Interview w/ Christian Pastor and Theologian

The purpose of these interview question were to get a better understanding between Christianity and Stoicism. So since I could not get a live interview with Greg Boyd senior pastor at Woodland Hills Church I emailed him some questions about it and here are the answers he came up with.

Hi Christian, sorry I couldn't get this to you in time for your project. But here are my short answers to your questions.

1. First of all are you familiar with stoicism?
--> YES

2. As a Christian Pastor and theologian would you say that stoicism closely relates to the Christian religion?
And in what aspects does it or does it not?
--> Stoicism has strongly influenced Christianity since at least the third and fourth centuries. It explains why so many Christians pray to accept suffering as God's will instead of revolting against it, as Jesus did. It's also why Calvinist thing everything is predestined by God.  I see Stoicism and the movement that Jesus birthed as almostly completely antithetical.  Stoicism strives to be a peace with the way things are. The movement Jesus founded assumes that the way things are is OFF, because the world is seiged by Satan and other forces of evil that must be resisted, and eventually defeated.

3. You talk a lot about serving the kingdom and building the kingdom in your sermons, I think that goes along with being a stoic thinking of bettering your life and the others around you. Do you think they are talking about it in the same sense as you are? Even if they aren't does it still have some connections?
--> I think all similarities are superficial. In the kingdom, we aspire to live and serve like Jesus to advance the reign of God over and against the Devil. Stoicism basically says, "what is, is right, so embrace it."

4. An idea of Christianity that does not go along with stoicism is the idea of always praying to god for certain outcomes. A stoic would tell you I think that you should not worry about those outcomes as you cant control them. Or maybe that go has already given us the tools we need; we just have to use them. What are your thoughts on prayer and the stoic idea of controlling what is in your control and being indifferent to those not?
--> your absolutely right. As I said above, in the kingdom movement that Jesus birthed, we pray to a personal God in order to change the course of events, whereas in Stoicism a) there is no personal God, and b) you cannot change the course of events. All is fated.

5. In life a stoic would believe that perfection is attainable on your own through reason, known as sages. What are you thoughts on the idea of perfection?
        Although you may not agree with the perfection part, do you think that reason is big part of living a better Christian like life or is something else a bigger part of that?
--> NO. I think the call to love and serve enemies looks foolish and irrational to people who rely on reason. Yet, this is what disciples of Jesus are called to do. Also, while we should strive for perfection, the perfection we strive for is not according to REASON, but according to Jesus Christ. It's the ideal of love...a love that wars against evil.

6. Forgiveness is something that runs high in both Christianity and Stoicism but I think that they are thought of in a different way. For a stoic I think forgiveness is more about not being mad at someone or controlling the emotion you have about someone who has wronged you. I think in their thinking the forgiveness process comes even before the wrong doing and you should prepare in a way that you don't necessarily need to forgive because you feel you haven't had a wrong done to you. So if you don't place high admiration for your wife's beauty in the first place you will not get mad or blame the adulterer. But in the Christian thought of forgiveness I think it comes after the wrong is done, saying ok you have done this and now I forgive you. What are your thoughts or opinion on forgiveness in both stoicism and Christianity?
--> I think you got it right. In Christ, we forgive because we have been forgiven, despite the fact that we may DEEPLY care about another took by wronging us. Forgiving by virtue of not being invested in the world or in people is a very cheap kind of forgiveness, and one that is contrary to Christ.

Love the way you think deeply about things Christian. Keep it up!

Greg

Conclusion

In this blog I wanted to take stoic thought, a primarily dead philosophy in our world today and see where it had its applications, where I could extract stoic thought, and create situations to think about. At the beginning of this I really did not know what kind of theme I was going for I just wanted to write about things that interested me and happened to have a connection to stoicism.

After finishing I found that there was somewhat of a trend or theme that went across most of the posts. That theme was what I called the main aspect of stoicism, the idea of the dichotomy of control posed to us by Epictetus. There are some things you can control and there are some things you cannot. To me this has been the most impactful in my life since learning about stoicism or at least the one I have consciously have been applying to situations in my life recently.

Before I liked to think of my self as someone who is really chill about things and did not put too much worry in the things that I could not control only to find out when learning about this an trying to apply it to my life that I do freak out about a lot of little things that are really out of my control. I was freaking out about getting my parking spot taken or letting that “annoying” kid (won’t name any names) get me irritated.

Now I find my self catching those instances and reminding myself that these things are out of my control and I just have to change my negative attitudes about them to positive ones. This is the one idea that I think in todays American world everyone could take in and use to better their lives because people do I think worry too much about the externals and things we don't have control over these days and they let them run their lives.

The Main Aspect of Stoicism Can Prolong Your Life

To me having control over your mind and being indifferent to things you don't have control over is one of the biggest aspects of stoicism, it is something that if you read any stoic writings that will be pounded into your head. The ideas of Epictetus that “Men are disturbed not by events that causes suffering but our opinions about events.” and “It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” are ones that show the stoic thought of how your attitude can change the way an event affects you. These are the quotes I want to use to connect to the idea of stoicism prolonging your life. What he is saying is it is often not an event that causes us to suffer but our attitude toward that event. So you can’t control these events but you can control your opinion about them. This is something that I think he was mostly just thinking of in terms of how you respond to things that happen in your life, like how you react to a death of a family member, the weather, or basically any external stuff that you do not have control over.

What you didn't know is that this mind set that was laid out by the stoics can actually help prolong your life because not only does it help you cope with or have better attitude about things that are out of your control externally but it can help your health and how physiological stress responses like breathing heavy or your heart pounding effects you. All you have to do is change your attitude about it, if you think these responses are bad for your health then it is going to be bad for your health. If you view these responses as something helpful as Kelly McGonigal says in the TED talk, as something that your body is doing to energize you and preparing you to take on whatever challenges that are causing the stress responses, this will reduce the health risks of a prematurely dying. As the study done by Abiola Keller, Kristen Litzelman, and Lauren Wisk of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health called “Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? The Association with Health and Mortality” concludes that people who endured a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die, in fact they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study including people who had relatively little stress. What is also pointed out by Kelly are these stats from the study that says, “people who experienced stress in the last year had a 43% increased risk of dying but that was only true for the people who also believe that stress is harmful for your health.” And “Over the 8 years tracking deaths 182,000 died prematurely not from stress but from the belief that stress is bad for your health.”

This study really got me thinking about the importance of that one aspect of stoicism. It is just a good philosophy to live by because our opinions and thoughts are something that nobody can take away from us and is the only thing we have complete control over, so using this we can have a more positive outlook on life leading us to a better one. And not only can it do that for us but it can actually help us live a healthier fuller life in the biological part just by changing how we view our stress. You don't need to get rid of stress you just need to change your view about it. So remember next time you start to feel the stress and the stress responses starting to come, take the Epictetus view and change your attitude towards these events that are out of your control and think of them as helpful not harmful and you can save yourself from dying from your stress beliefs.

You can watch the TED talk I refer to here:

Citations:

Epictetus, and William Abbott Oldfather.  The Discourses & Selected Readings as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments. London: W. Heinemann, 1926. Print.

Keller, Abiola; Litzelman, Kristin; Wisk, Lauren E.; Maddox, Torsheika; Cheng, Erika Rose; Creswell, Paul D.; Witt, Whitney P. Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality. Health Psychology, Vol 31(5), Sep 2012, 677-684

McGonigal, Kelly. TED talk

Analyzing the Epictetus Rap By Jeff Traylor

What I really wanted to find is how that this could connect stoicism with the career that I eventually want to get into which is working with at risk youth. I wanted to be able to take these stoic teachings and have something to connect with the kids I will eventually be working with in the future. I think today music is one of the best tools to connect and influence our youth. So I searched for a song that interprets stoical thought into music. I came across this book called The Epictetus Club by Jeff Traylor written for purpose of informing prison inmates of the ideas of Epictetus to help them prepare to return to society. In this book he starts it out with rap lyrics he wrote that have the ideas of Epictetus as a form to help better connect these ideas with the inmates

The Epictetus Rap

My name is Epictetus, here’s what I’m puttin’ down,
If you ain’t got your cog skills, you’re nothin’ but a clown. [He is saying if you don't have the cognitive skills or the power and control over your mind you are nothing, which was an idea he was known for]

You know I was a prisoner, you know I was a slave,
It took all of my mind to control how I behave. [This is just a little bit of background of Epictetus he grew up as a slave in Rome but adopted the idea of controlling your mind when studying stoicism under Musonius Rufus. I think the Jeff is trying to highlight something about Epictetus that will connect with his target audience, prisoners]

But I used my brain to live, I used my brain to get through, I let go of entitlement, thinking I was due
[Him saying he using his brain to live and get through is another connection to your mind being the only thing you have complete control over and don't think that you are owed something just make the best of what you are given. This can connect to a quote from Epictetus’ Discourses, “make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature.”]

Whatever I wanted, whatever anyone had,
I learned to focus elsewhere, then I didn’t feel so bad.
[This line connects to a quote from Enchiridion where he says, “if you desire something outside of your control, you are bound to be disappointed.” So he is suggesting we turn our desires towards things in our control and then you won’t feel so bad.]

I took my better feelings and opened up my mind,
I saw I used closed thinking, I saw that I was blind


To all my choices, all my options, all my possibility
And I made a vow right then that I knew I could be free


In my mind and in my heart
And in my thoughts is where to start.

[These three lines are about opening your mind about the world and knowing that you can’t blame the world for all of your misfortunes and once you are able to do that you will start to make progress in bettering yourself.]

So let me tell you what to do if you truly want to live
A life you can be proud of, a life where you can give

Instead of taking all the time, doing booze and drugs and crime.
Clear your head, clear your conscience,
Clear your record, clear your mind,
Ain’t no satisfaction in immediate gratis-faction.

[Here he is connecting to one of the two major vices Epictetus states, Lack of self control: not being able to resist pleasure. If you really want to live a good life you can’t just seek the immediate satisfaction posed to you by booze, drugs, and crime. You have to clear your mind of wanting these things and get your self on the right track.]

Now I know you think your circumstance Is the reason for your victim stance,
But you know it ain’t like that
You can survive like a cat.

Turn it on its ear, turn it upside down,
Instead of being crushed, ask how you can turn it ’round.

[The idea of circumstance being out of your control is made apparent here and you cant blame that as the reason you think you have been victimized. What you need to do is rethink things and see it in a better light.]

Don’t just do the time, don’t be a stupid fool,
This here is a place where if you play it cool,


You’ll be stronger in your thinking, stronger in your heart, When you come up out of here, you’ll now know where to start


To live a life of purpose, to live the life you need,
To let go of your past, your demands and your greed.

[Here Jeff is saying not to just serve your jail time and go back to doing what you were doing before that got you there. You have to create a strong mind and that is the start to making a purpose for your life. From there follow that purpose and don't let others including yourself hinder you.]

Instead of robbin’ in the hood, but sayin’ you are good, Get yourself on home, forget that Robin Hood syndrome. Don’t be makin’ no excuses, don’t be blamin’ no one else, Take responsibility and be Master of Yourself.

[Again this goes back to the idea that only ignorant people blame others for his own misfortunes and once you can take responsibility and be in control of your mind progress will be made.]

© 2002 by Maximum511

Overall I think Jeff did a great job in interpreting Epictetus’ ideas into a rap song to connect with his target audience, which are prisoners. I think it really illustrates the sense of having to be rational and taking responsibility of your own thought and mind. Those are two things that although I don't know for sure but I will make an assumption here that being irrational and losing control of your own thought are big reasons why people go to prison. So these teaching can be of big help to inmates or other people who are at risk of being put in the system.

Citation:

Epictetus, and William Abbott Oldfather.  The Discourses & Selected Readings as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments. London: W. Heinemann, 1926. Print.

Traylor, Jeff. The Epictetus Club. Monroevill, OH: Papillon Press, 2004. Print.

Lay Your Brick As Perfectly As You Can

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith there is a passage where he talks about how the stoics have appeared to consider life a game. Later in that passage he explains how we should play that game and here is an excerpt from that passage in the book, “Our only anxious concern ought to be, not about the stake, but about the proper method of playing. If we placed our happiness in winning the stake, we placed it in what depended up on causes beyond our own power, and out of our direction. We necessarily exposed ourselves to perpetual fear and uneasiness, and frequently to grievous and mortifying disappointments. If we played it in playing well, in playing fairly, in playing wisely and skillfully; in the propriety of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our own power, and under our own direction.”

So what he is saying here is that we can’t live life worrying about what is at stake and lets stay in the game metaphor, winning the game could be at stake. We shouldn't think like oh my god the game is at stake here if I don't make this shot we are going to lose or even the other side that there is nothing really at stake. What this quote is saying is that we should just play the game the right way, play it fairly, and play it wisely and skillfully because sometimes in life you are going to make that shot and sometimes you won’t and it is not always in your control. So if you just play it (life) the right way and to the best of your ability you have control over your life happiness (the stakes) and have nothing to be disappointed about.

So now that I have explained that I want to apply and connect that idea Adam Smith has to one of my favorite quotes of all time from a man by the name of Will Smith, you might have heard of him. He is one of my favorite actors so I am a little biased but what he says really is in a way a stoic thought that everyone should apply to their lives. He says, “You don't try to build a wall, you don't set out to build a wall, you don't say I'm going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that's ever been built, you don't start there, you say I'm going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid and you do that every single day and soon you have a wall.”

So lets connect that to the passage from earlier. We will say that “the wall” is what is at stake in Will’s quote. So he is saying you shouldn’t set out and worry about the wall or your happiness, which is at stake. You should worry about laying the brick as perfectly as it can be laid or playing the game the right way and wisely and skillfully and doing that soon you will have your wall or your happiness in life.

Citation:

Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiment. N.p.: Oxford UP, 1976. Print.