Listening In preview - Russell Moore

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Coming up next, a preview of Listening In. This week: a conversation with  Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

In this excerpt of their conversation, Moore offers encouragement on how to stand for truth in the face of adversity, especially when you have to do it all alone. Here’s Warren.

WARREN SMITH: Moral courage. What does that mean? It must mean, at least in part, clarity. Is that fair? 

RUSSELL MOORE: I think it partly means clarity, and it partly means a willingness to have a life and a conscience that is shaped by the word and the Spirit, rather than by whatever crowd is around a person at the time. 

And it also means, I think, a certain kind of dependence upon God and resilience through fear. And that’s one of the things you know, you mentioned that this past year has demonstrated a lot of courage in some unusual places, and it has. Most of the people that I think are the most courageous, are often the people who would never consider themselves to be that. That’s not the language that they would use for themselves at all. 

Because they imagine that courage is someone who is not experiencing any sense of fear at all. But of course, biblically that’s not what it means. Instead, it is a response to fear that is Christ-directed, rather than flesh directed. And so there can be an illusion of courage. That really just is another form of cowardice and kind of self protection, that that we can fall into easily.

BASHAM: That’s Russell Moore talking to Warren Smith. To hear the complete conversation, look for Listening In tomorrow wherever you get your podcasts.

(Photo/Melissa Golden, Wall Street Journal)

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