The Brits are known for being stoics. And that used to be true, and some, a minority still are. However, not in the vein that we were fifty or sixty years ago. The second world war I think brought out much of the “stiff upper lip” and stoicism that the British population are generally known for.

When I think about folks like Charles Spurgeon for instance: Most of his ministerial life, he was severely afflicted. Himself he suffered with gout, rheumatic disease, Brights Disease, (kidney inflammation) and severe melancholia or depression. At aged 33 his beloved wife Susannah also became an invalid and was more or less house-bound from that time on. Something to do with her female reproductive system. Yet, while all the above was going on, Spurgeon on a weekly basis, week in and week out, year in and year out, was carrying a work load that would put ANY Chrisitan to shame these days. He preached three times a week, and prepared his sermons meticulously. He was heavily involved with the orphanage he was once in. He answered five hundred letters a week, from people seeking his advice and counsel. He was also called on almost constantly by other ministers in his area, to help them solve problems. He wrote voluminously, as anyone looking at his works can see; He read six weighty theological books per week on average, and read them so thoroughly that he could quote most parts of what he read and tell you what chapter or page it was from of which book. He also had the Sword and the Trowel and was faced with many a controversy to deal with, plus any pastors normal pastoral duties that would be upon him. Births, marriages, deaths, visiting the sick etc. And all that, while suffering, gout, rheumatic disease, kidney inflammation and severe depression, and an invalid wife to boot, who he cherished no matter her inability. Dont we seem wimps by comparison, when you hear of Christians complaining of their workload today?

But, to get back to the point, the Brits are no more a nation of stoics it seems to me, these days than any other nation. Apart from the few. We have a thing here, which we women refer to as “man flu” A man will say he has the flu, a woman would pass it off as a slight cold and just get on with things. And though this video clips is a parody and meant to amuse its in some ways very accurate of this “man flu”; yet in Spurgeon’s day the stoicism that the Brits were known for, would not have left room for this phenomena. Yet its everywhere today, from the old, to the young to the in-between. And I am not intending to slate men, in a generalized way; I know the same as anything else, there will always be the exceptions. Yet in actual life, I have never known any man who does not  suffer from this “man flu” while women remain much more stoic in soem respects, and if they have a cold will just get on with things, while the men who seem to have a wife because they need mothering rather than the Biblical husband as the head, as Christ is the head of the Church, and so if ill, they become like small children. This is a big topic and something I may come back to at some point, as its all around us, everywhere it seems, where Biblical ideals, as far as being lived out are the exception rather than the norm. And as far as the Brits being a nation of stoics, Spurgeon was a Stoic with the above workload with the above afflictions in his life. And we as Christians today should feel ashamed at what we complain of, or act as if we are dying over the smallest ill health. From a nation of Stoics we have gone to something like the below!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EElqrgk4N0[/video]