, for example, can parents refuse their child’s blood transfusion and prefer it to die?
This understanding is due to a misinterpretation of the Bible and in particular of the Old Testament book of Leviticus (17: 13-15). The order there states that when an animal is slaughtered, they should not eat the meat with the blood. “For the soul of all flesh is blood.”
Hence, these sects begin to claim that the soul of the animal, but also of man, is in the blood. So if someone receives 400 grams of blood from a blood donor through a blood transfusion, he will also take his soul.
In the Bible, however, the word “soul” has a double meaning. Here the word “soul” means life. So in the aforementioned quote, the translation is “in the blood is the life of man.” And we all know that blood loss threatens human life. This requires a blood transfusion.
In recent decades, another biblical text, the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, has been grossly manipulated and misinterpreted. The word “antichrist” (which is not found in Revelation), the number 666 (which also does not exist because the text does not use Arabic numerals, but writes in Greek ΧΞΣΤ), the seal, etc. are the flags of today’s fundamentalists.
All this para-philology and this para-theology come from the American sects, who do not miss the opportunity to spread their views under the guise of Revelation. And we, the “Orthodox” not only in Greece, but also in other Orthodox countries, indiscriminately accept all these misinterpretations, considering them Orthodox.
COVID-19 was another golden opportunity for sects to declare their presence. The anti-vaccination movement, as Metropolitan Hierotheus of Navpact (Vlachos) writes, “prevails in America among fundamentalist extreme Protestant circles, as well as among people professing different principles of Eastern religions.” That is why it is now to hear these positions and arguments from Christians, which are characterized by the lack of serious theological education, but also of serious scientific arguments. It does not matter to them whether they risk their lives or infect their neighbor with tragic consequences.
These days we are witnessing something paradoxical and outrageous. Relatives of patients with COVID-19 do not refuse to transfuse, but to hospitalize or intubate them. They prefer the patient to suffer and die instead of admitting that the deadly virus exists. They went so far as to judge the doctors.
Personally, I know cases of patients whose relatives did not take them to the hospital, but left them at home. As a result, they became infected themselves, and the patient died a painful death. According to the doctor of a familiar patient, “he died not just of shortness of breath, but literally burst!”.
I wonder how the relatives who witnessed the martyrdom of such a person feel? Isn’t their ideological obsession cracking?
When COVID-19 first appeared, we had the excuse that we didn’t know. We have no excuse now.
We may respect all scientific objections, reasonable doubts, or fears of some, but when we dress anti-wax ideologies in religious garb and misinterpret biblical and patriarchal texts, we not only become scribes but become dangerous.
