Christianity and Stoicism

He threatened me the very first time I met him. Fever and all that. Like an apple terrifies a tomato’s peace; or like iOS terrifies something Chinese… He was dumb. I don’t know the right word to use to describe my feeling of his quietness, but he was kind-a like mute. Passive. He tingled my mind to want to understand him. He was a subject of distorted realities. A motionless creature, maybe. I watched him sweep away pain and sensitivity to emotion like the sun peels away the gloom of dark in an amberly way. He threatened the truisms in existence with such ease – counter changeably – like it was a mistake for some things to really make sense, and in his case, any sense at all. I felt like my innermost being really wanted to understand him, it screamed so loud for discernment; yet the other side of me that is always in touch with reality wanted so much to question him… such a creature in mortality that was jumpy in every bit of description. He was beastly and unwitful. Yet at the top of it all, he was Christian…

“But was I less?” I wondered. “Should I have been less? Why should I have been less anyway? Who said I was less? Less Christian than he was, huh?”

Some Christianity lacks emoticons… I should say. I should say that some Christianity lacks emoticons… Some Christianity lacks fun. It lacks motion and fervency. It lacks laughter and easiness. It lacks the life-smile. It lacks joy and passion. It is flat to the ground. It is warped and dead (or dying if I have to be a little ‘fair’), and shriveled, and painful, and weird, and too sharp, and somehow cunning, and brief, and paradoxical and - according to G. K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” - full of orthodoxy, and conventionalism, and blunt (although sharp in some way)… The terms of its existence are like a gas pump without oil…

But we meet it every day. We interact with it. We know it. Maybe sometimes we secretly admire it, and then most times we abhor it. Blunt stoic Christianity. It wants no pleasure, it knows no pain, it cries not, it laughs not, it cares less. Blunt stoic Christianity. It ties itself to spiritual plumpness. It denies pain. It carries with itself lots and lots of heaviness and uneasiness. Blunt stoic Christianity. It is what I have to talk about today.

The Christian life we live today has been overhauled into two extremes: either into a ‘radicalized’ sense of religion with taints of secularism or; into orthodox spirituality which grabs petty laws and converts them into dogmas of religion. In simple terms, you will meet as many Christians as you can’t count who subscribe to the notion that spirituality is being separate from any kind of physical pleasure (say as a result of money or prestige) and the ultimate pretence that pain, sickness and any form or displeasure is intolerable and should neither be existing nor be thought of. It is a life that most of us live - a life lacking the balance between genuine pleasure and materialistic pleasure. We have been taught to abhor pleasure – the whole lot of it – even good pleasure. We are desperate and struggling to live in the “now” that is today. We are struggling so much with the reality that is “now”. We abhor TV – even good TV, we deny the blend of fashion on us – even decent fashion. We don’t watch movies (or soaps). Some of us don’t watch news. We hate the internet and social media because ‘they are impure’. We hate good phones. We hate this and we hate that. We hate those who speak in tongues tagging them as ‘noise makers’ who should just do whatever they are doing in their privacy. We hate people who jump when they praise and worship. We are not friendly, not even to people of the Faith. We don’t even befriend people of the secular world in the name of them making us impure in one way or another (and I am not advocating for ‘befriending pagans’ but that it is important for a Christian to be social and suitable in his/her immediate environment). We are pathetic!

So I always wonder (about such people, like that guy up there and who may include myself) if God at all created pleasure for the secular world or for ‘the heathen’ as most of us love calling them. Were we created to be called to either evade pain or deny it all through our existence? Were we formed in the image of God so that our lives may be full of running away from things or people, even those we love; all in the name of acquiring the highest fonts of spirituality?

I am just wondering.  Am just wondering.

Of course we have been commanded (or instructed) not to engage in any kind of civilian life

(2 Timothy 2:3-4: Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs – he wants to please his commanding officer…) and therefore  should put our obedience in (and to) Christ above our own meager pleasures, remembering mostly where we are headed than where we are. But Christ Himself was in touch with His environment – He knew that he was going to the Father, but still wept when people died, and had compassion on some when they stayed hungry. He was angry and hungry countless times. He made friends - with his disciples and tax collectors, and Pharisees like Nicodemus – many friends, many kinds of friends. Christ was in touch with His immediate environment, although his lack of sin was (and still is) highly impeccable (Hebrews 4:15). This makes me wonder what say, His reaction(s) or behavior would be if he were to meet a guy like me today. I am sure that the Jesus I know would command me, “Don’t be a hypocrite like the Pharisees…!” then He would add some few statements here and there to confirm His allegations (as it would seem to me)… But again I may ask, “What would Jesus do today to remain Holy in such an imperfect and sinful world…?” The answer is simple: He would live a common and normally life without too much religious sophistication, but loving people and smiling at them, and being merciful and compassionate – He is the same Jesus, right? The one who doesn’t change, right? He will still do what He’s gotta do in order to achieve that which the Father sent Him to do – to offer help and redemption to mankind in any (and every) way possible…

Here is the endpoint: you don’t have to feel ‘fake’ or uneasy in the presence of one (or many) who glory in mortal piety and ‘spiritual strictness’, but rather feel inadequate before the One who demands that we obtain from Him immortal righteousness – that which He Himself has made us to become. For we are his righteousness, and not our own righteousness. We don’t have to be hard on ourselves in order to please God. We don’t have to pretend that pain or affection or love or desire does not exist, but learn and know how to channel all of them in a godly way to the rightful place until we achieve that which God has created us to become… his righteousness – and not blunt stoic self-righteous Christians!

Morris.