Tag Archives: mindfulness

Christian Stoic or Social Justice Christian?

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The Stoics

Like all philosophical schools in the ancient world—Platonists, Epicureans, Academics, et al—the Stoics sought the truths, attitudes and conditions that would facilitate a good human life. They observed that such negative emotions as fear, desire, and anxiety are generated by thoughts about attaining or avoiding that over which we have no control. Clearly, these negative emotions are incompatible with the good life. The best life is one of undisturbed contentment with the gift of existence in our inner being wherein we are always in the immediate presence of good things that cannot change. For the Stoics, there is only one thing and one place over which we have control, that is our own free will. It is the only thing that we can have purely by willing it. The external world, including our bodies, operates under other laws over which we have no immediate control and to which we must adjust. And the free will of other human beings is completely beyond our control because it is totally under their control. To banish negative emotions, we must refrain from desiring to control that over which we do not have immediate and total control. Stoics determine to accept the flow of the events that happen in nature as their lot. These external events cannot threaten or even touch the inner world of free will unless we allow it to do so.

Social Justice Christians

There is a kind of Christian ethics that in effect proposes that we ought to remain in a state of discontent and outrage until we right every injustice done in the world. And because we cannot accomplish such radical changes in the world by appealing to the free will of others by doing good, speaking truth, and setting good examples, these same Christians resort to using force: intimidation, insults, rudeness, disruption, legal action, and, yes, even violence.  Apparently, these social justice Christians think that the coming of the kingdom of God depends on our human efforts to establish their ideal political order that includes everybody, believers and non-believers, saints and sinners. They turn the Stoic understanding of a good human life inside out. What matters most are the external conditions of life: equal access to bodily pleasure, equality of material goods, equality of social respect, and equality of external freedom. Because this level of control over the external social, political, and natural order is impossible, these social justice Christians ensure that everyone is angry, unhappy, fearful, and offended all the time. Not a happy life.

The Christian Stoic

There are, of course, great differences between Stoic metaphysics, cosmology and theology and the Christian view of God, creation, salvation, and providence. Jesus’s teaching concerning God’s providence and against the need for anxiety, however, bears some resemblance to the Stoic doctrine of limiting our concern to the place where we have immediate control, our free will. Jesus tells us to trust and align our wills with God’s will. Also, neither in Jesus’s teaching nor in the rest of the New Testament is there the slightest hint that Jesus’s disciples ought to seek to remake the world into a social justice paradise by political means. That day is an eschatological hope dependent completely on God’s power. To attempt to control the world in the name of God in a way only God can produces only tyranny and rebellion. The only community in which there is a little hope for an approximate realization of the kingdom ethics taught in the Sermon on the Mount is the church, that is, the community of those truly converted to Jesus Christ in their inner being. But history demonstrates that this kingdom community has never become a concrete reality even in the church, the community divinely commission to become such. Much more is it a vain dream that it will be realized in a society of the unconverted!

What is the Christian Stoic to do? First, we must understand that apart from God’s grace in the Holy Spirit our free will is not free in the most radical sense, that is free to know and love the true God above all things. Only God can make God present to our minds so that we can know and love him in this way. But given God’s grace, we can love God in return for his love for us. In loving God above everything else we live free from anxiety about all those things over which we have no control. Moreover, we know that the God who loves us possesses power to control all things for our good.

Christian Stoics know they cannot right every wrong and transform the world into a social paradise. This task is not under their power and therefore is not their job. Their main job is, with the help of God’s grace, to allow themselves to be transformed into the image of Christ. From that transformed inner world they can turn outward to do good, speak truth, and love neighbor and enemy. God may use their good works and words to transform others.

Christian Stoics refuse to be unhappy because the external world does not submit to their control. We have come to know that our primary task in life is purification of our own souls. That in itself is a dauting task and the work of a lifetime.

Thinking and Thoughtfulness: Part 4 Thoughtfulness

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At the beginning of this series I mentioned a distinction Bernard Lonergan made between common sense and scientific thought. As far as I remember, Lonergan did not address the idea of thoughtfulness. But this concept cries out for analysis as a matter of logical development and even more so for its cultural relevance; in my view thoughtlessness is a central feature of contemporary culture.

Now that we have before us the concepts of observation, common sense, scientific thought and introspection we may be able grasp the subtler concept of thoughtfulness and understand how it relates to theology and the religious life.

Unlike observation, thoughtfulness is not intense concentration on something. It’s not perception of the relationship of things to our needs and wants. This is common sense. Nor is it acute insight into the relationships among things considered apart from us. Here we are speaking of scientific thought. And thoughtfulness is not merely the inward gaze that distinguishes idea from idea, mood from mood and feeling from feeling. Introspection is at work here.

Consider how we use word “thoughtful” in everyday speech. Sometimes we designate an act as “thoughtful” and at other times we speak of a person as “thoughtful”. A thoughtful act manifests insight into the need and desires of another person coupled with forethought and goodwill. Thoughtful people are likely to perform thoughtful acts because they possess awareness, sensitivity, anticipation and empathy toward others. Thoughtfulness is heightened awareness of what is hidden from external observation joined with caring involvement with people. In the common use we see clearly the ethical dimension of thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness in the wider sense I want to explore includes this kind of awareness but is more comprehensive.

By thoughtfulness in this wider sense, I mean “thought-FULL-ness,” that is, comprehensive awareness. Observation, common sense, scientific thought and introspection are one-directional and focal. In observation and scientific thought you sometimes forget your entanglement with the object of focus, that is, how it affects you and you affect it. In common sense you can lose sight of the object’s existence in and for itself because you are concerned only with its effect on you. In none of these modes of thought are you aware of yourself in the act of relating to the object or of how your or the object’s relation to God affects the total situation.

Ideally, then, thoughtfulness is simultaneous awareness of every dimension of your environment and your relation to it; it is awareness of yourself, your relationship to other things and of the relationships of other things to each other at the same time. In thoughtfulness we do more than observe and think about something; we also become aware of our observations, thoughts, feelings and judgments. We do more than interrogate the objects we think about. We also question the relationship between us and the object of our attention, taking into account all aspects of our relationship to it—causal, ethical, religious and esthetic.

Thoughtfulness challenges every automatic and habitual way of relating to things, ideas, people, God and ourselves. Thoughtfulness insists that we bring our every act and relation into the light of rational deliberation, freedom, moral judgment and awareness of God. Thoughtfulness takes nothing for granted. It interrogates every act, feeling, thought and every appearance. It raises not only narrow scientific and common sense questions but reflexive questions, questions that question the questioner.  “What am I doing?” “Why am I doing this?” “Why do I want to do this?” “Should I do this?” “What does my action reveal about me?”

Most important of all, thoughtfulness is awareness of God in all these relationships and dimensions. For a Christian, our relationship with God must be the decisive factor in all relationships, feelings and acts. Everything possesses a relationship to God, a relation of dependence, meaning and direction; and a thing’s God-relation is the most fundamental relation it can possess. It is the central component in its identity. No one is truly thoughtful who is not mindful of the presence and relevance of God to all things.

For a Christian, every relationship and every activity is a matter of conscience. Conscientiousness is habitual thoughtfulness in relation to God. It is awareness of God as the third factor in every relationship, every activity and every decision. It is constant awareness of God as our Creator, Guide, Judge and Savior. A conscientious person does not forget God in the daily routines of life and views forgetfulness of God as a serious fault. Conscientiousness sanctifies every aspect of life. All of it is lived before God and directed to God.

I will omit examples of thoughtfulness because I hope that every post I make on this blog illustrates and embodies thoughtfulness. To be continued…

Coming soon: the nature, forms and consequences of thoughtlessness.