Why the Christian View of Aging Is Countercultural

Number Your Days

The world’s false story of anti-aging is that aging is a disease that we fight or it is a malady that we conceal. You’re not supposed to show your age. The highest compliment that you can pay someone is, Wow, you look really young for your age. That’s a well-intended thing to say to someone. People have said it to me before, and I receive it in the spirit in which it’s given.

But I think it’s worth noting how we prefer that compliment to one that says something like, Wow, your wisdom for your age is really significant to me.

If you think about it as a younger person, when you move through the transition of someone just calling you by your name to calling you “ma’am” or “sir” or “Mr. So and So,” you may think, Wait, I’m too young for that!

We have something in us that makes us feel like being perceived as old is about losing something. And that is actually not entirely false because our entire culture worships youth, and we understand aging as a journey into obsolescence and obscurity.

So it’s no wonder we do so much to pretend like it isn’t happening, but it is indeed happening. And so it’s important for those of us who understand the significance of Moses’s words, “Teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom,” as something we should be doing. Are we numbering them, or are we doing what everyone around us is telling us to do—ignore, deny, look in the mirror and let the mirror tell you every single day that you’re actually only as old as you feel?

Now, there’s some truth to that statement. You are going to act younger if your body is in healthy shape. But we don’t want to actually live in a mentality that says you can avoid or stave off what is ultimately coming for you, because it’s not just a season that takes. It’s also a season that gives, and it gives rich gifts that we don’t want to miss and that we want to be sure that those around us experience as they see us moving into those phases of life.

Jen Wilkin is the author of Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World.

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