The Temptations of Old Age
By Keith Drury
Old people are not exempt
from temptation; they just face different temptations than the young. While we
expect sainthood from the aged, sin crouches at the door through all stages of
life. Jeremy Taylor got me thinking about this subject. In Holy Living and
Holy Dying he described some of the temptations of old age. Since I intend
to get old in the future, I’ve been investigating further. I remember the
temptations of adolescence and know about the temptations of middle age, but
I’ve never really thought much about the temptations and sins of old age. So, I
recently have been reading the latest journals and textbooks on aging, and I’ve
interviewed quite a few older people from age 60 through 95. I think I have
enough data now to make an initial stab at the sins and temptations of old age
I might face—at least this is what older folk say they face. When Jeremy Taylor wrote in the 1600s it was
an important goal for Christians to “die well.”
Today we are more absorbed in living well, but I’ve witnessed some Christians who die
poorly so I want to be aware of the temptations of old age. Here is the list
I’ve been working with along with some of the ways older folk have suggested to
resist the temptations of old age.
1. Selfishness.
The
temptation to selfishness knows no age discrimination. All ages are plagued
with self-centeredness but old people have more time on their hands to become
selfish. They have worked hard and sometimes expect their payback. The popular
bumper sticker on the 40 foot travel trailer says it this way: “I’m spending my
children’s inheritance.” Older folk are tempted to “get what’s due me”
after spending their entire lives working for others. Society even encourages
this approach by saying, “You’ve worked hard, enjoy life now, you owe it to
yourself.” But living only for oneself
is selfish. Selfishness is a besetting temptation of old age.
2. Feeling worthless
Psychologists
report that older adults have lower self-esteem than at any other time in
life—including adolescence! They are constantly tempted to feel useless and
worthless, especially in
3. Stinginess
All
older people do not have more money, but if they do they will be tempted to
cling to more tightly to their money. The aged have no “future earning power”
except what their money can earn itself.
All older people have is what they have. The aged look around and see
other old people who have been abandoned to fend for themselves and they get
fearful they will be left with nothing. It is difficult for people of all ages
to be generous, but it is especially hard for older people. A younger person
can always say, “Well I can work harder and replace that money easily enough.”
Older folk don’t have a job in their future. When they give, it’s gone. They
have been terrified by stories about the $6000 monthly costs of a nursing home
and they have heard about elderly friends whose children abandoned them. The
aged are tempted to trust in Mammon to save them. Worse, older folk often have
lived a simple lifestyle for decades are often asked to ante up to help a young
person take a vacation trip to play soccer in
4. Giving up
Middle
age people like to imagine old age as a wonderful time of rest and fun. For some
it is, but for many older people it is harder than that. Betty Davis once quipped,
“Old age is no place for sissies” reminding
us that it is not a cake walk for many.
Recent research in biology has shown what many older folk already know:
by about age 70 the average body simply
starts wearing out. Sometimes it comes sooner. Old age often comes with pain.
One retired man said, “I feel aches and pains every day like those
flu ads describe—but all the time, not just when I have the flu.” Hearing fades: “I can’t keep asking people
to repeat things so I just pretend I hear.”
Eyesight dims: “Even my glasses can’t make me see things like I used
to.” Taste diminishes drastically: “A good steak isn’t as good as it
once was.” Sexual function
diminishes—“The idea continues; consummation weakens.” Older folk
experience a general weariness—“I wake up after a full night’s sleep just as
tired as I was going to bed.” On top of this general decline in health is
the common experience of weary disremembering like the husband watching TV who said, “Isn’t that the fellow—you know that fellow what’s-his-name?” and the wife responded, No that’s the other guy” Both were just
too tired to remember the name. And they know that if they live long enough,
perhaps vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s is in the wings for them. Many worked
all their lives with the promise of an active exciting retirement of travel and
fun only to find themselves barely able to get to WalMart, let alone to
5. Morbidity
Younger
people don’t think much about death. Even when they do, it is usually about the
death of others. Older people face death frequently. Somewhere in the
50’s most people begin to actually read the obituaries in the newspaper and
notice the age of the newly dead. Over the 50’s and 60’s they watch the average
age of the dying marching toward them. They eventually see a person in the
obituary younger than them. Checking ages of the dead becomes a morbid habit
and they begin counting down. Eventually half of those dead are younger and
finally they have the day when they see all of the obituary notices were
people younger than they are. They now know they are living on “borrowed time.”
Older people attend funerals more often. They bury their parents. They bury
their best friend. They bury their spouse.
And, if they live long enough, they may bury one of their own adult children.
All this can tempt older adult to succumb to morbid despair. Younger pastors
often have little to say about heaven or the resurrection, even at funerals.
They focus instead on celebrating the life and work of the dead person, as if
all that counts is what people do. Middle age pastors complain about
their older people who “sit there like dead people” in the service and wonder
why they aren’t “more alive.” Perhaps it is because they are in the early
stages of their own death and they have been constantly told that life is all
that matters. This is how the aged plunge into an ever-spiraling funk of
morbidity thinking only of their coming departure and thinking little of the life
beyond. Morbidity is a besetting temptation
of old age.
6. Feeling abandoned
Older
people are the castaways of a society that is bent on measuring a person’s
worth by their present contributions. With few others coming to see them,
loneliness is the old person’s most frequent visitor. Children get busy with
their careers and move to another state. Friends have died or moved away to
their children’s towns. Letter-writing has disappeared and if the aged have no
Internet connection they hear almost nothing from others. Old folk eventually
are not elected to the church board or asked to sing a solo. Aged people become
invisible in the hallways at church, passed by as if they were not even present.
Issues come up at church they might have something to say about, but they are
not asked. Instead, they are pacified with an old song here and there, a short
remark, or they are offered sequestered entertainment as if they are children
needing baby sitting. They are not taken seriously and seldom get asked for
advice. They feel abandoned. This is why older folk float down the
hallways of the church like invisible ghosts, leaving quickly to eat dinner
with their spouse (or all alone) expecting nobody to invite them to lunch.
Feeling abandoned, they are tempted to hold their own pity party—“nobody
cares anymore—they’re just waiting for me to die.” They might even wonder if God too has
abandoned them. Surrendering to feeling abandoned is a besetting temptation of
old age.
7. Bitterness
Most
of us know someone who became “a bitter old man.” It can happen to women too. Sometimes
it even happens to “great leaders” who end poorly and leave a sour taste in the
memories of those who remember them. How does this bitterness happen? Some
bitterness may be rooted in unrealistic expectations of what we hope old age will
be like. Most middle age folk deny the difficulties of old age, preferring
instead to imagine a bright active time of great influence and activity. For
some this dream does come true. But for many, old age is more like we have been
describing here. When the “golden years” lose their luster, an old person can
be tempted to feel they have gotten a raw deal—that they have been ripped off.
After forty years of faithful loyalty to their company where they expected to
receive a regular pension their company goes bankrupt and they now receive
exactly eleven dollars a month from the court settlement. Ten years ago they
sacrificed all their vacations for six years, and gave a triple tithe toward
the new church building but the current pastor said just last week from the
pulpit, “You old birds need to realize that this church is not for you—it is
for the younger people.” They can’t understand why people can get away with
prejudice against the aged. They know that a prospective pastor would never
say, “That church simply has too many black people.” Or “I can’t
stand the songs the Mexicans want to sing,” but they know it is sometimes
said, “That church simply has too many old people.” Or “I can’t stand
the songs the older folk want to sing,” They are tempted to feel like they
are expected to pay the bill for a church that overlooks their own needs. Some
get bitter. Bitterness is a besetting temptation of old age.
8. Despair
Psychologist Erik Erikson suggested seven challenges humans faced through
life, forks in the road where one could take the wrong or right fork. He
labeled his final fork for the aged as “Integrity vs. Despair.” By “Integrity”
he meant an old person who looks back over life and sees it as largely as worthwhile,
e.g. “I made some mistakes but my life was worth living.” The other fork
(Despair) is when an old person reflects on life and regrets the way it turned
out. Vanity of vanities…all of life is vanity. To Erikson
it was the major task of old age: reflecting on life and pronouncing it
satisfying and worthwhile on the whole. The temptation here is to reject one’s
own life that has already been lived. It is why older people turn to alcohol—to
drown the vanity of their life. It is also partly why the largest single age
for suicides is old age, mostly
among males. These have asked, “What was it all for?” and answered, nothing.
They examined their life and found it wanting. This is sometimes why even in
the church we see the “walking dead” in our hallways. Unwilling to end it all
by suicide they pronounce themselves dead while still walking about. Succumbing
to despair they even see their own impending death as an escape from a painful
uselessness of life. Plunging into despair is a besetting temptation of old age.
9. Doubt
Old
age is not pretty. For some it can be delightful and beautiful but for many
getting old is difficult work. It may the most difficult test of one’s entire
life. Thus the greatest challenges (and temptations to sin) can be at the end
of life, not in adolescence. When an old person faces pain, abandonment, and
death and their old age did not turn out to be the icing on the cake, they can
be tempted to doubt God’s goodness. Thoughts come into their loneliness saying,
“You gave your whole life to God and the church and look what you got for it—is
that how God rewards His servants?” The
Enemy says, “So now you lost your wife, you lost your driving privileges,
you have to move in with you son, then they put you in this nursing home, the
pastor and people (and even your own children) seldom come to see you…you are
forgotten—is that what God has given you for your life of service to the
church?” How could God be good if this is how he rewards your faithfulness?”
So they are tempted to surrender to the Enemy’s line of thought and doubt the
goodness of God. Doubt is a besetting temptation of old age.
10. Losing faith
For
some old people the greatest battle of faith comes at the end of life. People
who die young can more easily die with a strong faith. The survivors who get
old may face bigger battles. For some, (especially males) the ultimate trial of
faith is at the end—asking the final and ultimate question: Does God exist or
has all this been a sham? This battle is usually faced silently and in the interior
secret rooms of the mind. Men who are facing this battle don’t even tell their
wife. “Maybe there is no afterlife at all?” “Maybe there is no heaven
and it was all just hopeful thinking to help us cope with life.” The final battle between faith and unbelief
sometimes comes at the end of life. I knew one saintly preacher who was visited
by younger preachers when he was dying with cancer. Looking up blearily to his
visitors he said, “It is true isn’t it—tell me it’s true.” The visitors vigorously
nodded and said, “It’s true—it’s true for sure.” The white-haired saint’s eyes fluttered and
closed as he whispered, “I hope so…I hope so…” How can a man preach with firm conviction all
his life, and then face doubt and unbelief at the very end? Because sometimes the
hardest tests come in the final minutes of the game. The Enemy does not
give up when we reach our deathbeds—he will present us with a final temptation:
to “curse God and die.” Losing faith is the ultimate temptation of old age,
especially those who suffer in the end.
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Not
everyone faces all these sins of old age. Perhaps you will die young and escape
these later and larger tests. Or you may dodge these challenges even though you
live to be 95. But many of us are going to live longer than we expected. It is
no longer unusual to live to 100. The temptations we face in old age might be
our biggest tests of all. Perhaps Jeremy
Taylor was right—all of life is to prepare us to “die well.” Our final legacy
to our family and church may not be their memories of how we lived, but also
how we died. But dying is not just a
momentary thing. It is longer than the moment of passing but includes the
extended process we have described above.
The church has rightfully launched all kinds of ministries to help
adolescents through the teen years and through a Christian college. Perhaps the
church will increasingly launch more ministries to help old people face these
bigger crises. By God’s grace, and with the help of
the church we all can “die well.”
Companion
article: Resisting
the sins of old age.
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Keith Drury