Ever since Adam and Eve ate the fruit they shouldn’t have, people have been getting old with remarkable regularity, barring premature send-off. One part of growing older, for all that time, has been a decay of physical capacity, a loss of durability, strength, recovery speed, and even dexterity. Rest becomes increasingly mandatory; physical labor becomes increasingly difficult. People slow down, whether they want to or not, and society has to deal with the fact, because ignoring it is also a decision.
The Modern Solutions
Modernity has two solutions, each with its own variations. The first is retirement – ceasing work (vocation), settling back, and enjoying whatever savings are available. Those of a more socialist bent would supplement this with welfare. Those of a more traditional bent make motions towards inheritance or filial piety. Regardless, retirement is supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation, no longer pressured by the proverbial rat-race.
Human beings, however, aren’t made to live in idleness. A life that is intentionally devoid of long-term goals, in which we are not striving towards something, is a life which swiftly grows wearisome. Vacation is good for a time, as an interlude; permanent vacation is stepping out into a void. Retirement cuts people off from the vocation that, as difficult as it may have been, was a path for them to steward their lives and the world around them, fulfilling the Dominion Mandate (Gen. 1:28, 9:1), which God made a fundamental part of us. Some, the wise and the motivated, find new vocations amidst retirement, but the cultural institution doesn’t require or encourage this. Indeed, the American perspective almost discourages such enterprise, regarding it as a waste of leisure.
Retirement as an institution also divorces the retiree from the world around him. He no longer lives with the same categories of pressures his children and their peers are dealing with. Too easily, then, the retiree can forget those pressures. In politics, retirement fosters a divorce of thought which is in part built on this difference in life-experience, in part on a divergence in interests, the divergence between the young who are working and the old who (too often) live off their capital, wasting their estate’s potential for fruit and diminishing the inheritance they can leave. In daily life, it means that in order to understand the troubles which necessarily shape the lives of his children and thus of his grandchildren, the retiree must cast ever farther back in his life, past his current existence. This barrier can spell disaster unless carefully navigated, even before conflicts of interest arise.
Retirement is therefore a deeply flawed solution to the problem of aging. Is the alternative any better?
A retiree stops work in favor of leisure. The only real alternative modernity sees is to keep working. “Work, work, work until you drop”. At any rate, that’s what the country hears when various ‘conservatives’ start railing against retirement. They hear, “Work, even if you can’t.” In the absence of a more concrete plan than ‘work,’ in the absence of more rationale than an appeal to diligence (or, on occasion, the ‘Protestant/ American Work Ethic’), the conclusion is plausible and occasionally accurate. Godlessness isn’t fixed by ‘western values.’
Getting rid of retirement and just letting work continue indefinitely is a genuinely terrible idea. No, retirement isn’t good, but “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins” (Mark 2:22). Putting a young man’s labor onto an old man’s shoulders will only work for so long. Eventually the shoulders will break, and the work will follow suit. Some people in some vocations will be able to stick out for much, much longer, perhaps capping with a much later ‘retirement’ when actual physical incapacity kicks in (though many, listening to the pundits pontificate, suspect that even such unavoidable retirement will reap mockery and shaming). The exceptions, however, do not obviate the harm which accrues to the majority.
Making old men and old women do the work of the young harms them. Moreover, when they are crammed into roles designed for and shaped by young people, they will simply be less effective, leading to an awkward choice. The employer could fire the elderly, forcing them into retirement through economic non-viability, or demote them to lower-paid jobs, where they’d compete with entry-level workers, making it even harder for the next generation to get a start. Alternatively, he could favor them over their children despite their lesser economic value, fostering resentment in young people at the unfair treatment, a resentment with some justice to join its pique. The dichotomy is untenable in the long term.
The Goal
We must build our alternative to retirement and work-till-you-can’t on the foundation of Scripture’s instruction to honor the grey head gained in virtue (Lev. 19:32; Prov. 20:29; 1 Tim. 5:17). In sum, the goal is to honor the gray head’s status, apply his or her wisdom, and pass down the vast store of intangible wealth the elderly have accumulated (by God’s grace) in skill, wisdom, and relationships.
Continuing Vocation
The solution suggested by Scripture (and history) is not a one-size-fits-all path for everybody’s life. People and circumstances are more complicated than that. Scripture directs us to seek a way for people to continue in vocation while accommodating their new frailties and pursuing their peculiar strengths. As such, this path discards the strict cut-off age of retirement (65, 70, 75, etc). It also discards the hard cut-off of the work-to-death approach, where work (possibly vocation) continues unchanged until it abruptly becomes impossible. Instead, each person is commissioned to follow the path of wisdom in light of his person, calling, and circumstances, by the counsel of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and those he is in relationship with.
Some will have a new vocation altogether, albeit maturity is a boon which transfers from any vocation to every vocation. The farmer becomes an author. The author becomes a doctor. The midwife becomes a cook. The boxer becomes a mechanic or a car salesman. Such shifts may partake of elements from the old vocation or may be as different as possible, but they will all follow the principles laid out below, in a wisely-lived society.
Most will continue their vocations at the core but change some facet of that pursuit. The young man becomes old, and the old man moves from the young man’s job (doing the work directly and under direction) to the old man’s job: leadership. This leadership might be formal leadership, becoming the boss. He might also become a mentor, an advisor, a trouble-shooter, even just a respected voice among the workforce, expected to contribute wisdom in place of workload, making everybody else better. The point is: his vocation’s focus shifts, respecting his physical difficulties but also respecting the skill and wisdom accumulated in that vocation. In many cases, such a change is practicable only when those around him respect and honor the new sort of value he brings.
The role of the elder in the community’s running also shifts in light of these changes. No longer is he the foremost doer, the man who lifts up the barn and starts the business. Now, he is the one who helps plan the barn-raising, who points out improvements in his son’s business plans. In the midst of the community at large, he serves as a witness to the enduring goodness of the Lord (Lam. 3:22-23), a reminder and an exhorter for those who come after him. He acts, whether formally or informally, as a judge and a counsellor, one who sits in the gate to bring reconciliation and justice (Prov. 31:21; Is. 28:6).
An End
Both retirement and work-to-death utterly fail to recognize and bring fruit from the marvelous gifts of potential in old age as God has designed it. Old age’s decrepitude and frailty, while a manifestation of sin’s curse, are only half the story; the other half is the gift of experience and long relationship with both God and men. If we are wise, we will seek to order our own lives and our society to honor and steward that wisdom. If we are foolish, we will continue to encourage young fools to become old fools that they may rot in purposeless relaxation or expire in parody of their dawn.
Which shall it be?
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