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The Bible’s Countercultural View of Aging
Culture’s Anti-Aging Messaging
In 2025 the anti-aging industry in the United States was valued at more than seventy-seven billion dollars, an eye-popping number that is predicted to almost double by 2034.1 To put it mildly, there’s big money in vilifying the aging process. And money talks. What message does it shout about how the modern world feels toward aging?
Anti. Against. Hard pass.
But is that altogether wrong? Isn’t aging a part of dying and, therefore, against God’s original design? If death is an enemy, isn’t aging also an enemy that we should rail against with all our might? Is it possible that to be against aging is a form of longing for an afterlife in which we will no longer be subject to the ravages of age? To answer these questions, we need a brief theology of time. What exactly is the true story of the Bible regarding aging and the passage of time?
Aging from the Beginning
The creation account of Genesis 1 shows us that time was functioning from day one. We know this because of the repeated time stamp of “there was evening and there was morning,” and because on the fourth day God created the sun, moon, and stars “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). The celestial bodies were created for the express purpose of marking the passage of time. It follows that the humans formed from the dust on day six were time-bound, experiencing the passage of time and being impacted by it. But how? What would time’s impact have been in a world before the fall of Genesis 3?
Dust to Dust
Jen Wilkin
In this biblical meditation on aging, Jen Wilkin draws poetic parallels between the first half of life and the second, inviting us to live fully at every stage.
The fact that humans are charged to be fruitful and multiply—to birth and raise children—implies aging: growing older developmentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Though in Eden humans exist in time, time is not an adversary. It simply marks another day, month, or year of God’s faithfulness to their flourishing. Every birthday is evidence of greater maturity, wisdom, skill, and fruitfulness. We don’t know exactly what full development of a body that’s both time-bound and uncorrupted would look like. What we do know is that Adam and Eve were taken from the dust, but to it they and their descendants would not have returned. Rather, the curve of human life in Eden would have simply arced up and to the right from the origin point, extending into eternity. Their bodies—uncorrupted by sin’s corrosive effects—would have never suffered the decline and death with which we are all too familiar.
But then comes Genesis 3: the serpent, the fruit, the fall. How does creation’s relationship to time change after the sin of Adam and Eve? Time becomes an enemy. Pre-fall we had all the time in the world. Post-fall our days are numbered, and our bodies are implicated in that new math. Rather than arcing up and to the right from the origin point, our lives now map as an arc with an origin and a terminus: birth, growth, decline, death. Rather than grow unhindered in wisdom and knowledge with every passing year, enjoying, laboring, and serving others with an incorruptible body, humans experience in their flesh the effects of a creation subjected to futility.
But remember: Aging existed before sin entered the world, and that means aging itself is not a penalty of sin. The penalty of sin on the human body is not that it ages but that as it ages, it declines toward death. It suffers increasing physical and cognitive failure with each passing year on the downward slope of the curve. Before the fall, people simply developed; they became more able, mature, wise, loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, and so on, with every year that passed. After the fall, people still have the capacity to develop spiritually and emotionally for all of life, but our bodies steadily decline toward death. Humans once formed from the dust know with absolute certainty that they will return to it.
The Bible’s true story of aging is motivated by joy: Embrace aging.
Simply put, we were created to age but not to decline in our aging. We were created for eternal life uninterrupted by decline and death, and those united to Christ will one day look back on decline and death as rude interruptions on our journey toward eternity. But for the present, we have traded a curve up and to the right for an arc with a beginning point and an end point. We all know the shape of this curve. The expression “over the hill” reflects our awareness of it. The false story of anti-aging says we can thwart the curve, that we can have that pre-fall curve up and to the right indefinitely, or at least far beyond what previous generations ever imagined.
By contrast, the true story says not just that the curve is our reality, but that wisdom is discovered by learning that curve. Perhaps nowhere is the true story of aging captured more beautifully than Psalm 90. After reflecting on the eternal nature of God and the fleeting nature of human life, Moses asks of God in verse 12: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
What is the wisdom of numbering our days? It is to pay attention to the passage of time and to live as though each day, each season, each moment on the curve matters for eternity. It is trusting God to help us unlearn the original sin of self-reliance as the aging process gradually, even faithfully, reteaches us dependence. It is living in hope-filled submission to God, bearing witness to the world around us in our declining bodies that “my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps. 73:26). It’s the proof that we are living out of God’s true story. That wisdom is ours for the asking, according to James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”
This wisdom is necessary for faithful stewardship of the time we are given: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15–16).
Competing Narratives
How does the Bible speak of aging? Is it anti? Is it against? Scripture’s insights sound far distant from the way we speak of it today. Consider Proverbs 16:31: “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” Or Job 12:12: “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”
Based on these two verses alone, the yawning chasm between the world’s view of aging and the Bible’s begins to open before our view. To the world, gray hair is a sign of impending irrelevance, and wisdom is found among the young.
But the gap gets bigger.
The Bible tells us that youthful beauty is fleeting (Prov. 31:30) but the world tells us it must be maintained at all costs. The Bible speaks of aging as a gift (Prov. 3:1–2) but the world tells us it is a disease to be fought off. The Bible tells us that care for the elderly is a sacred charge (Ex. 20:12; Lev. 19:32), but the world tells us the elderly are a burden. The Bible says our days are numbered and are to be counted with care (Ps. 90:12). The world says age is just a number, and that you’re only as old as you feel.
Don’t miss the underlying motivators of these two narratives. The world’s false story of anti-aging is motivated by fear: Don’t get old. You’ll be invisible, irrelevant, a has-been, a burden. The Bible’s true story of aging is motivated by joy: Embrace aging. You’ll grow in wisdom, depth, and value. No one is a has-been in God’s family.
Notes:
- “Anti-Aging Market Size, Share, and Trends 2025–2034,” Precedence Research, October 30, 2025, www.precedenceresearch.com/.
This article is adapted from Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World by Jen Wilkin.
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