Restoration Over Repair

As part of our collective denial of mortality, Americans have translated a legitimate desire for beauty into a thriving industry. In Drinking Problems at the Fountain of Youth, Beth Tietell finds that the 11.7 million cosmetic procedures performed in 2007 represent a 457 percent increase over 1997. She writes, “Yesterday’s hair coloring is today’s teeth bleaching, is tomorrow’s dermal filler, is the brow lift of the day after that. … Sociologists call this process ‘normalizing.’… In the not-too-distant future, getting sun damage zapped by a laser or a nasolabial fold filled won’t mean you’re excessively vain, just practical.” New biotechnologies present conundrums about what’s appropriate. “Does she or doesn’t she?” no longer applies to merely hair color, but breast augmentation, plastic surgery, liposuction, and other invasive procedures.

Tietell quotes Judith Wright, an expert in “soft addictions,” describing the women who come to her for life coaching. “We all have these deeper hungers and needs,” she says. “To matter, to be seen, to be respected, to belong, to connect, to love and be loved. But oddly, in our society we don’t talk about those things. We talk about our surface wants. I want to look good, but all these deeper hungers are what’s driving it. If I just wear the right makeup, then I’ll be attractive and then I’ll be loved.”

The more our identity and desires are intertwined with our physical appearance, the more desperate is our desire to retain and repair it.

The more our identity and desires are intertwined with our physical appearance, the more desperate is our desire to retain and repair it.  Yet the Bible teaches us to long not merely for the repair of our bodies, but for their restoration. Author and speaker, Dr. Kathleen Nielson argues that it is not a matter of valuing the body or not, but of “valuing my body for temporary purposes or valuing my body for eternal purposes. The most fundamental difference is that, as a woman of faith, I value my body as created by the eternal God—which makes it supremely valuable and supremely aimed to bring glory to its Creator.”

Nielson affirms that how we view our aging bodies has everything to do with how we view the visible and invisible realities of the world. “If these realities are only theoretical to me—if they make no difference to my thinking right now—then my visible body will become the reality that consumes me,” she says. “It’s much easier to focus on the visible than the invisible, of course, so without faith I will follow my natural [fallen] tendencies to ignore that other country and to become obsessed with this one.” But in light of the invisible realities, she continues, “I will value my body as an intricate part of who I have been created to be—for eternity. I will persevere through what Paul called the ‘slight momentary affliction’ of my body’s ‘wasting away’ because I have faith this body will be recreated perfectly for eternity.”

None of us is immune to the longing for beauty or the sense of loss that surfaces as our joints creak and our skin sags. But for many in our culture, Botox, plastic surgery, and liposuction are a last-ditch effort to repair damage and prolong youth in denial of what’s inevitable. As Christians, we can place our hope not in cosmetic procedures, but in the full restoration of our bodies. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:49, “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”

Death Is Life

Yet, in the ultimate paradox, in order to experience that beauty, we must first die. Earlier in the same passage in which he promises believers heavenly splendor, Paul writes, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed” (1 Corinthians 15:36). We join our Savior in death to join Him in life—both spiritually and physically. “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10). As we age, the stench of death becomes stronger, but the fact that we smell it reveals our longing for something more.

“Though few of us recognize it, embedded in this dread [of death] is a longing to return to what was supposed to be ... where death has once and for all been completely defeated."

“It’s unnatural and we all know it: People are not supposed to die. Like a knife rammed into the heart of creation, sin brought death into the world and all the aging, sickness, and decay that goes with it,” writes Paul David Tripp in Lost in the Middle.  He continues, “Though few of us recognize it, embedded in this dread [of death] is a longing to return to what was supposed to be. It is a longing for a place where life and death no longer battle, where death has once and for all been completely defeated. … Aging, sickness, deterioration, and death preach the gospel because they point to the utter futility of living a life that ends that way.”

Perhaps the “fight” against aging is an expression of that longing without a viable answer. Christians have the answer: Jesus Christ swallowed up death. He is making all things new. In Christ, we can mourn death—the mini-deaths we die daily as we age and the death that prevails in the world. But more than that, we can rejoice in Christ’s victory. For Christians, God pens a new ending to the human tragedy of death—He brings us fullness of life.

“The great humbling factor of aging is accepting limitations,” agrees Donald Guthrie, associate professor of educational ministries at Covenant Theological Seminary. “It’s almost startling when you realize your senses aren’t as sharp and you don’t have the energy you used to,” he admits. “It really forces you to look to the Lord for strength. Those passages start to make a lot more sense.” For Guthrie, Psalm 90 is a reminder of the abounding grace of God in spite of our steady progress toward death. “Even though we are here today and gone tomorrow, the Lord enables us to live and work and have our being,” he says. “‘Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’ That is an incredible kindness.”

Psalm 90 also gives us a vocabulary for suffering, says Greg Thompson, senior pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Va. “Death is the invader of all that is good and beautiful,” he says in a sermon on this text. “We hate sin because it is a plague on our lives. We are actually a gathering of the dying. We have elderly among us, sick among us. As long as we pretend that death doesn’t exist, we have nothing to say to the suffering.”

Faith in a future where God will wipe away every tear propels us out of a fear of death. God is daily rescuing us from this body of death. We can rest in the certainty that He will not abandon His child to the grave just as He did not abandon His Son to the grave. “This is the crux—these spiritual eyes of faith,” says Neilson. “Without such eyes, one can easily succumb to the focus on the visible, which pervades our world today. If all that is real is visible, then of course we would want to hold on to youth indefinitely. If all that is real is visible, then death represents an end to our reality, and we must deny death at any cost.” But because she believes in an eternal and invisible reality, Nielson says that as she ages, Proverbs 4:18 becomes more real, with its promise that the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter until the light of full day. “I see my life heading not for the darkness of death, but for the brightness of full life,” she says.

No Rx

With this arsenal of theological armor intact, we can address the real question: how do I deal with my aging frame? While we plead for a formula, it is impossible to prescribe. Yet a biblical viewpoint does present practical implications:

• We can nurture relationships with those who are getting older. We need them to tell us their stories, to teach us to pray, to share their wisdom, to enlighten our own paths of aging.
• We can cast aside delusions of perpetual youth and replace them with a vision that emphasizes the invisible realities of faith and the spiritual wisdom that comes from accepting our limits and cultivating our inner selves.
• We can enjoy our bodies while refusing to worship them, pursuing health and beauty with the goal of pleasing God.
• We can live in such a way that reflects a hope not in the transitory pleasures of this world, but in the redemptive hands of God.
• We can speak courageously into our culture. We can identify its longings—for beauty, permanence, acceptance, and love—as longings for the only One who truly satisfies, and point to His work that climaxes beyond the grave.

Susan Fikse is a freelance writer and member of Intown Community Church in Atlanta. She feels her advancing age acutely as she pleads for more energy to manage a household of three energetic kids and a lively dog alongside her husband, Jonathan.