Stoicism

Life can so easily get us down. Most of the time we ask, how can we survive? Lasting joy seems utterly out of reach.

The Stoics were a group of people in the ancient world who sought to find lasting joy while living a normal life. They wanted to move past depression, anxiety, anger, worry, and all the other negative emotions that often dominate our lives.

The Stoics were not, contrary to the common misconception, proposing that we be emotionless. They wanted to experience the blessing of positive emotions and minimize the impact of negative emotions. As the Stoic Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) wrote in his Letters to Lucilius: “Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business. Learn how to feel joy” (Letter XXIII, 55).

In this article, I want to explain how the Stoics suggested that you could find joy and then compare and contrast it with a biblical view of joy based on 1 Peter 1:3–9.

With so many hard and even awful things, how did these ancient writers think that you could find joy?

1. Let go of unnecessary negative emotions. According to the Stoics, there are many things that keep us from lasting joy that do not need to. For example, most of the things we worry about never happen and are not even likely to happen. We get nervous even when things are going well. As Seneca said: “The mind at times fashions for itself false shapes of evil when there are no signs that point to any evil” (XIII, 28). Even if bad things could possibly happen, “It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time” (XXIV, 57).

2. Don’t seek your joy in changeable things. People, pleasures, and places can bring us joy. However, if they are the ultimate source of joy, then we will inevitably lose that joy when we lose those things. Seneca put it this way: “For his joy depends on nothing external and looks for no boon from man or Fortune” (LXXI, 190). For example, if our joy depends on our business doing well, we will lose our joy when our business fails. If our joy depends on laboring honestly, then we have a source of joy that is independent of circumstances (or fortune).

3. Re-interpret suffering and hard things. The Stoics did not seek out suffering. They believed that one could live a virtuous life in spite of suffering. They also saw that living rightly in the face of suffering could actually strengthen a person. Seneca compared learning to live virtuously in the face of suffering with training to fight well:

The only contestant who can confidently enter the lists [i.e., engage in the conflict] is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary’s charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever (XIII, 26).

Responding well to suffering strengthens our character, and that is just one of the many ways we can reinterpret suffering to de-fang it.

4. Find a source of joy independent of fortune or circumstance. For the Stoics, that source was within oneself. Seneca said: “Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purpose, from the right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path” (XXIII, 55). Living rightly and responding well to what happens is something you can always do and that fortune and circumstance can never take away.

I think there is much to commend the Stoic perspective. We should let go of unnecessary worries, not found our joy on changing things, see the benefit of suffering, and find a joy independent of our circumstances. In my view, there is a large overlap with the Christian perspective, but there are important areas where our faith takes up the good insights of Stoicism and provides a much more solid context for lasting joy. Consider this in light of 1 Peter 1:3–9.

1. Christianity like Stoicism calls us from placing our joy in changeable things. Peter recognized that this world would bring us suffering and take away from us things that we value and find joy in: “You may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (1:6).

2. Christianity reinterprets suffering in a way similar to Stoicism. Suffering builds character. 1 Peter 1:7 is a bit difficult to translate, but the point is that suffering is like fire that makes your faith shine forth. When Jesus Christ is revealed, it will result in praise, glory, and honor.

3. Christianity finds joy in our character. We rejoice in the salvation of our souls, of who we are as human (1:9). We are being re-made, and this is something the world cannot take away from us. What is truly valuable that we possess? Our faith. It is of greater worth than gold (1:7).

4. Christianity finds joy in a relationship with Jesus. Here is where Christianity puts us on much better ground than Stoicism in finding lasting joy. There is a relationship with someone that is not changeable and is a source of continual affirmation and love. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy . . .” (1:8).

5. Christianity finds joy in the hope that all things will turn out well. Again, Christianity here redeems the insights of the natural world. It promises a world where the suffering we experience will be eliminated. It provides us a certain and unalterable hope that does not change based on circumstance. We have been born again into a new hope and an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. “In this, you greatly rejoice” (1 Pet. 1:6).

Stoicism represents one of the best human attempts to find lasting joy, and it is one from which we can learn much. As the Church Father Tertullian said, “Seneca is often one of us.” However, our faith provides us with a source of joy that is far better than anything the mind of man could have imagined: virtue based on God’s powerful transformation, a relationship with someone who will always love us, and a hope that will not disappoint. That is a sure ground for lasting joy, if we can learn to see it.

“Marcus Aurelius had a vision for Rome, and this is NOT IT!” Thus thundered Maximus in the well-known movie Gladiator. It’s also something I kept saying to my wife over several weeks while reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Not because the line itself is profound, but because it kept forcing its way into my mind—and out of my mouth.

Most people know Marcus Aurelius because of Gladiator. Long before that movie, however, he was famous because of his life and because of his book Meditations. In essence, Meditations is a self-help book—one people are still reading 1,800 years after it was written. There is a simple explanation: it helps.

Marcus Aurelius wrote these reflections while defending the borders of the Roman Empire. The book consists of brief, self-contained passages drawn from Stoic philosophy. Each one is meant to retrain perception—to help Aurelius, and the reader, live peacefully with reality as it actually is rather than as one wishes it to be.

The central claim is uncompromising: “If you are pained about any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.” Frustration is something we supply. And—Marcus relentlessly insists—we have the power to judge differently. Meditations is a manual for learning how to do that, so that anger and resentment give way to tranquility.

A few examples show how this works.

When things go badly: “Remember, too, on every occasion that leads you to vexation to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune” (4.49).

When you don’t want to get up early: “In the morning when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present. I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going into the world for things for which I exist and for which I was brought into this world?” (5.1).

When you dislike where you live: “[W]here a man can live, there he can live well” (5.16).

When you can’t get away: “Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and you, too, are wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself. . . . tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind” (4.3).

One of the book’s most penetrating insights is that human beings are social animals. “For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth” (2.1). We are made to work together. For that reason, “[t]o act against one another then is contrary to nature and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away” (ibid.). This theme recurs constantly: those who act against others violate their own nature—and in doing so, injure themselves.

From this follows an important implication. When someone wrongs us, they cannot truly harm us, because we remain free to act according to our own nature. That does not mean we never correct others. But when correction is rejected, we must bear with them. This, too, is demanded by our nature.

The same logic applies to doing good. Loving others and acting for the common good is natural—and therefore its own reward. As Marcus Aurelius puts it: “Have I done something for the general interest? Well, then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to your mind and never stop doing such good” (11.4). If we lived this way, we would be far less anxious about recognition or gratitude.

One place I struggle to put this into practice is driving. As a result, I’ve resolved to let others drive as they wish and refuse to let it govern my emotions.

Recently, I was waiting for a gas pump. I couldn’t pull directly behind the car already there, so I waited slightly to the side. When that car pulled away, another driver quickly darted in and took the spot.

My immediate reaction was clear: “What a jerk!”

Then I remembered Marcus Aurelius. The driver either didn’t know I was waiting, or he did. If he didn’t know, it was an honest mistake and not worth anger. If he did know, then he harmed only himself by acting contrary to his social nature. Waiting a few extra seconds injured me not at all. And who knows what urgency, pressure, or trouble that driver carried with him that day?

Moments later, I pulled up to another pump, filled my tank, and left the gas station . . . with a calm and genuine tranquility.

Tag: Stoicism

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