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» The Term 'Ethics' is Included as Part of the Professional Title for Dr. Russell Moore
The About page of his website says ..
Russell Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. The ERLC is the moral and public policy entity of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
Notice in particular the words 'ethics' and 'morals,' which I have made bold. These are the words that caught my attention.
» He has Actually Taught Classes in Ethics
His bio also says that he ..
» served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.
He has actually taught Ethics as a subject. He a taught a class on Ethics .. at the Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville.
Many such classes he taught. To many students. He taught class after class to seminary students. Year after year.
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I do not know how many years he has spent teaching ethics and morals. It doesnt really matter.
I find his professional position interesting. For a number of reasons.
See, I would never want this job, because it is obviously going to come with a daunting array of expectations.
Many different expectations. Because people are different. Even within the same denomination, you can have severe and extreme variations among almost any point along the moral spectrum. The socioeconomic spectrum.
» Torquing the Cranium
He is literally an expert in the area of Morals and Ethics. In the Age-of-Trump, and of the Grabbing-of-the-Pussy ..
.. and of the Newly-Crowned Undisputed King-of-Liars, and of the Rise of Malignant Hypocrisy, and most significantly, the Welcome Embrace of Racist Ideologies ..
.. this is the age in which Russell Moore has a professional title with the word 'ethics' in it.
That's gotta put a nice torque of the cranium. Such a stark contrast. I am genuinely curious about the things that float through his mind, through his head .. regarding the moral perspective vs other perspectives.
I am talking about perspectives that care nothing about moral or ethical concerns. Nada. Not even a little.
» How Does He Deal With the Gulf Between Gospel Teachings and the Embrace of a Nakedly Racist Platform by White Evangelicals?
I am curious about the way he squares things in his mind .. regarding the moral teachings of Christ vs the immoral things that so many evangelicals have supported. Enthusiastically, to say the least.
I am sure that Russell Moore is well aware of the data that says more than 80% of white evangelicals support Trump and his policies.
I feel compelled here to call Dr. Moore's attention to the fact that racism and racist ideologies .. have already been judged and condemned .. at the highest levels.
I would assert here that it is never a good time for Americans to align themselves with racist ideologies .. but the 400-year anniversary of black slaves arriving on American shores is a particularly bad time.
My spidey senses tell me that the Boss is not going to let the matching patterns that we Americans share with the prophesied history of the children-of-Israel pass without weighing in.
My confidence-level here feels very high .. if that means anything to you. You'll see what I mean. Sooner or later. Dont say you werent warned.
I want to ask Dr. Russell Moore .. I want to ask him how anybody could choose, time-n-again, to align themselves, and align their lives and set their moral compass ..
.. in accordance with patterns and patterns-of-behavior(s) .. that the scriptures teach (very clearly, I might add) .. that the word of Living God teaches .. have already been judged and condemned.
To me, this seems like a very stupid thing to do. A very unwise thing. An obviously foolish, dumb-shit thing to do.
I am talking about the grand scheme of things .. of things that are really important. As contrast to and with things that are not important.
Determining exactly what is and what isnt important .. this information you will get from you value-structure .. according to which kinds of things you value highly, and which you hold in low esteem.
I mean, we could certainly explore the possible reasons for such perplexing positions taken among so many so-called Christians.
I am not talking about one isolated point, or some small, insignificant teaching along the entire spectrum of moral experience.
No, sir. Rather I am talking about the many positions that evangelicals have staked out along the entire spectrum of moral experience .. Here in the early hours of the Third Millennium.
From a distance I am looking at verses of scriptures in my bible here. And I see what it says there. Then I look at the behavior of white evangelicals. This is where I scratch my head.
And I can hear a voice saying,
"Tell those dumb-fucks to knock-off that racist shit, and to move away from that section of the moral spectrum, which has already been judged and condemned. Because I'm fixin' to light me up some racist ass. And I dont want those assholes to be able to say that I didnt try to warn them. I dont want to hear their whiney, sniveling asses saying that I didnt go great lengths to try to warn them. They never listen. Rarely, at best. Sometimes I think I might as well bang my head against the wall, for all the good that my warnings seem to do. Fuck them. Fuck their racist asses. I've seen about all I can stand, and I can't stands no more."
I may be taking some liberties here with my characterizations, in order to convey my impressions in a twenty-first century zeitgeist characterized by the rise of fascism fueled by racist ideologies ..
.. that have been so resoundingly embraced and supported and championed by white evangelicals.
Without them, without the overwhelming, record-breaking support of the white evangelical, fascism-in-America goes nowhere. It goes nowhere fast.
The fact that the white evangelical, all by themselves, are able to preclude the rise of racism in America .. this places a greater degree of guilt and blame on them. On their actions. On their behaviors.
No? This is where Russell Moore comes in. What say ye, Dr. Moore? How do you see it? How looks the lay of the moral lands from where you lie? From your perspective?
Because, from my perspective, things look bleak for the white evangelical. For the racist-embracing white evangelical.
Time-n-again I have made clear my views on the subject, and the danger I see .. according to scriptural patterns so plainly presented.
I do not mince my words. No, sir.
A lot of people died horrible deaths because of Trump and his lies. This has already been documented in great detail, complete with dates and times and direct quotes and live audio and high-resolution video.
Any death-of-innocents, any shedding of innocent blood, that could've been avoided, this always involves a moral component .. does it not?
I am asking Dr Moore here about his understanding of morals and of ethics and of various outcomes as a result of certain behaviors under a broad spectrum of circumstances.
It is not like the white evangelical can say in his defense, "Hey, even if we didnt support Trump so enthusiastically, so cultishly, he still would've become president." No. They can't say this, can they?
They held in their hand the key to Trump's racist fate, and they opted to open the door for him. They opened wide the racist door for Donald Trump. They opened an ugly racist door that leads to an even uglier fascist world.
Evangelicals love Trump even better than they loved George W Bush, who was their hero and champion.
Unfortunately for you-n-me George was an incompetent president who refused to accept responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
He refused to even acknowledge that he might've made a bone-headed mistake and a historic blunder by invading Iraq, when it was really the Saudis who crashed those planes into the World Trade Towers on September 11th.
I won't even mention that George was skillfully manipulated by the evil Darth Cheney, who loved the dark side. Anybody who happened to worked anywhere near the Defense industry made shitloads of money.
That was no accident. That was by design. That's how things were intended to turn out. Is anybody even surprised? Let me know if you find anybody who is surprised.
Long after George is dead-n-gone, and has become food for worms, people will still be writing articles and books about how incompetent and inept he was.
My sense of George, and his administration, after all these years have passed, and we have all seen how his cards have played out .. or didnt play out, whatever the case may be ..
.. my sense is that his was what I would call » The Dunning-Kruger administration.
It doesnt matter what name you happen to give. What matters is that George and his buddies, his loyal, incompetent buddies, imagined themselves Masters of the Universe.
When in reality, they were woefully ignorant on such a grand scale .. that the nation might never recover from damage done by his fuck-up.
That is classic Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias. It couldnt be more clear.
If the empirical data doesnt support the wisdom of your bizarre decisions, then simply assert that the empirical data is inaccurate or wrong, and then reaffirm your conviction in your original strategy.
This is where George and Trump mirror and parallel each other. One of the areas, anyway. There are more. Many more.
You can go back and review some of George's interviews, where he adopts the position that, as long as you are certain about your convictions, then you are obviously correct.
I mean, it sounds rather farfetched, but you can watch the footage for yourself and see if this isnt exactly what he seems to be saying.
Seem to me that his position and posture here suggests a psychological flaw. Because, it doesnt really matter how certain someone might be that the sky is green. It's not green. No matter how certain someone is.
It is a stupid position to adopt from the git-go, and it only gets worse from there.
I should quit, because I am just so disappointed with George. And the sort of malignant stupidity that hovered about his administration.
It would be easier to forget if we werent reminded everyday of where Republican policies take the nation. For Us-the-People.
They will be writing about how his presidency, and his administration, established the preconditions necessary for a Trump to rise. For a fascist to rise up in America.
Because we want to learn the applicable lessons there and take steps to ensure such a thing never happens again.
George kept changing the reasons for why America was at war in Iraq, but at one point, he sold the war with the idea of spreading democracy abroad. But all the while he was establishing the preconditions for fascism to rise up here at home.
Anybody can pick up a history book right now and see exactly where those ideologies will take you. It's not pretty.
So dont expect me to go along peacefully. Not a chance. Homie dont play that fascist game.
One of the things about George that really frosts my ass is how he failed (refused) to take responsibility for his actions, and pushed the consequences of his poor decisions onto others.
Not that anybody is really surprised. But being in the military has exposed me to such things in a way that was up close-n-personal.
Like George, Trump is also nothing, politically, without the support of the white evangelical. The overwhelming support.
Because of this evangelical support that Trump simply could not have survived politically without, I feel confident here that the good doctor would agree that ..
.. that, in the moral world, the white evangelical would share in the moral responsibility, to some degree, for whatever immoralities and harmful things might've been committed by this administration that they so enthusiatically supported.
I would like to look at some patterns of behavior that I see in described in scripture, and I want to compare these patterns-of-behavior that I find there with patterns-of-behavior we find among the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals today.
I am just a lay person. I have never been to seminary. So maybe I am not seeing things correctly.
Russell Moore has been the dean of a seminary. So he brings the pedigree, the bona fides. Credentials on top of more credentials. He has probably got half the letters of the alphabet listed after his name.
» Right-n-Wrong Ain't Always Black-n-White
Morals and Ethics .. these are interesting topics. I find them downright fascinating. They get you thinking about things that you normally never think about. And from a perspective that you normally never adopt.
With morals and ethics, you are basically looking at a study of right-n-wrong, or right vs wrong. And why the right/moral behavior would be right, and why the wrong/unethical behavior is wrong.
The term ethics is defined as » The science of right conduct and character.
The term moral is defined as » Concerned with the judgment of right or wrong of human action and character.
» You Kids Should Take My Ethics Class Next Semester
I never had a class in Ethics or Morals, but I did take a class in » Logic. And the lady who taught that Logic class also taught a class in » Ethics.
Periodically she would pimp her class, saying things like, "You kids should take my Ethics class next semester."
Sometimes she would share little tidbits from her Ethics class with us in her Logic class. And the Ethics stuff that she shared, that she touched upon, it was indeed interesting stuff.
Stuff that made you think .. on a deeper level.
» That's Me He's Talking About
Russell Moore posted a piece of his own today, titled » The Roman Road from Insurrection (11 Jan 2021). It deals with the historic insurrection of 5 days ago on January 6th.
Notice where he writes (second paragraph).
Part of me hesitates to address this at all. That's because my views are well known and haven't changed. But that's also because I don't at all want to be heard as saying, "I told you so." That's not for me to say, and I'll leave whatever judgments are to be made to others.
When he talks about leaving it to 'others' to say 'I told you so,' that's me he's talking about.
This is one of the reasons why I opted to take this route today. This particular route. This writing route.
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