"stoicism’s Providential claim that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath (a claim Christianity borrowed from Stoicism)"
This is obviously and patently false. Christianity recognizes that God has both an active and permissive will. So, while God actively wills the good, He does not actively will evil. This would make God evil, which is incoherent. Rather, God permits evil, but only to bring about some greater good. So, it isn't that the evil isn't really evil, and it isn't that God wills the evil, but rather that the evil is permitted to occur to allow a good to come out of it. We do not deny the evil or the suffering it causes, but we embrace it and allow it to become an instrument of the good. To refuse to suffer the inevitable and inescapable evil that will be inflicted on us only produces more suffering, but a fruitless kind (though potentially instrumentally fruitful in that it may be instructive on this point). The Crucifixion is the paradigmatic example of fruitful suffering and self-sacrifice. The Crucifixion is tremendously evil, and according to Christian theology, the greatest evil ever committed. But by permitting this greatest of evils, God created the greatest of sacrifices, so cosmically great, in fact, that it could pay the price for all sin ever committed.
So, there's no complacency in Christianity, but it is cool-headed and subjects the emotional to reason and moves by the authentic love reason enables.
"stoicism predates the concept of human-generated progress by more than a millennium. It doesn’t teach us how to change the terrible aspects of the world, it teaches us how to adapt ourselves to them, and to accept them, presuming that they fundamentally cannot be fixed."
Another divergence is that Christianity encourages the humble discernment of what should be changed, what can be changed, and what cannot be changed and what should not be changed. In retrospect, this is common sense, and that is a good sign and to its credit, but ideologically-possessed people can become enraptured by a spirited and blind pursuit of some real or perceived good and cause a good deal of destruction as a result. There is a big difference between authentic zeal, which remains firmly rooted in reason, and becoming blinded by one's passions.
It's interesting, as well, to consider how much of "human generated progress" is just technological progress. The core flaws of human nature like greed or pride stubbornly refuse to change. If you rolled back the industrial revolution I don't think we'd be living in an equally free society where everyone is just materially worse off but in something that probably resembles the political and social climate of the time before this technological leap occurred.
This duality where god is "allowing" some other entity to do evil seem to be closer to Gnosticism than to omniscient and omnipotent god of Christianity.
This is obviously and patently false. Christianity recognizes that God has both an active and permissive will. So, while God actively wills the good, He does not actively will evil. This would make God evil, which is incoherent. Rather, God permits evil, but only to bring about some greater good. So, it isn't that the evil isn't really evil, and it isn't that God wills the evil, but rather that the evil is permitted to occur to allow a good to come out of it. We do not deny the evil or the suffering it causes, but we embrace it and allow it to become an instrument of the good. To refuse to suffer the inevitable and inescapable evil that will be inflicted on us only produces more suffering, but a fruitless kind (though potentially instrumentally fruitful in that it may be instructive on this point). The Crucifixion is the paradigmatic example of fruitful suffering and self-sacrifice. The Crucifixion is tremendously evil, and according to Christian theology, the greatest evil ever committed. But by permitting this greatest of evils, God created the greatest of sacrifices, so cosmically great, in fact, that it could pay the price for all sin ever committed.
So, there's no complacency in Christianity, but it is cool-headed and subjects the emotional to reason and moves by the authentic love reason enables.
"stoicism predates the concept of human-generated progress by more than a millennium. It doesn’t teach us how to change the terrible aspects of the world, it teaches us how to adapt ourselves to them, and to accept them, presuming that they fundamentally cannot be fixed."
Another divergence is that Christianity encourages the humble discernment of what should be changed, what can be changed, and what cannot be changed and what should not be changed. In retrospect, this is common sense, and that is a good sign and to its credit, but ideologically-possessed people can become enraptured by a spirited and blind pursuit of some real or perceived good and cause a good deal of destruction as a result. There is a big difference between authentic zeal, which remains firmly rooted in reason, and becoming blinded by one's passions.