There’s so much talk about early retirement, or reaching your “retirement number” in your senior years, but how does God view retirement? It’s shocking to me that some of Jesus’ harshest words seem to discuss the lust for early retirement today (you can read the article for the quote). While retirement can be a tremendous opportunity, it also comes with fierce temptations. Puritan Richard Baxter helps lead us into what a healthy retirement might look like. Because today’s post and Friday’s are linked, we’re making this Wednesday’s post available to all subscribers, free and paid alike. For those of you who have chosen to help support this column by becoming a paid subscriber, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’m at that age where many of my high school classmates are retiring. Personally, I’ve been inspired by John Maxwell’s words: the worst time to retire is when you can afford to retire. Not having to work creates a freedom and corresponding courage that the world needs. I aspire to have that attitude in this phase of life.
Let me stress—if you’ve been working a physical job and just can’t keep up anymore, or you worked primarily for a paycheck and mentally can’t motivate yourself anymore, I understand. No judgment here. Those are facts of life. But even in these cases, what you do in your retirement has serious spiritual consequences. My oldest brother is a great example. He accomplished an incredible feat, retiring from Microsoft at 65. They almost didn’t know how to throw a retirement party, because so few make it that long in what is a ruthless employment situation. Yet Jerry has used these days with the passion of a man who seeks first the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). You don’t have to be earning a paycheck to be productive; in fact, no longer needing one might usher you into the most fruitful season of your life.
I’ve just finished Richard Baxter’s ridiculously long A Christian Directory, volume 1. “Volume 1” is nearly half a million words long. Most modern books aim for 60,000 words or fewer. Baxter’s section on sloth, and how it might relate to retirement, couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
Baxter begins his discussion on work by stressing that we need to “understand how necessary a life of labor is, and the reasons of the necessity.” It is not necessary for the physically or mentally infirm in the same way, but those who can work need to work. A life of selfish leisure can be poisonous to our souls.
If we can do good, we should do good. Whether we’re providing for our own needs, or earning enough to help provide for others, the ability to be of service is in itself a call to serve. Whether that’s financial giving, wisdom giving, works of help, or some other assistance, the ability to give is God’s call to give.
Withdrawing from doing good to others so that we live “only to ourselves” sets us up for that jarring passage when Jesus calls a man a fool. As you read this, ask yourself, doesn’t this sound eerily like retirement? (especially, early retirement): “And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19:21). If this doesn’t sound like a modern man or woman planning to spend retirement solely for themselves, what does it sound like?
Reaching a “retirement number” doesn’t mean we’ve fulfilled our duty to God. In other words, we shouldn’t work just out of necessity, but out of principle, worship, and calling. “Will not riches excuse one from laboring in a calling? Answer: No; but rather bind them to it the more; for he that hath most wages from God, should do him most work. Though they have no outward want to urge them, they have as great a necessity of obeying God, and doing good to others, as any other men have that are poor.”
If God has equipped us to work and we don’t work, we sort of despise Him, or at the very least, despise His calling.
God commands our labor, in the Ten Commandments (“six days you shall work”) and through Paul’s example in the New Testament (“He who does not work shall not eat” 2 Thess. 3:10-12).
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