Distinctively Christian Retirement: A Biblical Call to Serve Jesus Well in Older Age

By Simon van Bruchem

Most of us simply assume that we have a right to retire from work and spend the rest of our lives doing whatever we want. While the idea of a long holiday sounds wonderful, this is not the whole truth. Retirement is a relatively new concept in world history and often brings relationship challenges, health problems, and crises of purpose and motivation. It is often not the paradise we have been promised.

God’s word never encourages us to take an extended holiday towards the end of our lives; while the concept of retirement is not found in the Bible, God’s word remains very helpful for us as we prepare for our later years. God speaks to us through his Word about important issues like purpose, death and identity that make sense of the struggles many retirees face. The book of Ecclesiastes is a particularly rich source of wisdom for us as we consider the best way to live out our lives in God’s world.

Older Christians should live in a very different way to those who don’t trust Jesus. The Bible is full of teaching about age and maturity, while also furnishing us with a range of helpful and unhelpful examples of older believers who have gone before us. God’s word also helps us think rightly about health limitations, nostalgia, money, and many other relevant issues.

While some older Christians may feel less important or that they have less to offer, the Bible teaches that our worth is not based on our work. Older believers have a great deal to offer the church and the world. The combination of experience and time means retirees are in a unique position to be a positive influence on those around them.

Christian retirees should be a great resource for the local church and a blessing to the communities that they live in. There are all kinds of opportunities for mentoring, encouragement, leadership, and evangelism. This book aims to give Christians a Biblical vision for how our later years might be used to serve Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jan 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9780648993452

Simon van Bruchem

Simon van Bruchem is a pastor of All Nations Presbyterian Church in Perth, Western Australia, where he has served since 2007. He completed his Master of Divinity at Trinity Theological College after a previous career as an industrial chemist. He considers it a great privilege to be able to study and teach the wonderful news about Jesus from the Bible full time.Simon is married to Andrea, and together they parent three boys, ensuring life is consistently interesting and busy. When he is not involved with his work of pastoring the church and his family, he loves to tend to his fruit trees, play golf and read widely.Simon blogs regularly at www.writtenforourinstruction.com.

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Distinctively Christian Retirement

A Biblical call to serve Jesus well in older age

Simon van Bruchem

Published by Written for our Instruction

www.writtenforourinstruction.com

Copyright 2022 © Simon van Bruchem

All rights reserved

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With the wisdom of the Bible and the love of an astute and observant pastor, Simon has given us a timely gift regarding the much longed for or equally forbidden, R word. Retirement can see dreams of freedom dashed into nightmares of boredom. But by thoughtfully reflecting on retirement, he helpfully shows how, approached under God it can bring freedom through service.

As an active and reluctant retiree of 5 years I found encouragement as Scriptural reminders of our worth in Christ and God’s design of us for freedom in service rather than self-indulgence, a tonic.

The challenges of the book come from an experienced and loving pastor, whose intent to help his readers catch, or re-discover, the joys of trusting and serving Christ clearly shines through. We are not being got at, but lovingly reminded, in very practical ways, that there is real life to be enjoyed in retirement.

Simon’s book will be of great value to workers, their families, those approaching and already retired. With expectations vital to any life change, the encouragement to godly and realistic expectations is a great boon. Saving us from unhealthy cul-de-sacs by opening up new vistas for the last lap, is a gift worthy of personal reading and small group attention.

I am very happy to commend Simon’s book and thank him for the work he has put in to helping us in this very practical way.

Rt. Rev Dr Peter Brain

Simon challenges us to rethink about the time God has given us on earth, and how we look at retirement against that backdrop. Is retirement from gainful employment really our time to relax, or an opportunity to serve God with that extra time He has given us? A most important discussion.

Rev Dr Stephen Rarig

Also By Simon van Bruchem

Fear Not: What the Bible has to say about angels, demons, the occult and Satan

For Andrea

I look forward to continuing to serve Jesus

with you as we grow old together

Introduction

We believe a lie

When we think of retirement, we often think of the glorious time of life where we walk hand in hand with our loved one along a beach or sip champagne on our yacht. According to the superannuation funds’ glossy brochures, retirement is a time to finally focus on ourselves. We can do what we want to do, when we want to do it, with no restrictions placed on us by work and children. Cruise ships full of grey-haired happy people beckon; that golf membership we never had the time for can now be ours. It is the common expectation of most people that retirement from work will usher in some sort of golden age where all our wishes come true.

It is simply not true. We have believed a lie.

So many retirees are not happy at all. Statistically, the divorce rate spikes in the years immediately following retirement, as spouses who previously spent much time apart are suddenly forced together. Many struggle with the unstructured time they now have to fill. Men, in particular, often struggle with feeling that they are not being useful or contributing to society. Depression rates increase as people struggle with accepting that the unrealistic fairy tale of retirement they expected is not what the reality turned out to be.

I love to play golf when I can and often meet retirees while playing. Many have told me that they started playing golf for something to do, being unable to think of other ways to fill their time. Some play golf every day or several times a week for lack of a better option.

Men’s sheds are a growing phenomenon in Australia. These are community organisations that gather men together to work on projects and socialise and are heavily supported by retirees. A co-ordinator of one of these men’s sheds gave an interview recently on the radio explaining how his organisation helped retired men; he said that instead of staying at home making their wives miserable, they could come to the men’s shed and be miserable there!

There is a growing realisation among the broader society that a retirement made up of a few decades of leisure is destructive mentally and physically.[1] Many others have written offering ideas and suggestions concerning hobbies and distractions we can take part in during our retirement years.[2] Most books written on the topic of retirement don’t deal with problems retirees face; they simply assume retirement is the wonderful nirvana we have been promised and give us tips on how to make enough money to enjoy it when the time comes.

This book is an attempt to do something altogether more important. My aim is to help Christians think about what it means to live a life serving Jesus in retirement. The truth is that too many Christians simply conform their thinking to our broader culture when it comes to retirement; the lives of retired Christians too often look identical to the lives of retired people who don’t know Jesus. Surely those who know the wonder of being saved by Jesus should have a different dream for the latter stages of our lives than to live a life of selfish indulgence!

Christians are called to be distinctive in the society we live in, like a city on a hill or a light on a stand that illuminates the whole house.[3] That cannot only apply to younger believers but also those living through their retirement years counter-culturally. We are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus,[4] to understand that serving Jesus means suffering and active service. Again, surely that applies to how we live in older age, not only to our priorities and lifestyle when younger. In all things, we need to examine our thinking and priorities to ensure they are not simply conformed to how everyone else in our society thinks.[5] We need to have our minds renewed to understand the will of God so that we can live to serve him with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength.

When Christians strive only for the self-centred leisure of the promised retirement ideal, it is not only those retirees who suffer. The local church suffers too. Many churches lack older people who are active in service and leadership. Too many mature church members spend a massive percentage of their money and time on travel, which leads to local churches not being built up by the gifts Jesus has given to them and leaving a vacuum of Christian maturity needed by their younger members. As the population of Western countries is generally ageing, this problem is accelerating.

The situation is not all negative, of course! I have had the privilege of serving side by side in my local church with many who are older than me, including a number who are retired. I know the great blessing that older believers can have in the church in terms of maturity, encouragement, prayer and service. Not all of the more senior saints have absorbed the thinking of the broader culture on the issue of retirement!

It isn’t easy to come to a topic like retirement with fresh eyes as a Christian. We have a lot of assumptions and expectations already in our minds. Our challenge together in this book is to consider what serving Jesus might look like in the latter stages of life, with the time and resources we have. To do this, we need to look at what the Bible has to say on the topic. No chapter or book in the Bible deals with retirement directly; it would be helpful if Paul added some kind of appendix dealing with this issue to the first letter to the Corinthians! The Bible does, however, have a lot to say on the issues that help us frame a godly worldview about retirement and later life in general. It will tell us how to think about issues relating to identity, purpose, the church family, and death, among other things. God, in His great kindness, has also given us direct teaching on growing older as well as furnishing us with a range of examples of older believers.

Obviously, this book aims to be useful for Christians who are retired from work. Ideally, though, we should think about these issues prior to retiring. Too often, we don’t think about retirement except to plan for future finances. Christians need to prepare for their service in the church and society when they have the time retirement will give them. This is a book for adults of all ages.

How might we better understand our often incorrect assumptions about retirement and consider a more godly perspective on these things? The main answer has to be by considering what the Bible has to say on this topic. We will be considering a range of books and passages from the Bible, but one of the most prominent will be the book of Ecclesiastes. This often-neglected Old Testament wisdom book was written from the perspective of an older man who looked back on his life and considered what was meaningful and what was not. His instruction will help us understand the issues around finding meaning, satisfaction and putting death in perspective.

In today’s world, retirement is simply a part of most cultures and we should seek to understand how it came to be that way. As we work through these issues together, we will touch on some history and secular research on our way to looking at key Bible passages.

Section 1

Retirement is not the paradise we are looking for

Chapter 1

A history lesson:

how did we get here?

Most of us hope that we will stop working while still healthy and then spend a few decades doing whatever we want. Many expect that not only should they be able to retire as soon as possible, but the government should provide some sort of pension to support it. If a politician wants to become unpopular, all they need to do is suggest that retirement benefits be reduced or limited in some way. In France, a suggestion for a moderate change to the retirement system resulted in large crowds rioting in the streets and burning cars.[6] The Italian government also faced civil unrest after suggesting a higher retirement age due to a national financial crisis.[7] After all, most reason, how dare the government reduce my pension that I deserve? I have worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, and expect to be able to enjoy my retirement in comfort. As early as possible, ideally.

Few people, however, realise that this is a quite new expectation in world history. Retirement in the form we have today was simply unheard of as recently as one hundred and fifty years ago.

In ancient times, people tended to work their entire lives, perhaps reducing their duties as they became older and less physically able. This was necessary as pre-industrial cultures were very work-intensive. Farming requires that all available people to be involved constantly; the luxury of extended leisure in your later years could not be afforded.

Retirement is not a Biblical concept. Perhaps that surprises you. The Bible was written over a very long time period and to a wide range of background cultures, but no passage describes or encourages a significant period of leisure in the latter part of life. The closest that we can find is an instruction to the Levitical priests who, while expected to retire from active service at age fifty, were instead to transition to help the younger priests instead of sitting back and being waited on.[8]

In most traditional cultures in ancient times and today, older people played a most significant role in society. They were consulted for their wisdom and life experience. Elderly relatives who could no longer live independently lived with their children or grandchil­dren, participating in home life as they were able to. We see something of this function for the older members of a Christian family in Paul’s instructions for older men and women to train and mentor younger Christians.[9]

The modern concept of retirement has its origins in the actions of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883.[10] Facing political pressure, Bismarck agreed to pay a pension to any nonworking German over the age of 70. This was significantly higher than the life expectancy of the time, which was around 40. Bismarck made this concession knowing it would not cost him much, as very few people lived to that kind of age in 1883! In 1916, the German parliament reduced this age to 65.[11] This decision introduced the principle that the government should fund a retirement pension. It also introduced the magic number 65 as the age that people can officially retire.[12] Despite massive changes in life expectancy and culture and the economy, even today 65 is considered to be the average age