Stoic Justice

What do we do when good people suffer, when injustice wins out, and when doing everything right still doesn’t give us the results we hoped for? And how do we make space for happiness when so much around us feels wrong?

Those questions were at the center of Rev. Sally Campbell-Evans’ sermon this past Sunday at Hyde Park United Methodist Church. She was continuing a series on Ecclesiastes that Rev. Magrey deVega started the week before. Magrey had mentioned the Stoics, which caught my attention. Sally didn’t talk about Stoicism directly, but as I listened, I was struck by how closely her message matched ideas I’ve been studying and writing about for the past eighteen months.

One statement really stuck with me. “You are responsible for your faithfulness. Yes. But you are not responsible for controlling the outcomes.” That’s very close to what Epictetus taught almost two thousand years ago. We can choose how to act, what principles to follow, and how much effort to give. But we can’t guarantee the world will respond as we hope. I’ve learned that lesson through professional uncertainty, and I’ve encountered it just as often in my civic and social justice work.

But Sally took the discussion in a direction I found especially meaningful. She reminded us that seeing injustice means we have a responsibility to act, even if we can’t fix everything. And while we do that work, we still have lives worth enjoying. We have friends to spend time with, meals to share, everyday moments of happiness, and people whose presence makes hard days easier.

Then she shared a remarkable story from her time in Nicaragua during the Contra War. She was at a gathering of women when news came that one woman’s third son had been killed. The room filled with grief. After a while, another woman stood up and reminded everyone that life was still a gift worth celebrating. She invited them to dance, and they did. For the rest of the evening, those women danced together while grieving a terrible loss.