Welcome to the Breakpoint podcast. I'm John Stone Street.

Today on the podcast, we're going to have a conversation that a lot of us probably had around

Christmas dinner tables and holiday get-togethers, even though they were limited this year,

which is related to the topic. And the topic has to do

with the ethical considerations as Christians about the COVID vaccine. We have gotten so many

questions ranging from the derivation of these vaccines to the administration of these vaccines

and everything in between. And just really privileged here to have my good friend, Dr. Ben Mitchell.

Dr. Mitchell is no stranger to the breakpoint podcast and to other breakpoint training resources.

Ben, I think the last time we had you on was talking about kind of a theology of death and dying as part of our short course,

which was at the early days of the pandemic. So I think that was the last time you've contributed

to us. But I saw an article that you had published along with Andrew Walker and I believe

another co-author on the ethical nature of vaccines.

And we've gotten so many questions that I really wanted to jump into them.

So great to have you back. I'll give the formal introduction, but just wanted to say welcome first.

Thank you. Thank you. And just for everyone, Dr. Mitchell, for years, was the Graves Professor of Moral

Philosophy at Union University. He also spent a lot of his career at Trinity International

University teaching on areas of theology and culture, was my professor and the advisor to my

master's thesis at Trinity. So it's always a little bit

intimidating. One of my other, Ben, I don't know if I ever have told you this, but I, I preached at

Beeson Divinity School and their beautiful chapel there when Graham Cole, who was the other

reader for my thesis, and I was kind of really worried that, you know, when you preach in front of your

advisor, that if he doesn't like it, he can pull it back. You know, I don't know if that's actually

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