Faith Venture

The last post discussed people of virtue avoiding sin because it was just the way they lived.

Let us take a look at the Stoics. One of the leading Stoic philosophers, Seneca, wrote essays that sounded so much like Paul that later Christian thinkers thought he was Christian. It’s unlikely that he ever heard of Jesus.

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. Ryan Holliday, today’s leading exponent of Stoic philosophy, writes, “Virtue to them was a way of life. It was pivotal, essential, irreplaceable. It wasn’t something you talked about, it was something you did. Aristotle said that we acquire the virtues the same way we acquire any skill—a carpenter builds, a flutist plays, a runner runs.”

Similarly, a follower of Jesus follows. We don’t go around pointing to other people’s faults instructing them with platitudes. We participate in a way of living involving prayer, meditation, study, service. And virtue.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2024 at 6:02 am and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.