Christian Philosophy: Everyone Has a Philosophy. It's The Lens Through Which They View The World and Make Decisions. Read Online Free PDF Page A

enemy.
    The root word “philosophy” that Paul used in his admonition to the Colossians was used in only one other place in Scripture. It was when Paul was speaking to the Greeks,
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
    Acts 17:18
    We are still encountering these philosophies today. Epicureans derived their teaching from the philosopher Epicurus who founded a school in Athens, Greece, around 300 B.C. Epicurus taught that the world is a random combination of atoms and that pleasure is the highest good. 3 His followers soon devolved into a materialistic group; a lot like the materialistic and pleasure-seeking society that the modern philosophy of evolution is giving rise to today. Having fun and seeking pleasure pretty much sums up most people’s philosophy today. In fact, the theory of evolution is simply a new presentation of the Epicurean belief that life is the result of the random collision of atoms.
    A Christian philosophy puts relationship with God above pleasure. I have a philosophy that pleasing God is more important than pleasing myself. If seeking God means doing something that isn’t pleasurable, I’ll suffer the consequences because I don’t make my decisions based on what makes me feel good. The world promotes buying the biggest house you possibly can, the biggest car, and indulging every sense you have. The world’s philosophy is “Get all you can. Can all you get. And sit on your can.” But God teaches that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and Jesus said that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15). People are more important than possessions, and I want to make my life count; that means I need to be serving others, not gathering stuff together for myself.
    The second part of Epicurus’ philosophy was to avoid pain at all costs. 4 Unfortunately, pain is sometimes necessary to accomplish good. Freedom, for example, has a cost. Millions of people have died in battle for freedom. A lot of pain was endured during World War II to provide the freedom that we enjoy today. A self-seeking philosophy doesn’t allow for sacrifice like that; it leads people to put their heads in the sand and hope that problems will just go away.
    When Hitler began his rise to power, as he first started implementing his racist policies, a lot of people thought he would just go away. Many governments had come and gone in Germany since they lost the First World War, and people thought Hitler would be another passing fad. Everyone wanted to avoid conflict and so they ignored Hitler and hoped he would fade away. Obviously he didn’t, and his plans for a “master race” and the genocide he employed in that pursuit plunged the world into a war in which over 50 million people died.
    Today, people are hoping our problems will go away just like Europe hoped Hitler would. People are putting their heads in the sand and ignoring attacks upon our society such as abortion and the promotion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual agenda, in the hopes that it will all go away. But those attacks aren’t going away unless individuals in society make a stand for morality. Ignoring these warning signs is a recipe for disaster. It’s a wrong philosophy.
    The reference to stoics in the above scripture refers to the Greek philosopher Zeno who founded a competing school of thought at the same time as Epicurus. The stoics believed that virtue was sufficient for happiness, and that the ultimate goal in life was to become free from the fluctuations of emotion—pleasure or pain. 5 Stoics sought to calmly accept all circumstances as the unavoidable result of divine will or the natural order. 6
    A lot of Christians today are stoic in their philosophy. The extreme sovereignty of God