LIE: Aging is bad and is to be avoided

Lie:      Aging is bad and is to be avoided.

Truth: Although aging is the natural process of death, Christians have no need to fear it.

Aging is nothing to relish. It’s true, no one ever wants to grow old and die, but getting old is now regarded much differently than it once was. Before the advent of Botox®, Rogaine®, ‘low-T’ and the plethora of geriatric pharmaceutical drugs, growing old was an inevitable and accepted part of life. But no more. Most now dread and avoid aging and its symptoms if at all possible.

Yet this avoidance of aging has its benefits: many 60s, 70s and even 80- and 90-year-olds are now working hard at living an active lifestyle. It may be golf and shuffleboard, but at least people are moving their bodies.

As welcome as these developments are, we have to look at what motivates them. Why are we so desperate to fight aging? Could it be the availability of so many remedies? For example, practically every ‘symptom’ of aging now has a product promising to cut it down to size: things like balding, wrinkles, gray hair, loss of muscle mass, loss of hearing, memory and vision. The sheer number of remedies forms a fuzzy vision of a fountain of youth. The corollary lie is: ‘if I look younger, I’ll be younger.’

Life extension technologies also promise salvation, an artificial postponement of aging, even an indefinite postponement. And some technologies could actually reverse aging. Should we believe these claims or are they siren songs? Are they telling the truth or lying?

On the whole, the remedies offered today only mask the aging process, which is the process of death. Some health and fitness programs can increase health and prolong life, which is good, but we have to ask ourselves ‘why?’ Why do we want to slow aging? Is it so that we can see our grandchildren grow up, or because others depend on our income? (these are good reasons). Or is it that, if we’re honest, we simply don’t like what aging does to our face and our bodies? Is it because we’re afraid of aging and death? Do we suspect that our body is betraying us?

The truth is no one has yet beaten death except one — Jesus Christ. Yes, he actually died, but rose again, conquering death, the last enemy to be destroyed.

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. — I Corinthians 15:20–26

Believe it: we have no reason to fear or try to avoid aging or death. For those who are in Christ, death is not the end. With death conquered through the resurrection of Jesus, no other enemy can stop you: no disease, famine, terror or tyranny, large or small, can deter you from doing all of his will. It is the best and highest freedom, unattainable through any other means and is accompanied by ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’. For those who have seen it, it is a sobering and an indelible sight to see a saint at the point of death. Remember Stephen, whose face shone, seeing beyond this world, into the eternal world where God has finally vindicated all suffering and injustice.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:31–39

We as Christians, for most of our lives (for you will be you forever) will live in the renewed world, in our renewed and immortal bodies. The immortality that we all desire is God-given. The question is, which promise of immortality will you believe – the false and ephemeral of the world or the faithful and true word of our Father.

See also the introduction to this category: Lies attacking our self-understanding.