Allow me to introduce my new character, Southern belle aristocrat, Miss Tequila Mockingbird. She’s been on my mind a long time, representing a certain type of personality I’ve become very accustomed to in the American South: a gnostic pseudointellectual armed with baseless “secret knowledge” to be whispered in the open and giggled out in close gatherings among friends gleefully giddy to be in the know.

I tell you, when the Mark of the Beast really does come into play — and I find its interpretation as a singular, historical innovation dubious at best — it won’t be something any number of holy men and women believed to be morally sound, something that only a few people, randomly guessing in the dark, might have identified correctly as drawn up by the devil himself. The idea of having secret knowledge that the bishops and the pope do not, secret knowledge necessary for salvation, is contrary to Christianity.

You can believe what you like about the vaccine — many do — but let’s cut the gnosticism.