Age-ism as a Violation of Divine Law

A year and a half ago I attended a Sufjan Stevens concert.  And as the crowd filled the Royal Oak Music Theater, I noticed an unsettling trend: everyone was younger than me.  I was surrounded by slim college kids wearing the latest fashions, tweeting and texting on their smartphones.   I saw my middle-aged, spectacled self through their eyes.  I was suddenly self-conscious.

Ours is a culture that values youth, beauty and vitality.  These are our currency of choice.  A year ago Time magazine published an article entitled “Amortality”.  Its author observes that the lines between adolescent, young adulthood, middle and old age have blurred significantly in recent years.  Young teens are dressing and acting like adults.  Their parents are dressing and acting like teens (LOL).  Older persons are availing themselves of pharmaceutical and surgical options that maintain the illusion of youth well into their sixties, seventies and eighties.  Why? 

Because we all know that when we no longer seem youthful, we will no longer be relevant.  One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard among local job seekers is that no one will hire anyone over 50.  Those nearing “senior citizen status” (and even those significantly younger) are immediately perceived as out of touch with the skills and technologies of today’s economy.  Obsolete. 

This is a radical shift from the way older persons were treated in the cultures that produced the Bible.  In the Old Testament God insists that his people show due respect to those who have gone before them:

You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord. (Lev. 19:32)

There are practical reasons for this command.  Our elders have lived what we’re living now.  Even if they lived it poorly, their mistakes have given them wisdom.  All of us can benefit from those whose experience exceeds our own.  It makes sense to respect people with more life experience than yours.

There are also sentimental and spiritual reasons for it.  Each of us (God willing) will one day be the age that “old” person is now.  When that day comes we hope we will have something relevant to say, and someone to whom to say it.  But as people of faith, we also recognize that we exist on an eternal playing field.  Not only are you and that 70-year-old not that far apart compared to eternity.  But you are on the same lifelong journey – a journey not to achievement but improvement.  Doesn’t it make sense to pay attention to the ways God has used the experience of years to improve the people around you?  Could God’s work in your own life be enhanced if you allowed yourself to be influenced by those who have been there?  As with all God’s commands, Lev. 19:32 has great relevance.  We and our culture suffer when we disregard it.