Growing old with grace

I am 65 years old. I have struggled with my mental health much of my adult life. My wife, Robin, is 70 and has Parkinson’s disease. We are both retired from formal paid work. Some of our close friends are older or have greater health challenges than us. The reflections that follow are prompted by a desire to grow old with grace and to stimulate discussions on the topic with family and friends.

The communal dimension

Affluent individuals in the West think in individualistic terms. Perhaps, when it comes to ageing, they may think in a little more in terms of being part of a couple, and perhaps a nuclear family. However, ageing increases our dependence on others: a spouse, children, relatives, friends, neighbours, organisations, and governments. Even if, as individuals, we come to terms with the issues discussed below, that does not mean that our loved ones will. This complicates things further.

Accepting reality

We are all going to die. Unless we have a sudden and unexpected death, we are all going to get older. Gradually, our minds and bodies will decay. Ailments will increase. Physical, mental, and emotional energy will decline along with agility. It is tempting to live in denial that this will ever happen, or to deny that it is happening right now. The truth can be too scary, complicated, disappointing, or uncertain to accept. Even if we accept it, our loved ones may not. Even if we acknowledge the reality at an intellectual level, will we deal with it emotionally and at a practical level?

Declining energy

As we age, we have less physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual energy. We get tired more easily and our recovery time is longer. Today, I cannot function without a daily nap after lunch. I must carefully manage my limited energy. I cannot imagine doing many of the things I did a decade ago, let alone when I was young. 

Despite our declining energy, in retirement, we may have more time and freedom than ever before. We may have a new perspective on what really matters and want to use our freedom to avoid being sucked into the cares and anxieties of this world. What a blessing! The challenge is to make the most of our freedom with the energy we do have.

Some people retire from full-time employment and experience “a new lease on life.” Freed from a demanding work schedule and burdensome responsibilities, they have energy and enthusiasm for all sorts of activities.

On the positive side, what am I enjoying about this stage of life? How do I notice my energy changing? How am I adapting? Will I deal with practical and emotional issues while I still have the energy?

Practical dimensions

There is a whole range of financial, medical, legal, bureaucratic, transport, and housing dimensions to ageing. On the one hand, these complexities can come from individual affluence and living in a country with generous (by global standards) government support. On the other hand, navigating these complexities requires considerable time, energy, planning, technological savvy, and patience. It can be overwhelming. Furthermore, simply waiting until problems escalate to unsustainable levels risks creating unnecessary crises, placing burdens on others, and missing out on potential solutions. This is where accepting reality is important. At some point, we will have to stop driving, riding a bicycle, using ladders, writing books, travelling overseas, using stairs, and possibly living in our current house. Can we accept this? When do we think some of these things might happen? Do we have a plan for how we will adapt? When and how will we discuss this with family members?

Attitude

Facing reality is not easy. Our bodies are decaying. Opportunities and our influence on others are diminishing. Our legacy may be set. Not only are we changing, but so is the world around us. It is not what it used to be. Social and technological change is rapid, increasing, surprising, not necessarily for the better, and not easy to adapt to. Unlike during the bravado of youth, it is harder to deny our limitations and finitude. We now feel them in our bodies and brains. Loss rather than gain may be the norm. Funerals may outnumber weddings and births. Will we truly grieve our losses, whether it is the death of loved ones, a dream, or diminished mental capacity? Stages of grief may include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, not necessarily in a linear fashion.

Spiritual dimensions

The practical, intellectual, and emotional dimensions of ageing cannot be separated from the spiritual. My spiritual life can enable me to deal with the other challenges. Do I believe this life is all there is? Is it preparation for something better? Do I trust Jesus is walking next to me in this life stage, just as He has promised? As I experience weakness, is His grace sufficient for me? Am I looking back at past failures and disappointments with bitterness and shame? Or am I looking forward to being welcomed by Jesus into an eternal home? Do I have the hope of heaven, where there will be perfect love and justice, and no more death, tears, and pain?

A diversity of circumstances and experience

Everyone is different. Some people have excellent health and circumstances, and even when they are eighty years old, they don’t have to wrestle with some of the challenges I discuss here. Perhaps, they won’t have to for another decade. Some people die young. Some people have chronic health problems or disabilities their whole lives. Different family, social, or financial contexts can significantly affect the nature or extent of the challenges I discussed above. To illustrate the diversity I include a graph (at the end of this post) of the projected age of death for women in Australia who are 65 years old. It shows a large variation in life expectancy.

Some relevant books

Currently, Robin and I are reading three books. Each considers a different dimension of ageing.

"We need to talk about mum and dad" It is by the Australian comedian Jean Kittson and illustrated with cartoons by Patrick Cook. Although written for the children of ageing parents, it is helpful for anyone getting old. It discusses the complex family dynamics associated with ageing and how to navigate the many dimensions of the practical complexities of ageing. 

"Not Old, Not Young, Not Done: Following Jesus in Your 50s And 60s" by Christopher Ash.

"The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully" by Joan Chittister. Although the author is a Benedictine nun, the book is intended for a broad audience. The book challenges our attitudes to ageing, but may be a bit idealistic for some of us.

Mental health in a fallen creation

The Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-2 represents God's ideal. There is harmony between God and humanity, between male and female, and between humans and nature. There is no struggle for survival. There is no shame. Everything in the creation is good.

Yet this is not the world we live in.
People are alienated from God: they lose identity, purpose, and hope.
Men and women are in conflict.
Work is hard and stressful. It is usually a struggle for survival.
Humanity is alienated from nature.
People are ashamed.
Violence (physical, sexual, and verbal) is prevalent. Violence easily escalates and is passed on to the next generation.
The mind is corrupted. People believe lies, including about themselves.
Disease and death are present.

This is the world introduced in Genesis 3: the fallen creation. Adam and Eve believe a lie: they can be like God: be rulers and know everything. They rebel and experience the consequences: the world described above, a world of alienation.

Mental illness is part of the fallen creation. Depression is characterised by a lack of hope.

The Bible does not present a simplistic or reductionist view of what a human is. The description in terms of ``mind, body, heart, and soul'' is not dualist or even quadralist! Rather the Bible presents a holistic Hebrew perspective that being human and being whole is multi-faceted. Hence, mental health requires an integrated approach. The causes are complex. The solutions are complex. There are spiritual, biochemical, social, and psychological dimensions to be addressed. These dimensions often interact with one another, either constructively or destructively. Healing and prevention may require a blend of prayer, counseling, drugs, exercise, diet, supportive relationships, community building, and lifestyle changes.

The mandate for Christians is to bind up the broken hearted, heal the sick, and set the prisoners free.

The profundity of a mundane existence

My family enjoyed watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
It promotes a very interesting idea: real heroes are not necessarily those who do glamorous things, attract fame, or have outstanding achievements, ...
Real heroes may be those who do a simple job well; faithfully and with integrity.

Can one separate the sacred and the secular?

Or how does one distinguish the sacred and the secular?
How does one redeem society? Should Christians even bother?
Should Christians even make a distinction?

In the book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview by Albert Wolters
there are two helpful contrasting diagrams that illuminate these issues.
The versions below are taken from here.

The point here is that one should not make a sacred/secular distinction. Rather, a more helpful and appropriate category is whether things are done in harmony or conflict with good God's design, expressed in unfallen creation. The key question is then whether in a particular time, place, and context a specific thing [whether the church or sport] is being done in accord with God's good design.

Don't give your life to your employer

I think the movie The Company Men is worth watching. It is a moving portrayal of how several men respond to getting retrenched from a company they have given their lives to. One struggles with his self image and must deal with being massively in debt, because of an extravagant lifestyle. Another is betrayed by the CEO, who used to be his best friend. It also highlights corporate greed, which is driven by short term financial considerations and considers people as just "resources" to be exploited.

Overall it is depressing and there is little redemption and hope. Yet, this is realistic. Give your life to your employer and you will probably get hurt.

Emotional health and theological health are inseparable

Let me be honest. Due to certain prejudices I am reluctant to recommend books written by pastors of large American churches. Nevertheless, I did recommend Radical by David Platt.  

Recently I read The Emotionally Healthy Church: A Strategy for Discipleship that actually changes lives  by Peter Scazzero and Warren Bird. In a small group I also worked through some of the material.

I think the book raises important issues that are often overlooked, neglected, or even opposed in some church, ministry, and mission contexts. Humble, gentle servant leadership versus "sanctified" ambition [male testosterone]. Organisations and programs before people. Mental health. Sabbath rest. The profound effect [good and bad] of family backgrounds. Grief over past losses and trauma. Focus on numbers. Work-church-family balance. Unresolved conflict. Parochialism. Diversities of personalities. Embracing failure and weakness. Modelling....

The personal honesty and transparency of Scazzero make the book easy to read and there are some helpful practical quizzes and suggestions. You will probably find stuff to disagree with and may cringe at some of the American cultural baggage. But I don't think that should stop Christians seriously taking to heart and acting on the issues the book raises.

Three senses of the secular

What does it mean to be secular?
Secular means different things to different people.

In his book, How (not) to be secular, James K.A. Smith gives three distinct definitions of "secular".

secular_1 
"the earthly plane of domestic life"
This is the "classical" or "historical" definition, and distinguishes the secular from the sacred, i.e. the domain of priests. "butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers carry out "secular" work. To early reformers such as Luther this was positive. There was to be no distinction between the sacred and the secular.

secular_2
"the areligious - neutral, unbiased, objective"
This is a "modern" definition. It is particularly used in claims that the "public square", i.e. politics and public debate should be "free" from discussions about religion or religious values and perspectives.

secular_3
This is the notion of Charles Taylor, who in A Secular Age, says it
 “consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed unproblematic to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace”.

Wrestling with your conscience

In a work environment, when and how does one cross the line between "just doing your job" and being unethical?
Will lapses of ethics drive you crazy?

My son and I watched the movie Michael Clayton. It is a "thriller" about a the "fixer" in a large corporate law firm in New York. It touches on mental health issues, corporate corruption, and predominantly issues of conscience.

India: forward or backward?

I am in the middle of a five-week trip to India. Two things that are clear about India today. First, it is rapidly changing.
Second, it is struggling to cope with change, just like most societies.
Rapid economic growth and restructuring are accompanied by rapid technological and social change. Institutions, all the way from the family to the national government are struggling to adapt. On this trip, I am reading the newspaper, The Times of India, every day. It accentuates the observations above.
In the Western world, dramatic changes associated with globalisation, economic restructuring, and technology are also happening. However, I feel that the change is happening slower than in India.

Is all this change positive or negative?
It depends on your perspective. The following quote from the book India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking is particularly interesting. It compares the problems of the old India, where life in villages was dominated by caste, to the new India, where life in the cities is dominated by capitalism.

this narrowing of tasks, while making things more efficient, also made it harder to find meaning in work. ... what caste did flagrantly, putting humans into their different boxes, globalization was doing more artfully: giving every worker a sliver of a specialized role, making him work harder and harder, depriving him over time of a sense of the whole, and eroding his connections with other humans. ... cousins in deprivation [are] the labourer driven from his land for the software company and the software coder who writes his narrow code, slogs for people he has never met, and suffers the fate of the new-economy worker bee: fifteen-hour days, bumper-to-bumper traffic, sexual and marital frustration, children who ask, `How come Papa never comes home?'

When caste wanted to separate man from man, it used the concept of dharma.. When capitalism wanted to separate man from man, it used the concept of production, of higher consumption, of better livelihood - whatever. The end result was separating human being from human being and erasing the socialness, the human essence, from the human being.

This is not the author, but someone he interviewed. You will have to look at the book to see who said it. That makes it of even greater interest and challenge.

A distortion of vocational calling

My son and I are just finishing reading Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung. I thought the following paragraph in was quite insightful about work and careers.

Unfortunately, we’ve turned the idea of calling or vocation on its head. The Reformers emphasized calling in order to break down the sacred-secular divide. They said, if you are working for the glory of God, you are doing the Lord’s work, no matter whether you’re a priest or a monk or a banker. But we’ve taken this notion of calling and turned it upside down, so instead of finding purpose in every kind of work, we are madly looking for the one job that will fulfill our purpose in life. 

(p. 103)

Are you beavering away at work?

This week I am in a group that is looking at the chapter, "Making much of Christ from 8 to 5", from John Piper's book, Don't waste your life.

I like the following paragraph. He points out that beavers are diligent, industrious, purposeful, skilful, and "subdue the earth". How are we different?

No beaver or bee or hummingbird or ant consciously relies on God. No beaver ponders the divine pattern of order and beauty and makes a moral choice to pursue excellence because God is excellent. No beaver ever pondered the preciousness and purpose of God and decided for God’s sake to make a dam for another beaver and not for himself. But humans have all these potentials, because we are created in God’s image. We are created to image forth God in these ways. When God commissions us to subdue the earth—to shape it and use it—he doesn’t mean do it like a beaver. He means do it like a human, a morally self-conscious person who is responsible to do his work intentionally for the glory of his Maker.

John Piper, Don't waste your life, page 140.

                                                

Work without a sabbath is slavery

^{When does work become idolatrous slavery? It is not just when one is not paid. It becomes slavery when there is no freedom to rest and to worship God.} 


John Grisham's novels paint a brutal picture of young associates "slaving away" in large law firms and getting paid $300,000 per year. 


^{The passage below from Exodus 5 illustrates how the powerful can use work as a means to control "the masses". Don't let them rest! They might think for themselves. Worse, they may worship God!}


But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” ⁵ And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!”⁶ The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, ⁷ “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. ⁸ But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ ⁹ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labour at it and pay no regard to lying words.”

Learning from life

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

        Muhammad Ali

So what "life wisdom" have I learnt from experience and observation?
What do I wish I knew and understood when I was twenty?

Life proceeds in stages. Adapt your expectations and activities accordingly.

Making a living is hard.

Financial debt can be a noose around your neck.

New initiatives need to be sustainable in the long term.

The good is the enemy of the excellent.

Learn to say no!

Enjoy work and life

 I am currently reading through the book of Ecclesiastes. I love the wisdom it presents concerning the folly of most human endevour.

²²What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? ²³For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.  

²⁴There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, ²⁵for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? ²⁶For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 2

Laughing is important too. Here is my favourite video of a real scholar in action.

Why hot desking is not so hot

Hot desking is the latest inane office management technique that economic rationalists have brought to the corporate world. It is a system where no-one in an office has their own desk; when they show up for work (if they are not travelling or tele-commuting) they are assigned a desk which they have to clear/empty at the end of the day. The touted advantage is that it saves office space and the associated costs, promotes "culture change", and leads to employees interacting with a wider pool of other employees and thus creating new synergies.
 
There is a short article Cold shoulder for hot desk layouts in the Weekend Professional section of todays Weekend Australian. [I can't find the article online]. The article points out how unpopular hot desking, making it harder for companies to hire new staff and retain current staff. Business is not just about space and infrastructure. Hot desking depersonalises the office space, makes it more stressful, and makes employees not feel being part of a team.

What is the underlying problem here? What does this have to do with theology? Well, it depends on your anthropology and your view of humanity. If you believe that at heart people are relational (as the Tri-une God is) and that is their primary need, mode of operation, and motivation, then any workplace should be structured accordingly.

The gracious divine Gift of freedom, rest, and joy

Two months ago I posted Freedom, rest, and joy on the Sabbath about Karl Barth's exposition of Genesis 2:2,3. This morning I read more of Barth's wonderful discussion of the theological significance of Genesis 2:3

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Barth discusses how this first Sabbath is the beginning of God's covenant of grace with man.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that this invitation comes at a time when creation, and particularly man, had nothing behind it except its creation by God, so that there can be no question whatever of a relationship between this Sabbath observance and any work completed by himself. Before and apart from all work and conflict, irrespective of any merits of his own, he is invited to cease from his own works, to rest, and therefore to enter into the freedom, rest and joy of God Himself. In his case, therefore, the Sabbath as the sign of the given promise does not stand at the end but at the beginning, i.e., at the beginning of his working week. 

And the promise itself, whose sign is the Sabbath, cannot be tied to his own volition, achievement or merit. What precedes it when it first occurs is wholly the work of God and not of man. God has taken it upon Himself to do and accomplish what can now be for man as well as for Himself an occasion for freedom, rest and joy. As far as man is concerned, he has simply to recognise that God has really done all that is necessary, that He has invited him to participate in His rest, and that he may accept this invitation. In other words, he is left wholly and utterly with the grace of God. When this is addressed to him, there begins the history of man with God. Hence this really begins on Sunday and not on a weekday. It begins with the Gospel and not with the Law. It begins with the freedom of man and not his commitment; with a holiday and not an imposed task; with joy and not with toil and trouble. The latter will follow soon enough, but only in succession to the former. 

That God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it, is the first divine action which man is privileged to witness; and that he himself may keep the Sabbath with God, completely free from work, is the first Word spoken to him, the first obligation laid on him. It is thus decided once and for all that the history of the covenant which begins here is to be the history of the divine covenant of grace. And with this decision creation is completed as the revelation of the will of God with regard to the existence and being of His creation. With it creation itself is also completed: "The heavens and the earth … and all the host of them." Creation took place in order that man's history might commence and take place as the history of the covenant of grace established between God and himself. According to the first biblical witness it took place because God's love for man willed to be incomparably strong in the fact that man and his whole world and therefore the object of God's love should become God's creation and therefore belong from the very outset to God. Creatureliness, and therefore creation, is the external basis of the covenant of grace in which the love of God for man moves towards its fulfilment. It is in this teleology that it is presented in the first creation narrative of the Bible.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1: The Doctrine of Creation, pp. 218-9.

The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Rembrandt (1637)

Freedom, rest and joy on the Sabbath

²And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. 

Karl Barth has an interesting exposition of this beginning of Genesis 2, all that it says about the Sabbath for man:

It is not a question of recuperation after a toilsome and well-done job. Even the Sabbath rest of man corresponding to the divine rest does not have this sense in the Old Testament, but means negatively a simple cessation and abstention from further work. The freedom, rest and joy of the Sabbath consist in the fact that on this day man is released from his daily work. On the Sabbath he does not belong to his work. Nor is it merely a question of having to recuperate from the work that lies behind him and to fortify himself for the new tasks that are ahead. On the Sabbath he belongs to himself.

Whether he be farmer, artisan, servant or maid, he is just the man who for six days had to be these things and to perform the corresponding tasks, but whose being and existence are more than all these things .... that his work cannot devour him but consists of steps towards this goal, is confirmed at the end of each week by the proffered freedom, rest and joy of the workless Sabbath which he is granted. It is this which gives perspective and depth, meaning and lustre, to all his weeks, and therefore to his whole time, as well as to the work which he performs in his time.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1: The Doctrine of Creation, page 214.

So on the Sabbath we can celebrate and enjoy that our work and employment (or lack of ) does not define us or have to consume us. There is freedom and joy in that.

The watercolour is God blessing the seventh day by William Blake.

God's Kingdom cannot be reduced to an equation

My family has been having some lively discussions about how we should interpret circumstantial events, particularly when they follow us praying about them. This morning I changed my mind about the views I was expressing. Many of us, including myself, would like to be able to have well-defined criteria that allows us to say how and when and why God acts in a particular situation. But, I am challenged by reading Jesus parable of the labourers in the vineyard.

(Matthew 20:1-16)

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house...  'I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' So the last will be first, and first last.

One thing we can be sure of is that the God of the Bible, the Father of Jesus Christ, is always more generous than we expect and than we can imagine.

The promise of Rest

What is the significance of the seventh day in the Genesis creation saga? This follows up on my previous post about the significance of God resting on the seventh day the commandment to keep the Sabbath. I am reading through Exodus and today I got to chapter 31. I found it noteworthy that the last thing the LORD said to Moses before he gave him the two tablets:

¹⁵ Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. ¹⁶Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. ¹⁷ It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.

Again the creation account is linked to the covenant, to the Sabbath rest, and to life and death.

Giving the seven day creation a rest

What are the creation texts in Genesis really about it?
A colleague has continually emphasized to me that a main point of Genesis 1-2 is to teach the Israelites to keep the Sabbath. Genesis 2 says:

²And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

I thought he was pushing this point too far because it seems to diminish the significance of Genesis 1 and all it tells us. But then this morning (on the Sabbath) I read in the ten commandments (Exodus 20):

⁸ "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, ¹⁰but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. ... ¹¹For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Here is a little of Karl Barth's commentary on Genesis 2:3

the real question is whether it is not a modern notion to interpret rest in the sense of recuperation after preceding exhaustion. It is true that in the parallel in Ex. 31¹⁷ God's resting after the completion of creation is connected with the concept of "refreshment"(naphash), and that in Ex. 23¹² this refreshment is also ascribed to the "son of thy handmaid" and the "stranger" who are also to keep the Sabbath. But as a comment on "resting" the term "refreshment rdquo; inclines us in the direction of "coming to oneself" or "reviving." And if (apart from the later laws of the Sabbath, cf. Ex. 20^8f., etc.) the decisive commentary is to be sought in the connexion, indicated in the passage itself ( v. 3), with the day which is blessed and sanctified for man by divine precedent, it must be said that according to Ex. 16²⁹ the Sabbath is a divine gift to man. In bringing relief, it means positive blessedness, freedom, joy, rest and-it may be added-peace. ......

 In fact, however, the saga says and means the very opposite. It is a part of the history of creation that God completed His work and confronted it as a completed totality. The true and finished world in its actual constitution is heaven and earth and all the host of them, not without but with the God who willed and created them as the world, and who now confronts them in this being of theirs as the Lord. On the seventh day God was blessed as the One who had thus completed the world. And for this reason He has blessed and sanctified the seventh day to man as a day on which man may also be blessed and free and joyful, resting from his labours, belonging to himself in peace, breathing freely and being refreshed.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1 Doctrine of Creation, pp. 221-222