Rodney Macready - Retiring Retirement

A good book provides a conversation partner. A good conversation partner provides a dialogue. A good dialogue provides the opportunity to learn, think, grow, change, and develop.

There is little point in reading a book to confirm your opinions. Often it is best to listen to a conversation partner with whom you disagree. Yet it is most valuable to dialogue with somebody who shares the same fundamental assumptions, who speaks the same language and inhabits the same thought world but disagrees on a particular point.

Such a conversation partner is like a teacheropening up new worlds of thought. This is the case with Rodney Macreadys book Retiring Retirement.

A few years ago, an American friend of mine, Dr. Phil Burgess, told me he was writing a book against the common culture of retirement. I thought it sounded interesting and strange. It had never occurred to me that there was any alternative to retiring. I put it down to Phils zest for life and his American work ethic. But Phil insisted it was a matter of Christian commitment. When Phil returned to America, I lost my only goad to think afresh on this topic, though his challenge continued to spur me to think about the whole Christian philosophy of work and especially retirement. I suspected Phil was right, but my life was too busy for me to thoroughly investigate the Bibles teaching on retirement.

I saw a number of Christian friends retire, but continue in active service of others. Their financial arrangements changed, their workplaces changed, but their productive service of the community did not diminish; in some cases it increased. I came to the conclusion that we resign rather than retire. We resign from one employment in order to work differently for the good of the community.

Then Rods manuscript arrived at my desk.

Here is the conversation partner Ive been looking for. This book goes back to basic principles, assuming only the general theological position of the average evangelical believer regarding biblical authority and method.

There are no holds barred as Rodney wrestles with the question of retirement. The very topic forces him back into the Bibles view of work and rest and so back to creation, the eschaton, and all stops between. Its exactly the right way to tackle a question such as this, for so many of our ideas and values about retirement are derived unconsciously from our culture.

As an Australian, it is so easy to take our affluent Western way of life for granted, and worse, to generalize it to all people; worse still, to find it in the Bible! There is always this danger in exegesis: that we read the Bible from our life instead of reading our life from the Bible. Those reading this book from outside the Australian context will be particularly helped by its different perspective as well as its biblical awareness of universal principles. Again, that is the advantage of a good conversation partner, who can point out our unwitting biases and help us look at ourselves from the viewpoint of the Scriptures.

Rod helpfully takes time to tell us about himself, so that his readers can join him in evaluating how his cultural and personal biases may be clouding his judgment. Apart from being personally interesting, this is of great benefit, because it confronts the reader with his or her own particular assumptions about work and retirement.

This is not the book for those who want ten essential tips for a happy Christian retirement, nor the best way to a fulfilling retirement. Its a book that raises serious questions about our ready acceptance of the worlds values about retirement. And whether you agree or disagree with the argument, it is a discussion that is long overdue. Rod Macready is to be thanked not only for raising the topic but for doing it in such a thoughtful and biblical way.

Phillip D. Jensen, Bible Teacher and Evangelist
Two Ways Ministries, Newtown, Australia