Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.

• Exodus 23:4-5

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighboras yourself. I am the Lord.

• Leviticus 19:18

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

• Matthew 5:43-48

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

• John 13:34-35

“The most vivid and compelling of all the expositions of Stoicism are to be found in the writings of the later Stoics, which were all in Latin. The outstanding figures here are Seneca (c. 2 BC-AD 65) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180). They were not original thinkers in the sense of adding significantly to already-existing Stoic doctrines, but they were such good writers that their works are read to this day by people who are not academics. It is to them that anyone who wants to study Stoicism at first hand should turn.  Stoic ethics have always been widely found to be impressive and admirable, even by people who do not wholly go along with them. They are not easy to practice – but perhaps it is bound to be a characteristic of any ethics worthy of the name that they are difficult to put into practice. They had an unmistakable influence on Christian ethics, which were beginning to spread at the time when Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius were writing. And of course, to this very day the words ‘stoic’ and ‘stoicism’ are in familiar use in our language, with perhaps grudgingly admiring overtones, to mean ‘withstanding adversity without complaint’. There must be many people now living who – even if they have never consciously formulated this fact to themselves – subscribe to an ideal in ethics which is essentially the same as that of the Stoics.”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Stoicism focused on our reaction to things that we could not control.  Our reaction should be within four virtues: Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom.  While Stoics are noted for their scholarly writings, it boils down to listening to that inner voice within us, something God put there in our genetic code that said that it is just common sense that these things should be virtues.

One downside of Stoicism is that they believed that if you could control something, by all means do so.  Thus, suicide was on the table for discussion and there was no social taboo associated with it.

Again, the book’s author gets things backwards, downplaying Christianity.  As I stated above, our sense of justice and wisdom come from within, something God planted there.  The ethics that Jesus spoke of were expressed in the Old Testament.  A lot of Jesus’ “new” teaching was to explain hidden gems in the Old Testament.

But the concept of the Stoic philosophy is very much like Christianity, but the Stoics might believe or not believe in God.

There are some things that we cannot control, but we can control our response to those things.  While the Stoic tries to use philosophy and reason to call upon some sort of courage, temperance, justice, or wisdom, the Christian calls upon God who indwells us for our strength.

The Stoic might say that was a way around the reasoning, but a Christian reasons that the situation is something they have no control over.  Then the Christian reasons that they do not even have the prerequisite strength to be courageous to handle the situation.  Thus, it is reasonable to call upon God for courage.  It is reasonable to then use temperance in dealing with the situation.  Our sense of justice is then reasoned.  And in studying Proverbs for quite some time, wisdom boils down to a fear of God, not an irrational fear, more of a reasoned fear, an awe that this situation would be far over my head if it were not for the Almighty Power of God.

And that power was on earth long before Zeno of Citium came up with the idea of Stoicism around 300BC.  Zeno predates Jesus in human form, but not the ethics that is espoused by Christianity.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.