Mid-Life Crisis?

If one of those warning lights starts blinking red on your car dashboard – what do you do? No, no, you misunderstand me, what DO you do?

Tiddly squat.

Your brain goes into impressive overdrive (note the continued metaphor) and creates several alternative explanations for the flashing light or strategies to deal with it. Number One is to lean slightly to the right to obscure the light – best not to be distracted whilst driving. Number Two is to congratulate the car in its old age, at least something is still working and drive on. Number three is an unconvincing risk assessment – ‘I’ll deal with it if it doesn’t sort itself out by next Thursday’.

Wisdom is silenced in favour of procrastination and procrastination is the infant born from a life organised around certain priorities that have erected a No Entry sign to any uninvited interruptions – including illness, burst water pipes, redundancy, marital problems, or…lack of oil and impending disaster: RAC tow to the nearest garage, overnight hotel, a big dent in bank balance, the wrath of boss, wife/husband, and child who needed a lift to the school concert, and the time-wasting frustration of appealing against the yellow parking ticket affixed to the windscreen.

Following in its wake is a diet of humble pie, three per day for at least a fortnight until some hidden timetable of shame and defeat has done its work and you are helpless with laughter at the ridiculousness of life…and you realise, again, that it’s back to the drawing board. A personal MOT is overdue.

Of course, there are deeper mid-life crises that pay a visit. Ones that threaten to crush its victim beyond repair and others that make long-Covid appear to be a walk in the park.

Back to the question – what DO you do?

Other reactions that do lean towards wisdom rather than outright foolishness include taking a surreptitious peak at self-help articles online or in ‘that section’ in Waterstones. Or, maybe, you will take up that offer from your boss for a well-being introductory day with work-based counselling as a further option.

Somewhere in the back of your brain is not even a memory, more an impression that, in the past, you might have talked things over with a Vicar or Priest. And what does that word ‘spiritual’ really mean anyway? All you know is that the panic attacks at 3am are highly unpleasant, recurring nightmares are increasing in frequency, you’re intimidated by even the thought of doing a presentation at work, and you can barely look at the ones you love in the eye because you fear choking on tears for no apparent reason. And you feel guilty about several recent decisions you’ve taken that fell below the moral standards that you hold others to. Nothing major, but you’ve taken your eye off the ball, ignored your conscience, and taken some shortcuts…your moral compass hasn’t pointed north for some time, so you’ve tidied it away. It’s the flashing warning light all over again. What do you do?

taking a surreptitious peak at self-help articles online or in ‘that section’ in Waterstones

You can fool most of the people most of the time but someone you’ve known, not one of your inner circle of friends, has come up to you recently and asked with a piercing but understanding look: ‘Are you OK, Geoff?’ or ‘Are you OK, Hannah?’ and your hesitation says more than whatever words tumble forth from your lips.

Why am I writing this?

You might surmise that this is autobiographical. Not quite, although I do have this t-shirt. Nor is this article one of those ‘anti-psychobabble’ critiques of counselling – I’m currently about 12 counselling sessions into meeting with a therapist. No. This line of thought was set off by reading about two kings in the bible – namely Hezekiah and Josiah.

Let’s get to it. And, maybe along the way, we might figure out what the word ‘spiritual’ means. Maybe.

King Hezekiah

b. 741BC – ascended to the throne aged 25 in 716BC and died aged 54 in 687BC having reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years.

The account of his political and military exploits is written in 2 Kings chapters 18-20 and 2 Chronicles 29-32. During his reign, Isaiah and Micah prophesied to the Kingdom of Judah.

For us, the important point in Hezekiah’s life came 14 years into his reign when he was 39, a good age for a mid-life crisis.

Despite his great success in pushing through fundamental spiritual reforms, removing idol worship, and returning Israel to the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he has fallen gravely ill. So ill that Isaiah the prophet tells him to put his house in order and prepare to die.

Hezekiah’s response to this mid-life crisis was to pray. As a result of his pleading. God sends Isaiah back to announce that his life would be extended by 15 years. He had reigned for fourteen years, and now his life would be extended by fifteen…you can’t get much more ‘mid’ than that.

Not all mid-life crises have a happy ending; this one included. Initially, you might imagine that Hezekiah, brought so low by his illness, was taken spiritually to ground zero. His own powerlessness was evident to him, and the source of all his help, past, present, and future, lay beyond his human abilities, wealth, or political clout, it lay in God. There was nowhere else to turn. The doctors had failed, his counsellors’ advice could not touch his personal crisis, and even the prophet Isaiah had said ‘time’s up’.

Hezekiah, however, humbled himself, and called out to God. It saved his life and proved to be such a turning point. The biblical account sheds light on Hezekiah’s state of mind:

‘..his heart was lifted up…made for himself treasuries of gold…’ 2 Chron 32 v 25, 27

‘Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart…’ 2 Chron 32v26

Despite this experience of humility, being blessed, and having his life extended by God, in his heart he turned it around so that it became a boast. He made the fatal mistake of showing ‘his’ riches to the Babylonian envoys and failed to acknowledge the Lord as the source of his blessing and riches.

During the latter half of Hezekiah’s reign, his son Manasseh was born who witnessed his father’s spiritual decline and how his pride and love of riches had consumed him. Perhaps it was the effect of the spiritual tide retreating in his father that bred in him a desire to lead Israel differently, away from the Lord, and to commit idolatry? Hezekiah started well but finished poorly, Manasseh started badly but repented and finished well (2 Chron 33 v 1-20)

King Josiah

‘b. 648BC – ascended the throne aged 8 in 640BC and died aged 39 in 609BC having reigned in Jerusalem for 31 years.

The account of his political and military exploits is written in 2 Kings chapters 22-23 and in 2 Chronicles 34-35. During his reign, Zephaniah and Jeremiah prophesied to the Kingdom of Judah.

For us, the mid-reign crisis in Hezekiah’s life came after 18 years into his reign when he was 26 after which he would reign for a further 13 years.

Josiah’s personal history and his spirituality are very different from his great-grandfather, Hezekiah’s, whom he had never met having been born nearly 40 years after Hezekiah died. From the outset, aged 8, his reign was saturated in doing right and reintroducing the worship of the Lord to Israel:

‘In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David…’ 2 Chron 34 v 3.

He was sixteen years old.

‘In the eighteenth year of his reign…he sent Shaphan to repair the house of the Lord…’ 2Chron 34 v 8

He is now 26. The crisis comes when Hilkiah finds the Book of the Law in the temple and hands it to Shaphan who takes it to the King:

‘And Shaphan read it before the king. When the king heard the words of the Law he tore his clothes’ v19

He is crushed by a sense of fear and grief. He realises, not only that Israel has often disobeyed the Lord who brought them out of Egypt, gave them the Law, and promised to be their God, but that the penalty for disobedience would be the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and exile…the wrath of the Lord.

What does he do?

‘Then the king commanded Hilkiah…(and)…Shaphan’ v 21 to enquire of the Lord. They find a prophetess, Huldah who reveals the will of the Lord:

‘Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself…your eyes will not see the calamity I will bring on this place’ v 27,28

In the space of one year following this crisis and the word of the Lord, Josiah instituted a complete overhaul of Israel’s worship and reintroduced Passover v19.

So much good came out of this period and yet, like Hezekiah, it can be argued that the final 13 years of his reign were spent in spiritual decline culminating in disobeying the word of the Lord through Necho the commander of the Egyptian army, entering the battle, and suffering fatal injuries.

His son, Jehoahaz, was 23 when his father died. He was born when Josiah had begun to seek the Lord aged 16 and grew up witnessing his father’s reforming zeal. But his reign was short-lived, lasting all but three months before Necho replaced him with Jehoiakim, his brother.

What can we learn from these two mid-life crisis experiences?

1. Seemingly, crises arise out of the blue and impending disaster looms large

2. We are forced to realise that many things are beyond our strength to put right

3. In our humiliation we may have to face the truth of our complicity in their arrival

4. Hezekiah and Josiah did what a lot of people do…they cried out to God, they prayed

5. In both cases, God responded to their prayers, their prayers and petitions were heard

6. Spiritual turnarounds, however, can be repackaged. True statements such as ‘this happened when I prayed’ shifts the emphasis towards the pray-er rather than the Lord who answered the prayer. That is spiritual pride.

I may be wrong about Josiah’s final 13 years, the second half of his reign. I hope so. As noted previously, the biblical account records the Lord saying:

‘Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself…’

During a crisis, once we’ve poured out our turmoil, complaints, grief, anger, and our pleading to God we must arrive at a place of peace, and exhaustion, and make sure our heart is ‘tender’.

This is exactly what happened to the Prodigal son (Luke 15)

In a foreign land far away from home his moment of crisis arrives. In the mind of the prodigal, it’s financial; he’s run out of money and cannot support his lavish lifestyle. In addition, his fiscal downturn coincides with a country-wide famine. His only option is to become a slave to a pig farmer whose priority, under pressure himself due to the famine, is to feed the pigs, not his slaves.

So, like Hezekiah and Josiah, he cries out. It is a parable, by the way, not history. It’s easy to forget. In the parable he ‘comes to his senses’. Somehow, in the middle of this disorientating period of his life, he manages to clear his head. Without that, we are lost, doomed to become victims, powerless in the face of events that threaten to overwhelm us.

From this point on the road to recovery is sweet.

But, like all good storytellers, Jesus leaves the story unfinished…on a cliff edge. The party’s over, the initial rush of emotion, of lavish forgiveness, has subsided. The servants have gone to bed nursing hangovers and the father who has overeaten for joy, falls asleep. At 3am, we can only imagine where the older son has taken himself, to some sleazy bar downtown, rehearsing his bitterness and wondering where it all went wrong.

The point of the mid-life crisis story is the necessity to cultivate a tender heart, not harbour resentment, selfishness, or pride.

How does the parable continue? The father: did he keep his heart tender? Or did the bitterness of his eldest son infect him and pollute his joy over the one who was lost and is found, was dead and is alive? Did the prodigal maintain his tender heart towards his father – and his brother? And what of the older brother? Now in a mid-life crisis of his own making. Will he in his rage come to his senses and find a way to revisit all the wrong-thinking that had spoiled his relationship with his father over many years?

As a Christian, at this point, it is tempting to say what we should do in a mid-life crisis is turn to God. I do believe this is ultimately what we have to do, face to face with no other alternative than relying solely upon ourselves, but that’s not quite the message of this discussion.

I may be wrong about Josiah’s final 13 years, the second half of his reign. I hope so.

The main message is that maintaining a tender heart is the key to recovery. To forgive others, and to forgive yourself. To thaw whatever is frozen. To melt, to soften anything that has become hard and inflexible. To rediscover what it is to be a child with no power to provide for him or herself and yet trust that love cannot be destroyed. If we can do these things, no one needs to preach the gospel, or advertise God, He has already made Himself known to you.

You now understand how Jesus on the cross was able to say: ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do’.

If it is true what Jesus said about himself, ‘I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again’, all the more remarkable it is that he did not exercise that power but made himself powerless, submitting himself to the ignominy of a false trial, a near-fatal flogging, the king of kings made to wear of crown of thorns, and then to be crucified outside the city he had wept over.

Suffering injustice and rejection, somehow, he maintained a tender heart: ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’. Arriving at this point we understand that God hears the cries of our hearts and that our cries are mingled in with Jesus’ final prayer. We have found that the source of our forgiveness is not out of reach.

And, if so, you know the true meaning of the word spiritual.

And you found out because you didn’t or couldn’t ignore the red flashing warning lights any longer.