It turns out that no one really knows why we age, exactly. To be clear: growing old is simply a matter of the chronological passage of time. That much is understood. But why we age—why, that is, our bodies should change, and especially, deteriorate as we grow old, why skin should lose its elasticity and eyesight its precision, why muscles should lose their tone and bones their density and mental processes their alacrity—medical science does not have an especially penetrating explanation for this.
In the words of that old Iron Maiden song (yes, Iron Maiden; kids, back in my day, the rockers were also the philosophers...): “There’s a time to live, but isn’t it strange that as soon as we’re born we’re dying.”
But why?
Why shouldn’t our cells be able to reproduce indefinitely? Why shouldn’t bones continually maintain their density, or muscles their tone? Why shouldn’t accumulated experience just keep sharpening our mental processes without end or limit?
Science can’t say, exactly.
At least, according to Doctor Andrew Weil, one of America’s leading gerontologists, science can’t. To be sure, there are theories. In his book, Healthy Aging, Dr. Weil surveys some of the best.
There’s the “Genetic Loss” theory of aging, for instance. Apparently, every time your cells reproduce, they lose tiny bits of genetic material from their DNA (humans lose approximately 0.6% of their heart muscle DNA each year, for instance). Over time, this gradual loss of DNA shows up in our bodies as, well, saggy skin, noodly muscles, brittle bones, and so on. On this theory, as best as I can tell, aging is kind of like a prolonged genetic mutation.
Then there’s the “Telomere Theory”. Telomoeres are the end bits of our chromosomes, and their job is to keep said chromosomes from genetically “fraying” (they’ve been compared to the plastic cap on the end of your shoelace). Telomeres have a tendency to shorten over time; and when they grow too short, they activate a mechanism that prevents further cell multiplication. Well: nothing says “old pair of shoes” worse than when the shoe-laces are all frayed.
The theory I found most interesting, however, is the “Reproductive-Cell Cycle” theory. The idea here is that, early on in life, our bodies naturally produce reproductive hormones designed to promote cell growth and ensure, especially, that we reach the age of sexual reproduction; but later in life, in a futile attempt to maintain sexual reproduction past our prime, these same hormones become disregulated and start to drive senescence instead (senescence is the fancy word for the way your body falls apart as you get old). In short: it’s our sex drive, actually, that’s killing us.
Well; I’m light-years from being an expert on any of this, but that was my lay-man’s understanding of Dr. Weil’s book.
And I’m not sharing any of this to be morbid. Or flippant. It’s just, in a previous post I spoke about the reverence the Bible has for old age, and how it tries to encourage the same in us; and it’s just possible my post may have elicited some knowing smiles or downright scoffs from readers who, like me, have passed a 40-something-eth birthday and are noticing for the first time that their bodies just won’t do what they used to do, and have begun to do all sorts of things they never did before, instead.
Reverence for old-age indeed!
So, any thorough theology of aging will eventually have to come to terms with the hard truth that, just because Proverbs 16 calls my quickly-graying hair a crown of glory, that doesn’t change the fact that the hair’s still grey. And thinning. And the fellow it’s crowning feels somewhat less glorious than he did back when he was 20-something and full of vim and vinegar.
When we do come to terms with this truth—the fact that old age involves loss and deterioration as much as it does growth and gain—we discover the flip-side of the Bible’s teaching on the matter. Regardless how medical science may try to explain the phenomenon, biblically speaking, aging is not only a gift from God, it is also a divine limit placed on us by God.
The definitive text on this one is Genesis 6:3, where God, in response to the seemingly endless proliferation of human sin, says this: “My Spirit will not contend with human beings forever, for they are mortal. Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Here, I think, we have the first solid theological word on the aging process. Cells lose their genetic material over time, telomeres shorten and chromosomes fray, reproductive hormones eventually begin to wear down the very organisms they once helped to sexually reproduce, because God, in his wisdom, knew that we needed to have limits placed on us. And he saw what we might become without them.
In another definitive text, Psalm 90:10 underscores this basic idea. The context is again a reflection on God’s right response to human sin, and it says, “Our days may come to seventy years, or perhaps eighty if strength endures, but the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.”
The Bible seems quite convinced on this one. God in his wisdom has placed an upper limit on the length of the human life-span. And spiritually speaking, healthy aging is about learning to live well, fully and wisely and contentedly, within those limits. For lack of a better image, aging is about the joy of colouring inside the lines of the human life-span.
It is interesting, of course, to speculate on the meaning of the Resurrection within this theological framework. Because all genuinely Christian theology must end, eventually, with Christ; and the promise of the empty tomb is in fact a resurrected body where, presumably, cells reduplicate without genetic loss and God binds up the fraying telomeres of the broken-hearted. But that is far more speculative than I wish to get today, except, perhaps, to say this: if the promise of the Gospel is indeed eternal life in Jesus Christ, then for Christians, it would seem, Christ himself actually replaces aging as God's divine limitation on human life.
Food for thought.
But while that simmers on the back-burner, let me just make my main point one more time. Biblically speaking, graceful aging—Proverbs-16-glory-crowned aging, that is—begins when we accept the reality of aging not simply as a divine gift to us, but also as a divine limitation placed on us.
Of course, for the wise, those two things aren’t really all that different, in the end.
Polishing Up My Proverbs 16 Crown of Glory (Part IV): A Biblical Theory of Aging
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