Years ago, noted behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, then in his eighties, presented a speech at the American Psychological Association’s annual conference titled “Growing Old Gracefully as a Psychologist.” Skinner’s understanding of the human condition, reflected clearly in his remarks, revolved around two assumptions: the empty box and control by reinforcers.

In his view, positive or negative life circumstances that he called reinforcing stimuli impinge upon soulless creatures, human accidents of evolution who, because they lack any capacity for undetermined free choice, are helplessly driven by what happens to them. Humans are little more than complicated dogs, empty boxes who instinctively chase after meaty bones and avoid threats to their well-being. Our behavior is under the control of reinforcers. His psychology was known as radical behaviorism.

In his speech Skinner reported that in his experience as an older man, age minimizes the felt impact of reinforcers that in earlier days felt attractively strong. Senior citizens live their remaining years without passion, drifting through life like a sailboat at sea on a day without wind. To maintain or recover some experience of pleasure, something to enjoy today and look forward to tomorrow, the elderly psychologist indicated (perhaps with his tongue nudging the inside of his cheek) that eating spicier foods and looking at hardcore pornography had become necessary.

When I read that speech, I shared Skinner’s wisdom with my devoutly Christian father, then a few years older than my present age (sixty-nine). With his tongue pressing hard against his cheek, he responded, “Well then, I guess I’ll soon need to more often frequent Mexican restaurants and get a subscription to Hustler magazine.” (For readers too young or too sheltered to know, Hustler was a glossy magazine featuring hardcore pornographic pictures, a magazine thankfully long out of business.)

When I was invited to write a personal article on spiritual formation continuing into senior years, Skinner’s speech came to mind. My immediate thought? I can do better than Skinner, not because I’m eleven years away from my eighties, but because I’m no empty box. How I live my remaining years will not be determined by what happens to me but rather by my deepening awareness of what the gospel of Christ is stirring within me, within my heart and mind and soul and emotions.

§

01.  A Way to Live Soulfully

What I’ve been doing, what I’m now doing, and what I will be doing until I die is an expression of my freedom that is shaped by the degree to which:

 

• I am in touch with my deepest longings as a bearer of God’s image, created and recreated to know God and to reveal his character to others by the way I choose to relate;
• I am firmly persuaded of the truth embodied in Jesus and in the relational story he came to tell that invites me into the dance of the Trinity and into the lives of others moving in the Trinity’s relational rhythm;
• I freely embrace the purpose that the gospel empowers me to pursue as my life’s ambition; and
• I cease demanding to feel pleasant, self-affirming emotions and instead seize the opportunity to know the kind of self-denying joy that Jesus knew in Gethsemane and on Calvary, a joy that defies natural categories and sustains hope in the promise of a terrific eternal ending to God’s story.

 

The phrase I just used—the degree to which—raises an important point. The degree to which I am firmly persuaded in the center of my being that the story Jesus came to tell is the story I want my life to tell (at any cost to my immediately felt well-being) is the degree to which I will discover my deepest longing, embrace my gospel-directed purpose, and understand that suffering for God actually releases, rather than eliminates, true joy.

§

02.  Continuing to Continue

Paul encouraged Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:14–15, ESVAll Scripture quotations marked are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.).

I converted to Christ at age eight. Within weeks, my father gave me my first “adult” Bible with those words from Paul inscribed by Dad on the flyleaf inside the front cover. I read them then, I’ve reread them a thousand times in the past sixty years. But now, as I near seventy, a landmark that will designate me as officially old, Paul’s challenge to Timothy challenges me in a deeper place, in a more disturbing way.

How firmly persuaded am I that everything I’ve somewhat easily believed and have comfortably taught for all these years will keep me on the narrow road to life as advancing years narrow the road through the difficulties that are sure to come? Will I get more experientially in touch with my deepest longing to know God and represent him well until I see him face to face in Jesus? Will I count it a privilege to faithfully serve him no matter whatever cost may be required? Will I have the faith necessary to believe that joy can exist in the midst of unbearable agony of body and soul?

I don’t know. How can I? I’m entering a season of life that is full of uncertainties, a season that promises trials I’ve never yet experienced. But as I observe my journey as I’m living it now, I recognize three realities, each one currently quite real, as I grow older not simply as a psychologist or even as a Christian psychologist, but as a Christian, a follower of Jesus.

Here I must be careful. C. S. Lewis observed and recorded one person’s grief, his own, following terrible loss, with no intent to guide others through their experience of grief. He titled his book A Grief Observed, not Grief Observed. So too I want to observe how the Spirit continues to form me as I grow older without subtly hinting that my journey into old age will be or should be yours.

The three realities that I am now recognizing as I walk the narrow road to life are, first: a certain depth of wisdom comes with years, rarely before; second: honest doubt plows the soil in which the seeds of wisdom grow; and third: significant sentences spoken by my spiritual community, especially those spoken by those ahead of me on the path, impact me with spiritual power. Let me now briefly discuss each one.

§

03.  A Certain Kind of Wisdom Comes with Years, Rarely before

Two quick caveats. Age does not guarantee wisdom. It merely creates the opportunity to gain wisdom. And profound wisdom does sometimes fill a young soul. Bonhoeffer died in his forties. David Brainerd died younger. John Calvin wrote his first version of the Institutes of the Christian Religion at age twenty-seven. Paul told Timothy to let no one despise his youth.

I’m now sixty-nine. I will turn seventy in the summer of 2014. A hard-to-welcome opportunity to know a deeper wisdom has come upon me, more strongly in these past few years. Others have called it acedia, a diminished ability to feel a satisfying passion felt strongly in earlier years. I’ve recently been telling others of a new slogan I’ve adopted for my ministry and life: I don’t care!

And I don’t; I care less now than ever. I no longer care as I once did whether I’ll again enjoy the legitimate thrill of speaking to thousands or leading a well-received seminar or writing a book that sells big. What passion those God-honoring activities once generated is now mostly gone. A strange boredom has taken its place. And I’m glad. It frees me to care more fully about what really matters—putting God on display by how I live.

But the boredom I experience, the loss of passion in doing good things, seems to be creating an opportunity to discover what has long been hidden but always alive in my regenerate and slowly forming soul. With a quietly burning passion that often feels more solid than hot, I do care whether I’m telling God’s story by how I relate. I do care whether God’s grace is sufficient to keep me fully loved in his family when I fail miserably. I do care whether God will say “well done” when I stand before him. I do care whether I’m telling my story for my sake when I think I’m telling his story for his sake. And I do care whether my love for the God who has given me life has the power to dislodge my entitled expectation that my life in this world should go smoothly.

During those three terrible hours of darkness on Calvary, Jesus felt no pleasantly fulfilling emotion. Far more terribly, all experience of his Father’s loving presence was withdrawn. And yet, with resolute will sustained only by faith without a glimmer of sight, Jesus never lost confidence in his Father’s love and good plan; he somehow clung to the certain hope that even in his deepest agony, especially in his deepest agony, a profoundly good story was unfolding. And it was!

As the passion to enjoy satisfying ministry diminishes, I think largely because what I long to see happen never fully happens, as acedia settles in as a chronic experience, the passion to live what I cannot not believe increases. Unsupported by satisfying emotions but strongly supported by genuine desire, I am coming to understand that raw obedience is the path to knowing the peace and joy Jesus knew in his worst moments. I think that is wisdom, a certain kind that develops with years, rarely before.

§

04.  Honest Doubt Plows the Soil in Which the Seeds of Wisdom Grow

Doubt has been my off-again, on-again companion for most of my life, from mid-teen years till now. As I grow older, a quieter, deeper kind of doubt seems more often on-again. I wonder: what am I firmly persuaded is true, especially in my worst moments, moments of fear, of disappointment, of terrifying uncertainty, and of paralyzing doubt?

I find comfort in John Owen’s words, written by the great Puritan pastor and theologian several centuries ago. As Christians grow older, Owen said, their fire often flickers, their confidence often fades, their hope often dims. But fear not, Owen counseled. God’s deepening work continues. Do I believe that? I’m not always sure.

I want to walk through the doorway of doubt to discover that living truth. To deny doubt will deny me that opportunity.

Just recently, I felt nudged through that door when I saw something in a familiar passage I hadn’t noticed before. When Jesus fed the five thousand, he distributed the multiplying bread and fish to his disciples, who ate the food for themselves first, then served others. Looking back on forty-plus years of counseling, writing, and teaching, I’m now seeing that I’ve spent lots of time in the kitchen preparing meals of truth, then only nibbling on bits of food before I carry full plates to others.

No wonder I doubt whether God’s provisions are properly nourishing my soul. They aren’t, because I’ve not taken the time to eat them, to digest them, and to relax in God’s presence with gratitude for what he has given me to enjoy. Perhaps my ongoing doubts, coupled with worsening fatigue, need claiming as God’s nudging me to do what I’ve done so little over my years of active ministry, to come to his table and respond to his invitation to delight myself “in rich food” (Isaiah 55:2).

§

05.  Significant Sentences Spoken by My Spiritual Community

Significant sentences spoken by my spiritual community, especially those spoken by those ahead of me on the path, impact my inner being with spiritual power.

It would take more space than the constraints of an article allow to record the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of impacting sentences that have been spoken to me over the course of my life. Emotions stir as I remember life words spoken to me by my mother and dad, so many spoken by my wife, Rachael, and by my two sons, others spoken by close friends including the two couples in our longstanding spiritual formation group.

But let me mention just a few sentences recently written to me that linger with growing impact. I received them in an email from a ninety-year-old man who from a distance has been a profoundly impacting mentor: Dr. James Houston.

Late in 2012, after I wrote to Dr. Houston that my two previous bouts with cancer were perhaps making a third appearance, my poor communication led him to think my cancer had been again diagnosed. Within a few days, I received the following email that went almost exactly like this:

 

Dear Larry,

How grievous to hear that your cancer has returned. So few Christians realize how valuable it is to reckon with our mortality. Perhaps you’ve heard Samuel Johnson’s apt comment that “Nothing quite clears the mind like a walk up the gallows.” Facing our mortality provides much clearer perspective. It will be good to see what the Lord will give you to enjoy and pass on to others in whatever time He yet provides.

With Warmest Affection,
Jim

 

Sentences like these help me appreciate that I am alive in spiritual community. They provide hope that faith deepening in the darkness of doubt will provide wisdom to live well in whatever circumstances of blessings and difficulties lie ahead, to delight my Father through the Spirit’s power to put Jesus on display by the way I relate.

God, may it be so, for the sake of your kingdom and my eternal joy—in that order.