Loving Aging Parents Well - Ask Pastor John

Video from Desiring God

Loving Aging Parents Well - Ask Pastor John

Audio Transcript

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Today we talk to the children of aging parents. How do we honor aging parents when that labor feels overwhelming and, oftentimes, thankless? Today Pastor John shares key insights from Scripture and likely some stories from his own life on how to balance responsibility, love, and help from the wider church family as we care for parents who are growing old, and maybe not growing old gracefully.

And Pastor John, we get there through a hard email from a listener named Jan: “Hello, Pastor John! I am 41 years old, married for 15 years. For most of my adult life and marriage, my mother has lived with me, and I have cared for her as she’s aged. There were seasons where she helped, but she’s now in a place of entitlement, no longer physically or financially able or willing to help. All throughout my life, I have endured physical, verbal, mental, and emotional abuse from her, and now, in her seventies, she is even more emotionally and mentally abusive than ever. I have reached a point where I feel I can no longer care for her, and my younger children and husband are emotionally and mentally exhausted by all this, too. However, I fear that if I remove her from our home, her situation could worsen. She is also a believer. What does the Bible say about caring for or living with an abusive elderly parent, especially when trying to balance honoring them with protecting my family’s well-being?”

How many thousands and thousands of Christians are facing the question of how to honor and care for their aging parents?

In some cases, those parents have been financially blessed so that they have made all the provisions necessary for their own care. For many others, that’s not been financially feasible, and they will face very difficult decisions that involve their children. Others are completely alone and have no family at all. So, this is a question that is of enormous importance for thousands of believers.

“How do we want to be treated in our old age? That’s the question we ask when we’re dealing with our own parents.”

Just a few years ago, Noël and I faced these questions for her mother, who lived to be over a hundred. Noël has eight brothers and sisters, so the primary burden did not fall on any one of us, and we live so far away. It wasn’t mainly on us, though you’re always involved. Then, twenty years ago, we were in a position of having to make choices about my father in this regard, as his dementia made it impossible for him to live alone. And thirty years before that — back in the late 1970s — because of my mother’s untimely death, we faced the question of how to care for her mother, my grandmother.

Cluster of Commands

So, Noël and I have walked through these questions three times, and I don’t claim to have found the perfect solution. It isn’t just the straightforward biblical command, say, of Ephesians 6:2, “Honor your father and mother,” which I think stands to this day, no matter what the age. It’s also the commands of 1 Timothy 5:4, 8, and 16, that a family should take care of their own widows rather than putting that burden on the church.

And it’s also — and I think this is the most important thing — the many biblical commands and principles that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. How do we want to be treated? And I’m thinking, if your neighbor is your neighbor, how much more is your mom your neighbor? How do we want to be treated in our old age? That’s the question we ask when we’re dealing with our own parents.

And not to return evil for evil but to do good, not only to the good but also to those who mistreat us (Romans 12:17). And so on. There are all kinds of biblical commands that are relevant in general, and then especially for our family. The commands to love the way we have been loved by Christ are applicable, and even more so because of Galatians 6:10: “especially to those who are of the household of faith.” And if in the household of faith, then also in your own household they’re applicable. These commands to love the way Christ loved are applicable to our family — and they can sometimes be the most difficult people to love, as she’s pointing out.

Before there was any social-security program or government provisions for the destitute, it made a lot more sense, I think, when Psalm 127:3 and 5 said, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. . . . Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” In other words, children were God’s first idea of social security for parents. That’s the way it worked.

It Takes a Village

It’s not the only idea God had for how to care for each other. We know that from 1 Timothy 5, where the church steps in to take care of widows — who are called “real widows” because they’ve got nobody in their families who can step in and take care of them (1 Timothy 5:5). We shouldn’t have the idea that a singular nuclear family should be caring for parents or grandparents, as if that’s the ideal. And I don’t think it’s ever been the ideal because there has always been a wider network than the nuclear family.

I don’t think God ever intended for just one man and one woman to be alone with all the consequences of their aging parents. There are siblings and aunts and uncles and friends. There are churches that can make life livable for everyone if we team up. It’s proverbial in many cultures that it takes a village to raise a child. So, think of the challenges of homeschooling without the help of a co-op to help you with advanced mathematics. Well, it also takes a village to care for a person entering his second childhood in his eighties and nineties. Children at the beginning, children at the end. Caring for the young, caring for the old, has always been a community project — not falling to just one family with no help from anybody.

One of the reasons for that is the hundreds of variable circumstances in which a family may find itself — oh, goodness, varying health issues, varying financial issues, varying conflict issues, varying social and cultural issues, and on and on. The circumstances of one family are so varied. You can hardly say one simple solution. So many things may make the care of a parent or grandparent more or less difficult, or even impossible. We all need help of many kinds, and thank God for the church, when it is functioning the way it should to help families in this regard.

Personal Testimonies

A couple of examples might help from our situation — not at all claiming perfection. My father became a widower for the second time when he was eighty, and my sister and I — that’s all there was, just the two of us — saw to it that he got set up to live by himself, which he wanted to do. But when he could no longer manage his medications, he needed daily care of some kind, so Noël and I asked him if he wanted to come from South Carolina to Minnesota to live with us. And he thanked us and said no. He laughed and said, “It’s too cold up there.” But he didn’t want to leave his familiar surroundings, his few friends. It was his preference to go into a long-term care facility, and from there to heaven. That’s what he did. I never felt complete peace about that, but it seemed to be for the best, all things considered, especially with his desire. So, my sister was very faithful to care for him as she was closer down there.

When my mother died at age 56 (I was 28), her mother, in her eighties, moved into independent living. She had lived with my family growing up, and now she’s on her own for the very first time in her life, being by herself. She found it extremely disappointing, extremely stressful. And so, bless her heart, my wife and I asked her if she would come live with us from South Carolina to Minnesota. And she said yes. So, we brought her and she lived with us and our two small sons at the time for two years. This became increasingly relationally difficult because of some of her attitudes — her non-Christian skepticism about everything spiritual toward our kids, toward family prayer and devotions. We came to see this as pretty harmful to our children’s faith.

“Caring for the young, caring for the old, has always been a community project.”

She had three other grandchildren besides me. So, I put out the word and asked if someone else would be willing to share this care for the next season, and her granddaughter in Pennsylvania was willing to do that. And so, we moved her to Pennsylvania. She flourished in the living situation there, played the piano for the first time in twenty years, and was very happy, it seemed. And that’s where she passed away.

Care in Loving Wisdom

I think perhaps the most crucial consideration is to remember that we are to act in love as we were loved by Jesus, and that there are often competing claims upon our love. This is what makes things complicated: spouses to love, children to love, neighbors to love, churches to love, unreached people groups in missions to love. And what seems loving to one group doesn’t always seem loving to the other.

And therefore, we must pray and immerse ourselves in God’s word and consult with wise and experienced people and seek to act in such a way that does the greatest good to the greatest number as far as we can tell — and for the glory of Christ." from the Transcript

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.