The Tendency to Turn All Sorts of Things into Ethical Matters

[Ernie]

I'm always amazed at how people can take a wisdom issue, and turn it into an ethical issue. Every time someone turns a wisdom issue into an ethical issue, Christians end up dividing/parting ways/schismatizing, while the world watches on. Someone pictures a foster child from a broken home observing a dysfunctional family, only to realize that the dysfunctional family wants to take him into their home. That is the last thing he wants is to go to yet another dysfunctional home.

Separating wisdom from ethical is something I saw in the fundamentalist world - it's a rampant place for compromise and dysfunctional homes.

So Ernie, explain how a separation of wisdom from ethics actually works. It would seem like the two are intertwined.
One could argue its unethical in regard to many restrictions or the vaccine and the opposite side, one could argue its wisdom in the same on both sides. It just seems to me that they are very connected.
The wisdom of man is foolishness to God and true wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
Job 28:28

People turn wisdom issues into ethical issues. There are also good-better-best issues that people will turn into ethical issues.

The apostle Paul thought that because of the present distress, it would be good if people remained single like him. However, he made room for people who did not come to the same conclusion as himself.
Since then, many people have turned this into an ethical issue which resulted in "normal Christians" needing to part ways with them or vice versa.

The apostle Paul made room for both vegetarians and omnivores in the church. He made room for both the circumcised and the uncircumcised. He made room for those who observe certain days and those who did not.
Since then many people have turned these things into ethical issues which have resulted in schisms and hard feelings between believers.

I think head-covering for women in public life is a good thing to do. I have tried to make a case for this. Many people have tried to make a case for this. But I don't think this should be made into an ethical matter. I certainly do not consider women to be spiritually inferior if as an adult they begin covering for worship, but don't cover their heads in public life. In fact, I may consider them more spiritually mature than women who have covered their heads because it is part of their Christian culture and dogma to do so.

[Ken]

I think you are perhaps talking more about morals than ethics. Although those terms often get used interchangeably.

I think of morals as guiding principals for the individual, often with a religious basis. Don’t drink or curse, honor your father, wear a head covering or modest dress. Etc. etc. are all moral guidelines.

I think of ethics as philosophical guidelines for a group that aren’t necessarily religiously-based. Business ethics, medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, etc.

What I perceive you to be saying is that some Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians tend to turn ordinary things into moral imperatives. So, for example, ordinary childhood misbehavior or talking back becomes a much more stark moral issue if the child is perceived to be violating a moral code of not honoring their father and mother. Rather than being an ordinary toddler or adolescent. And that what leads to things like parents who are quick to engage corporal punishment and beat their children for the slightest infraction because they perceive it to be a black and white moral issue and the child’s soul is at stake. While the collective wisdom related to child rearing might suggest different approaches and that not all childhood misbehavior is related to morality and sin. In other words, a rigid moral code is leading the parents to make wrong decisions.

Or did I completely miss your point?

[temporal1]

The outer culture is STEEPED in tribal warfare, it’s increased exponentially in my lifetime.
There is need for wise faith leaders to lead their flocks away from it.

i grew up near a large state university.
my family was not interested in organized sports or college sports - or college! for that matter.
but, of course, there was a great influence, positive and negative.

i saw college sports, esp football and basketball, grow into (big business). i saw “team spirit” go throughout all the colleges in the university, with chants, colors, tribe-building. not confined to athletics. stadiums filled with 60,000+ people chanting for their tribe.

after graduation? - it does not stop. graduates take their tribal loyalty with them - all over the globe.

television.
i still can’t get over the “idol” programs, and “survivor” type programs. i do not view. beside being morally wrong, they are boring.

These are big indicators of what the outer culture is about. This is what the young are being fed. Empty calories.
It affects everything, as you say. No intimate personal or family matter is not affected.

Politicians+media THRIVE on it. Contention, not peace, SELLS.

i pray for wise faith leaders.

[Wade]

Maybe our understanding of wisdom differs?

There are different kinds of wisdom and this is the definition I reference to understand true wisdom:

17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

What I gather is that all wisdom from above translates in action and therefore is not just head knowledge that is void of some response. I don't see opportunity for this kind of wisdom to seperate what it knows from what it does. So is it not God turning everything into an ethical matter? You greatly misunderstand if you continue to think this polarizes people - it seems strange you keep doing this?

Solomon was the wisest man yet we read in 1 Kings 11 that he didn't use his wisdom to guide his ethics and was found as disobedient to God in the end of his life.

[Ernie]

I think you are perhaps talking more about morals than ethics. Although those terms often get used interchangeably.

I think of morals as guiding principals for the individual, often with a religious basis. Don’t drink or curse, honor your father, wear a head covering or modest dress. Etc. etc. are all moral guidelines.

I think of ethics as philosophical guidelines for a group that aren’t necessarily religiously-based. Business ethics, medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, etc.

What I perceive you to be saying is that some Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians tend to turn ordinary things into moral imperatives. So, for example, ordinary childhood misbehavior or talking back becomes a much more stark moral issue if the child is perceived to be violating a moral code of not honoring their father and mother. Rather than being an ordinary toddler or adolescent. And that what leads to things like parents who are quick to engage corporal punishment and beat their children for the slightest infraction because they perceive it to be a black and white moral issue and the child’s soul is at stake. While the collective wisdom related to child rearing might suggest different approaches and that not all childhood misbehavior is related to morality and sin. In other words, a rigid moral code is leading the parents to make wrong decisions.

Or did I completely miss your point?

You may be right. I think of ethics as "right and wrong". Moral imperatives probably better conveys what I am referring to.

Those who draw moral imperatives (on issues I think God did not make moral imperatives) look at the issue in a black and white manner.
Anyone who doesn't view that issue as black and white might be labeled as employing "situational ethics".

On the Covid topic, there are those who think that church life and social interaction should go on as normal and that it is ungodly to make adaptations that would help with mitigation efforts. I have yet to meet someone who would suggest doing this if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus instead of Covid. Which tells me that we all support mitigation efforts in particular situations, but we differ on whether we should employ them during a Covid outbreak.
So the moral imperatives are made regarding infectious diseases at one end of the sickness/fatality spectrum. The moral imperatives do not apply to infectious diseases at the other end of the sickness/fatality spectrum.
I have not yet heard anyone who has labeled mitigation efforts as ungodly, explain how the same would not be ungodly if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus. If there is a place to apply the term "situational ethics", it would seem to me that this would be a most likely place.

[Ken]

I think you are perhaps talking more about morals than ethics. Although those terms often get used interchangeably.

I think of morals as guiding principals for the individual, often with a religious basis. Don’t drink or curse, honor your father, wear a head covering or modest dress. Etc. etc. are all moral guidelines.

I think of ethics as philosophical guidelines for a group that aren’t necessarily religiously-based. Business ethics, medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, etc.

What I perceive you to be saying is that some Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians tend to turn ordinary things into moral imperatives. So, for example, ordinary childhood misbehavior or talking back becomes a much more stark moral issue if the child is perceived to be violating a moral code of not honoring their father and mother. Rather than being an ordinary toddler or adolescent. And that what leads to things like parents who are quick to engage corporal punishment and beat their children for the slightest infraction because they perceive it to be a black and white moral issue and the child’s soul is at stake. While the collective wisdom related to child rearing might suggest different approaches and that not all childhood misbehavior is related to morality and sin. In other words, a rigid moral code is leading the parents to make wrong decisions.

Or did I completely miss your point?

You may be right. I think of ethics as "right and wrong". Moral imperatives probably better conveys what I am referring to.

Those who draw moral imperatives (on issues I think God did not make moral imperatives) look at the issue in a black and white manner.
Anyone who doesn't view that issue as black and white might be labeled as employing "situational ethics".

On the Covid topic, there are those who think that church life and social interaction should go on as normal and that it is ungodly to make adaptations that would help with mitigation efforts. I have yet to meet someone who would suggest doing this if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus instead of Covid. Which tells me that we all support mitigation efforts in particular situations, but we differ on whether we should employ them during a Covid outbreak.
So the moral imperatives are made regarding infectious diseases at one end of the sickness/fatality spectrum. The moral imperatives do not apply to infectious diseases at the other end of the sickness/fatality spectrum.
I have not yet heard anyone who has labeled mitigation efforts as ungodly, explain how the same would not be ungodly if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus. If there is a place to apply the term "situational ethics", it would seem to me that this would be a most likely place.

The best example I can think of demonstrating “situational ethics” or “moral relativity” is the Catholic Church’s response to child abuse.

I vividly remember watching TV coverage of the scandal when it first really hit the headlines a decade or two ago and I remember my Catholic wife becoming increasingly enraged as we watched a national news show interview some high ranking Catholic Bishop or Cardinal on the topic. And what he was saying/claiming was that the Church didn’t have a good understanding of the urgency of issue in the past but now [two decades ago] they did. In other words, the Church was arguing that the circumstances or “situation” was different in say the 1950s when they didn’t really understand the issue of child abuse.

I remember my wife with 12 years of Catholic K-12 school under her belt and a degree from a Catholic university becoming enraged at the Churches attempt at moral relatively on that issue. As she pointed out, there is no moral ambiguity about child rape. It was a sin punishable by stoning in the Old Testament. People knew it was a horrible sin and crime in the 15th Century and the 19th Century as well as the mid-20th Century. And the Church’s attempts to explain away its actions or inaction during the 1950s and 1960s was just moral relatively of the worst sort. They absolutely did know it was both immoral and illegal. They just chose not to prioritize addressing it and chose the path of cover-up instead. Until they couldn’t get away with that anymore.

[Bootstrap]

On the Covid topic, there are those who think that church life and social interaction should go on as normal and that it is ungodly to make adaptations that would help with mitigation efforts. I have yet to meet someone who would suggest doing this if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus instead of Covid. Which tells me that we all support mitigation efforts in particular situations, but we differ on whether we should employ them during a Covid outbreak.

I think it makes sense to use risk assessment and cost/benefit thinking for this kind of thing. Suppose you believe that the entire congregation would die a horribly painful death if they meet in person. Suppose you believe that there is no real threat to the congregation whatsoever. Based on which you believe, you are going to act very differently.

If there were no real risk, I would not want to disrupt church services at all and I wouldn't bother with a vaccine. If going to church meant everybody dies, I would definitely want to find a way to keep people safe while still functioning as a church. The level of risk makes a moral difference. Who would blame a church for continuing to meet during cold season?

Covid-19 is a much larger risk than a cold or the flu, but most people will not die of Covid-19 or be hospitalized for it. So far, over 700,000 people have died of Covid-19 in America, though, it's one of the leading causes of death, it has overwhelmed some hospital systems, and it is worth taking seriously.

[temporal1]

The “change” in public+legal recognition of serial child rapists (in every institution, secular, and faith based) was the advent of internet exposure, not the sins or crimes, which have not changed over the ages. The change was empowerment of victims to find each other and to not be silenced by predators, who had gotten away with these sorts of sins+crimes with remarkable efficiency over the ages. This struggle is not over. But predators do not have the comfort they did.
That’s another topic.

Ernie:
.. I have not yet heard anyone who has labeled mitigation efforts as ungodly, explain how the same would not be ungodly if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus. If there is a place to apply the term "situational ethics", it would seem to me that this would be a most likely place.

My memory of Ebola is that the very leaders pushing today’s extreme pandemic responses were fairly lackadaisical about Ebola, and other diseases, including HIV AIDS. Pressures were to do nothing, citing racism/homophobia. Not much reference to godliness, except when opportunities to criticize Christians arose. No change there. There was lively discussion of Ebola on MD.

Things seem mostly quiet (so far) about Nipah.

My sense is, those seeking godliness respond about the same to all earthly miseries, whether disease or other disaster.

It’s logical that people will have different views of the same event, based on different information, and different standards.

[Wade]

I think you are perhaps talking more about morals than ethics. Although those terms often get used interchangeably.

I think of morals as guiding principals for the individual, often with a religious basis. Don’t drink or curse, honor your father, wear a head covering or modest dress. Etc. etc. are all moral guidelines.

I think of ethics as philosophical guidelines for a group that aren’t necessarily religiously-based. Business ethics, medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, etc.

What I perceive you to be saying is that some Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians tend to turn ordinary things into moral imperatives. So, for example, ordinary childhood misbehavior or talking back becomes a much more stark moral issue if the child is perceived to be violating a moral code of not honoring their father and mother. Rather than being an ordinary toddler or adolescent. And that what leads to things like parents who are quick to engage corporal punishment and beat their children for the slightest infraction because they perceive it to be a black and white moral issue and the child’s soul is at stake. While the collective wisdom related to child rearing might suggest different approaches and that not all childhood misbehavior is related to morality and sin. In other words, a rigid moral code is leading the parents to make wrong decisions.

Or did I completely miss your point?

You may be right. I think of ethics as "right and wrong". Moral imperatives probably better conveys what I am referring to.

Those who draw moral imperatives (on issues I think God did not make moral imperatives) look at the issue in a black and white manner.
Anyone who doesn't view that issue as black and white might be labeled as employing "situational ethics".

On the Covid topic, there are those who think that church life and social interaction should go on as normal and that it is ungodly to make adaptations that would help with mitigation efforts. I have yet to meet someone who would suggest doing this if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus instead of Covid. Which tells me that we all support mitigation efforts in particular situations, but we differ on whether we should employ them during a Covid outbreak.
So the moral imperatives are made regarding infectious diseases at one end of the sickness/fatality spectrum. The moral imperatives do not apply to infectious diseases at the other end of the sickness/fatality spectrum.
I have not yet heard anyone who has labeled mitigation efforts as ungodly, explain how the same would not be ungodly if we were dealing with Ebola or Nipah virus. If there is a place to apply the term "situational ethics", it would seem to me that this would be a most likely place.

Ernie,
I live with my family on a couple acres, we home school and have a big garden, chickens and fruit trees we tend to. We live pay check to paycheck so we do no travelling or vacations (we drove out to Alberta (7hrs away) for Lester's viewing, stayed in a hotel and drove straight home the next day as a rare occasion of travel). My wife and children have almost no contact with others outside of church and family stopping by except another family living on our property, I pick things up from grocery stores on the way home from work where we have to mask and social distance. I do get calls that I go to in helping minister to lonely and addiction people ( of which I know more people who have drank themselves to death or commited suicide in relation to social distancing than I know of people who have died from COVID). I am 5'11" and 160lbs, recently did 20 chin ups in a row, this past winter I ran 3kms in under 15minutes in 4" of snow, we eat fresh raw veggies from our own garden with much manual labour, we hunt and enjoy hiking up the mountains, people at work often ask me how I have the energy I do. We asked multiple doctors about COVID before going in the hospital and they all laughed or shrugged it off as no big deal, and then a nurse gets angry at me for wearing a mask in the hospital room.

We are healthy, fairly isolated, we are following regulations. Honestly what are you expecting from us? Please stop condemning people who desire to obey God in faith with your polarizations.

[Soloist]

I think that you need to study wisdom and what the Bible says on it, Ernie. Perhaps you are referring specifically to matters of conscience?

As for Ebola, it was a contact disease and was relatively easy to deal with. Those exposed were isolated, those sickened were isolated.

Smallpox they shut down localized regions for a set duration. No historical case has ever shut down society or specifically church for months and months on end.

Its one thing to shut down for specific risk for a specific time... its a completely different thing to shut down indefinitely as how Canada does. Conflating those is a problem.

Given that the Nipah virus has regular outbreaks yearly, would you support the church being shut down during the "season" or would you think a Christian church could take precautions?

As usual, many Covid debaters continue to attack the extreme position/outcome of their own, while avoiding any discussion about alternatives that could be considered in between those two extremes. I will keep mentioning this until Covid is no longer being discussed or until the debaters are willing to have a discussion about alternatives between the extremes.

I've said this before, but it seems to have been forgotten. So I will say it again for the record.
I believe it is possible for Christians to continue assembling with other believers in-person, and even practice the holy kiss, while mitigating the spread of Covid.

What do you deem as reasonable precautions that we are not even discussing? Stay home when you're sick? no one is arguing that... I think you are misreading people and ignoring those stuck in these extreme situations you pontificate away. How is your church protecting the vulnerable at this point?

Repeatedly, you've said that church can be suspended for a time but refused to ever say how long that time is in your eyes. You've said this could be good for us, but I've heard reports of weakened members, and I've seen members simply stop coming at all to church.