Easter’s message is that we all need God’s forgiveness and all can receive it.

Beware the unforgiving, vengeful post Covid Puritanism.

Apr 08, 2023

Ex Telegraph cartoonist and prominent anti lockdown and anti Covid vaccine campaigner Bob Moran recently caused a Twitter storm with his cartoon fresco of God casting Piers Morgan and Julia Hartley Brewer out of Eden. The pot bellied, very ill endowed Piers is eclipsed by the saggy, shrivel skinned Julia with grotesquely deformed pointy breasts and cone-like nipples. It is also the depiction of Julia as Eve to Pier’s Adam that has caused arguments and divisions within the lockdown and vaccine sceptic movement. Actor Laurence Fox quote tweeted Bob’s cartoon with a sad emoji saying, ‘Julia was one of the very few voices in the media who railed against the ridiculous, failed public health experiment. Putting her in the same picture as that snake Morgan isn’t remotely fair or accurate, Bob.’ Laurence sums up what many people on my side of the Covid debate felt on seeing the cartoon. Why choose Julia rather than the smorgasbord of female pro lockdown/‘lock up the unvaccinated’ journalists and why was Bob’s pen especially poisonous when he drew her? On the other hand for some it seems that being so enthusiastic about Covid vaccines that have ‘poisoned’ many makes Julia a legitimate target for any type of verbal or pictorial attack. I have to declare some personal bias here. Julia Hartley Brewer gave me a platform on her popular Talk Radio show to express the suffering that lockdown was causing me. It’s my pinned tweet! I will always be grateful to her for that and, more importantly, for campaigning so passionately against lockdowns and Covid measures like masks. However I am also suffering significant health problems due to the Covid vaccine. (For the record again I was forced to take 3 shots to see my late Grandma in Germany before she died). I have publicly called Julia out on her refusal to address Covid vaccine damage and continue to campaign for awareness of and justice for the vaccine injured and bereaved. For me one of Julia’s biggest sins will always be applauding Health Secretary Matt Hancock at the start of the vaccine rollout. Journalists should have asked far more questions about a rushed to market novel ‘vaccine’ and there should have been no thought of ever giving it to the non vulnerable. Moreover I wouldn’t even applaud lockdown lover and serial liar Hancock if he invented a cure for cancer! But, although I see both sides, overall Bob’s latest artistic offering saddens me.

I will always be very uncomfortable at depicting any woman in hideously deformed naked form. Despite my intense dislike of Meghan Markle, I even thought Jeremy Clarkson infamously describing her being paraded naked through the streets was tasteless. Actually, on being cast out of Eden, Adam and Eve were clothed by God with garments made of animal skin! However the main issue at hand is the message being conveyed around the ‘sins of Covid.’ Ironically Bob chose the most powerful Biblical image of universal human sinfulness. Adam and Eve represent the fall of humanity, i.e. every man and woman ever born and those yet to be born. We are all cast out of Eden because none of us is free from sin. At Easter Christians mark the most seismic event in history. Jesus’s death and resurrection offers salvation to all because all need saving from evil, not just Piers Morgan. Although one of the two men being crucified alongside Jesus mocked him the other admitted his sins and begged Jesus to remember him in heaven. The gospels of Matthew and Mark use the Greek word ‘lestes’, meaning robber, highwayman or bandit, so we can be sure this was a bad man with likely a lot of blood on his hands. At that time there was a real problem with groups of highwaymen swooping down on travellers between Jericho and Jerusalem, stripping them of all possessions and then either killing them or leaving them for dead.

“‘We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.' Then he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered him, 'I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.'" (Luke 23:41-43, NIV)

It may not seem ‘fair’ according to a popular human mindset but God doesn’t rank sinners in terms of how bad they are. Therefore I’m afraid you and I are on exactly the same level as every lockdown and Covid vaccine zealot, Fauci and indeed Vladimir Putin. However that’s the glory of the Easter message because it means that you’re never beyond redemption.

Perhaps the most popular article I’ve ever written for The Conservative Woman was about the need to never forget those who pushed the lockdown and Covid vaccine orthodoxy, often dehumanising the unvaccinated in the most vile way. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/lockdown-and-vaccine-fanatics-we-shall-remember-them/ It was inspired by the hashtag #neverforgetthesepeople. But never forgetting and fighting with everything we have to secure justice does not mean cruel vengeance and does not preclude forgiveness. We must repent to receive God’s forgiveness. However when it comes to human forgiveness Jesus shows the way in perhaps the most well known line from the Easter Story. Praying for those nailing him to the cross he said, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’ Many people got swept up in the Covid hysteria. It’s worrying that even when some show signs of repentance a puritanical element within the lockdown/vaccine sceptic movement won’t accept it. Piers Morgan’s smug self justifying ‘the science changed’ is not repentance. But others, like Julia are edging closer or have even clearly confessed their sins. It’s not just unchristian to say ‘too little too late’ but it actually decreases the chances of winning the popular Covid debate. That’s a debate on which lives depend and therefore we need as many allies as possible.

Laurence Fox has a great pithy catchphrase which is ‘they are exactly what they accuse you of.’ In George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ the pigs started off oppressed and then became worse than the human farmer. Almost every righteous revolution in history ends up destroying itself through a thirst for vengeance and an obsession with purity. Easter and indeed Bob’s own Garden of Eden cartoon should remind us that we’re all impure. We don’t get an exam grade, it’s just pass or fail, and we’ve all failed. Ensuring people get held accountable and punished for specific crimes doesn’t negate the universal nature of sin and the need to forgive. Reminding yourself of your own sin nailing Jesus to the cross is a wonderful guard against arrogance and the desire to hurt rather than seek justice.