People have long believed that what we do in life echoes in eternity. These days, however, we are far less concerned with the afterlife and are much more fixated on the one we are currently living. We now live according to the philosophy that what we do in our youth echoes in our old age. We work on our posture; we count our steps; we have our coffee with a little collagen, fully expecting to be rewarded for our good behavior. Despite our due diligence, life inevitably takes a toll, whether by the kids we raise or the shoes we wear. We may try to prolong the aging process, but, the body always keeps the score.
With a surging elderly population, it feels like the perennial quest to live forever has been abandoned for the next best thing: how to age well. Hence the booming industry of skin rejuvenation and joint supplements. In his article “How to Die in Good Health,” Dhruv Khullar examines the mass appeal of so-called longevity evangelists, a growing number of celebrity doctors and alleged “biohackers.” Instead of old age being a long, slow decline, these crusaders assure that you can live a happy, healthy life right up until its sudden end (as long as you subscribe to their exercise regimen and buy their entire line of products).
The longevity industry’s brightest star, Peter Attia, author of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, provides exercise protocols, health consultation, and diagnostic tests for the wealthy elite. If the body keeps the score, Attia wants to turn you into an “athlete of life.” His advice ranges from general platitudes (eat well, exercise, invest in personal relationships) to hyper-specific instruction. If you want to lift a grandchild when you’re eighty, try goblet squatting fifty-five pounds when you’re forty. If you want to lift yourself off the floor unassisted in old age, it’s time to start practicing “toe yoga” now. For Attia, the loss of our physical capacities in later-life should not be considered inevitable. Just follow his regimen and you could be given another healthy decade of life.
Attia’s promise pokes at our fear and insecurities enough to make it hard to entirely write it off. After all, if you have your health, you have everything, so why not invest in his plan? And isn’t it a good thing that he’s inspiring people to imagine a healthier approach to aging? As Khullar writes, “In a society that chases money, power, fame and beauty, there are worse gods than longevity.” Maybe … but I imagine few longevity disciples envision their final years being lived in ignominious destitution. Fewer still are the number of people with the financial means and time to do those goblet squats or purchase all the (unregulated and unproven) anti-aging supplements.
If anything, a long, healthy life is a necessary precondition for maintaining wealth, power, and fame. Those most interested in extending their lives tend to be the ones whose lives are already successful. Aging well might enable you to play with your great-grandchildren, but it equally affords you the luxury of never retiring, globe-trotting on seniors cruise liners, or never having to suffer the indignity of ever-depending on another person.
The underlying promise that the longevity movement offers feels eerily related to the first lie the serpent ever told: “you will not surely die.” The fatal flaw in the longevity movement is that, while the body keeps the score, the game is rigged. Exceptionally long life is less due to the hours logged on a treadmill and more having to do with factors well beyond your control, like where you live in the world, access to world-class medical care, or, most tellingly, whether you possess a “longevity gene” in your DNA. Nearly half the people who are blessed with such a gene are overweight. Khullar’s article quotes a hundred-year-old woman who was blessed with a longevity gene despite being a lifelong smoker. When asked if anyone had warned her about the danger of tobacco, she said, “Yes, all four of the doctors who told me to stop smoking — they died.” Longevity evangelists may preach a gospel of cause and effect, but God seems to negate this way of thinking. “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,” he mutters as he knits us together, one DNA strand at a time.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that relinquishing our need to control prolongs our lives in ways that striving does not allow. A growing body of research shows that palliative and hospice care can help a person live much longer than when put on life support. In some sense, our lives begin once we accept the reality that we are going to die.
If the body keeps the score, our only hope is to be removed from the game entirely. Thankfully, Jesus is not interested in preserving your present life, but in giving us a completely new life altogether. Whereas collagen and natural supplements may promise to just maybe stave off death a little longer, the gospel promises us that Jesus has destroyed death altogether. And by rising to life again, he has won for us far more than a long life, but one that is everlasting.
As for our own fragile frames, a Christian perspective on the body can lead to a far greater vision of health and wellness. Experience goes to show that things such as forgiveness and compassion are not only good for the soul, but for the body. In the Pixar movie, Up!, Carl Fredricksen’s morbidity has far more to do with his grief and guilt than it does his physical ailments. Life has taken its toll, but grace ultimately provides what no supplement ever could. In Steve Brown’s When Being Good Isn’t Good Enough, he tells the story of a woman who confessed a moment of infidelity to her husband. After hiding it from him for twenty years, the husband forgave her on the spot. Brown writes that when he saw the woman the next day she looked fifteen years younger. It turns out that spiritual rebirth gives way to physical renewal. We may pour our life savings into rejuvenating elixirs, but the best anti-aging drug out there is mercy.
Contrary to longevity evangelists, the gospel proclaims that the purpose of our lives is not simply to survive, but to live according to an entirely different health plan. We are not ultimately saved by our own carefully balanced diet or exercise routine, but by the wounds of Jesus. Our hope is not in prolonging our lives, but in his own untimely death. While our bodies may keep the score, his resurrected body has already won our salvation.
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Amen!!!!