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“What’s the difference between contentment and stoicism?”

I was recently thinking through how believers ought to deal with change. Denial is obviously not a Christian option, though it’s a very natural one. Intransigence is also generally unhelpful; there are situations in which no movement is good movement, but these are rare. Stoicism is a third common reaction to change, even among followers of Christ.

Oh, we wouldn’t call it that. Most of us haven’t read the stoics to know what they believed.

But “God willed it, so we must suck it up and carry on” is basically a stoic reaction, not a Christian one. I observe it frequently, and not only among believers of a determinist theological bent.

So what are the differences between stoicism and contentment? There are many, but here are three major areas in which the two methods of navigating reality part ways:

1/ Loneliness

Stoicism is a deeply lonely philosophy. It asks you to produce courage, temperance, justice and wisdom whether or not you have the natural fortitude to do so, without the necessary tools and in the absence of any ongoing assistance. Plenty of pagans display raw courage, but how does one become temperate without the Holy Spirit’s fruit? How does one define justice without recourse to revelation? How can one be wise without consulting the greatest wisdom literature ever published, and without the wisdom of God to interpret it? And can even great courage shore you up when you are facing certain defeat? Stoicism tells you how to live, then leaves you to sink or swim. Sure, there are other stoics around, but they are all dealing with their own dramas in isolation with no access to spiritual resources that really matter. Stoicism is like a beautiful building with a foundation of sand below.

The contentment the Christian faith offers comes with the endless resources of the Spirit of God, the word of God and the fellowship of the saints, and with the sure knowledge that whatever you suffer, Christ has been there before you and knows what you are going through. It is built on a solid intellectual and spiritual foundation that takes into account the world at its worst and equips the believer to deal with it. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses ... Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” The Christian can be content because he has more than an intellectual philosophical framework to guide his actions: he has a living, loving Savior walking with him through all the hardships of life, and a place within a body of likeminded individuals working toward the same goal.

2/ Hope

The stoic lives a good, ethical life … and then he dies. There’s no getting around that. Once he’s gone, the world will quickly begin the process of dismantling what he has built. The famous stoic writer Marcus Aurelius was probably Rome’s most renowned and beloved emperor, but his son Commodus was a psychopath whose reign was characterized by extravagance, tyranny and brutality. The name pretty much says it all. Because it only operates in the earthly realm, stoicism can offer nothing transcendent to look forward to, only the certain operation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics destroying the work product of a man’s lifetime once he can no longer maintain and protect it. Provided you can avoid creeping despair, stoicism offers a way to get through life with some sense of purpose, but nothing beyond that.

Contentment is a by-product of a life lived to the glory of God and for his pleasure. The value of a believer’s life is not in his accomplishments, his legacy or even the degree to which he was able to command his own person. Christ measures these things differently. By God’s standard of value, an impoverished widow accomplished more with two mites into the temple treasury than bags of gold from the rich. By God’s standard of value, the life of an itinerant preacher under perpetual threat of death and frequently abandoned by his fellow workers was an act of worship meriting the crown of righteousness from the hand of the Lord Jesus. By God’s standard of value, the sacrifice of thanksgiving in the mouth of a martyr is precious. The Christian can live contentedly because nothing he builds, becomes or values is ever lost. It remains perpetually preserved in Christ to result in his praise for eternity.

3/ View of God

Stoicism attempts to provide a framework for behavior without reference to the character of God. I don’t mean all stoics are atheists. Many believe in higher powers of various sorts, including the Christian God. Marcus Aurelius wrote about “the gods” all the time. But the stoic’s God, like the God of Christian determinists, is either arbitrary or operates so unfathomably that for all intents and purposes we may as well call him Fate rather than God. From the perspective of humanity, he’s essentially a role of the dice. If there is a meaning to a stoic’s car accident or cancer diagnosis, we will never know what it was. It was simply “God’s will”, and the God of that will is distant, unknowable and random.

Contentment says God loved me enough to send his Son to die for me. Having given me Christ, how will he not with him graciously give me all things? Contentment says my Father knows what I need before I ask. Moreover, my Father will not give me a serpent when I ask him for a fish. God knows, he sees, he cares, and if my circumstances are suddenly and drastically changed for the worse, it is not because he stopped loving me or was caught off guard by genetics, fortune, Satan or my limited driving skills. Rather, it is because he has counted me worthy to suffer affliction, dishonor, sorrow, pain or financial distress in the process of conforming me to the character of his Son, and he has set an upper limit on the level of temptation that comes with it, including my temptation to despair. He is granting me the opportunity to know Christ better and to accumulate reward.

Contentment says this circumstance may even be random, but a loving God’s reaction to it is absolutely not.