I can easily be fooled into mistaking apathy for godly serenity. I might take comfort in the absence of “fiery” sins like lust and anger — yet I may be blind to the pride, selfishness, and slothfulness that have crept into their place. Time can make us lazy, and we’re all subject to its subtle drift. Perhaps the sifting question for the aging Christian is, “Am I killing sin, or have I just traded one destructive path for another?”
The sad failures of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah suggest three solemn warnings for the seasoned Christian who wants to finish well.
1. Beware the temptation to coast.
As a much younger woman, I heard a well-respected Christian leader admit, “I could take my foot off the gas pedal today, and no one would ever know it. But I would, and God would.” From Screwtape’s devilish perspective, C.S. Lewis describes the “long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity” as “excellent campaigning weather” (Screwtape Letters, 155). He added, “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts” (61).
This description perfectly fits “the time when kings go out to battle,” as David, coasting “on the roof of the king’s house,” set himself up for moral collapse rather than tending to business (2 Samuel 11:1–2). Then, later in the monarchy’s downward spiral, King Hezekiah, concerned mainly that there be “peace and security” in his own time (2 Kings 20:19), took “the gentle slope” at the end of his reign. Apparently, if he could cruise along in safety for the rest of his life, he didn’t care that Babylon would eventually be the instrument of God’s judgment upon Israel.
With David’s and Hezekiah’s backslidings before our eyes, we might ask ourselves, “And what about me? As I age, will I coast — or will I press on?” Personally, keeping my foot on the gas pedal will look like deep study and preparation for every ministry opportunity, resisting the temptation to whip up a twenty-minute devotional from the scraps of my previous teachings. It will require that I take captive the subtle sins that go undetected by others, listening instead to the voice of the Spirit as he filters every thought, word, and deed. It will mean that I never stop praying desperate prayers for God’s power to carry me and to keep me in the battle against sin and the fulfillment of my calling.
2. Beware the tendency toward cynicism.
By the time we reach midlife, we’ve likely accumulated a fair number of reasons to succumb to cynicism: the disappointment of prodigal or estranged adult children, the challenges of the sandwich generation, the heartache of difficult diagnoses, or even the death of a spouse. It’s all enough to make us join Solomon in singing the blues about the days when “the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails” (Ecclesiastes 12:5).
But Jude’s chilling description of “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted” sends me in search of fruitfulness rather than slothful cynicism in this season (verse 12). If I give in to cynicism, I will find myself unable to enter sympathetically into the world of young family members and friends. Dismissive and emotionally unavailable, I’ll soon forget what it was like to care.
By contrast, the apostle Paul endured every indignity, trauma, and flavor of “church hurt” that we can imagine without bowing to cynicism and taking his hand off the plow. With unquenchable optimism, he never doubted God’s ability and willingness “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” in people, churches, and situations that he could have easily scorned (Ephesians 3:20).
With our own eyes firmly fixed on the character of God, time may test and try us, but it can also soften us. We’ve lived through some hard things, but we’ve also seen God’s goodness and faithfulness in ten thousand different lights. By grace, we get to choose where our mind’s focus will rest. We can keep listening to the heartaches and challenges of the people in front of us.
We weathered the ages and stages of parenting long ago, but Spirit-fueled compassion keeps us listening with sympathy to the sleep-deprived mother of a toddler. We know for certain that the fate of the free world does not rest on our teen grandson’s failed driver’s license test, but we resist the temptation to apply a quick Band-Aid to his disappointment. Instead, we trust God for the gracious flexibility to enter the teenage world — and the worlds of all other kinds of people we encounter.
3. Beware grasping after youthfulness.
Was David’s moral failure with Bathsheba a symptom of his desire to prove he was still “a ladies’ man”? Was her youthful beauty the trigger that overcame his good sense? When he wrote Ecclesiastes, was Solomon lamenting the effects of the aging process on his joints? Regardless of the answers to these questions, their lives certainly attest to the danger of chasing an eternal springtime.
Our culture also worships youthfulness and fears the aging process, having long ago lost touch with a biblical view of aging well. Gray hair, which Scripture describes as “a crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31), signals obsolescence or even invisibility to the man or woman whose greatest treasure is found in this world. Certainly, we don’t give in to our changing bodies without a fight. We exercise and eat sensibly — but we don’t listen to bad advice from advertisers who tell us we can stop the clock. Nor do we chase pleasure and make irresponsible choices in an effort to feel “alive” again.
Embracing the gift of years will look like mentoring younger women, partnering with God in creating the next generation of confident disciples of Christ and students of the word. As we steward our experience and trust God with the reality of our waning strength, we will be poised to serve the body of Christ with a depth of maturity that comes only through long-haul faithfulness.
Grace to finish well will come to us through humble, routine habits of holiness, spiritual disciplines that don’t deliver a big dopamine rush but provide a foundation for a faithful life. Regular communion with God through his word, confession of sin, and receiving daily grace for the “normal” Christian life doesn’t look very shiny unless it is seen in light of Paul’s laser focus:
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13–14)
The prize is not a good reputation or a stellar legacy. The prize is Christ, and the commitment to pursue his “upward call” produces the benefit of a life well-lived. Thanks be to God for the cross, our sacred starting place and our only hope for a faithful finish.
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I have an image in my mind of the godly old lady I want to be someday: soft-spoken, kind to all, full of wisdom. Having logged half a century under God’s sanctifying sandpaper, I should be well on my way by now. And, taking stock, I can see that I don’t have to rein in my temper as much as I used to, and there’s precious little out there that tempts me to covet. What I am learning, however, is that as I age, I sin differently. Sin is still “crouching at the door.” It just comes in a different form.
I can easily be fooled into mistaking apathy for godly serenity. I might take comfort in the absence of “fiery” sins like lust and anger — yet I may be blind to the pride, selfishness, and slothfulness that have crept into their place. Time can make us lazy, and we’re all subject to its subtle drift. Perhaps the sifting question for the aging Christian is, “Am I killing sin, or have I just traded one destructive path for another?”
The sad failures of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah suggest three solemn warnings for the se
