An old mountain man once told me a story that he thought was humorous. He told me about a young man and an ancient withered man riding in the same wagon. The young asked the old when he lost interest in women. The older responded, “You’ll have to ask someone older than me.” I chuckled appropriately as I was a young man talking to an old man who might be referring in some ways to himself. The quote, “You have to ask someone older than me,” has stuck with me.

I woke early from a series of rough dreams last night. In one of the dreams, I spent hours and hours working on a beautification project. Someone else came in at the last minute and took credit for all the work. I woke very frustrated. When do you quit fighting the challenge of personal vanity? I guess you have to ask someone older than me. I believe there are many challenges that we will face all the way to the last breath we breathe, no matter how old that might be. Personal vanity and the human tendency toward selfishness are two of them. The failures of man are many, so the list of challenges might be very long.

The availability for any failing anyone has ever committed is within me. I have experienced enough rage to cause me to wonder whether or not I would really commit a horrible act if I were to let my anger go unrestrained. The answer is yes, I could. So it is with other failings. Thank God I live in the restraints of my culture, my training, my experience, and the generosity of Jesus that many things on that long list are walled outside my experience. I have seen in the news and through history that the wall can be breached, and people you never suspect, or who had never failed before, can suddenly fall into devastating behaviors and thoughts. We are vulnerable and susceptible. There are no guarantees in life and the human experience. You never get too old to be part of the warfare that is life.

The holocaust was committed by people who left civilian life, entered the military, and became monsters they would have never been had they been living under normal circumstances at home with their families. It is horrifying to see that people who started out in need and working to help others could end up like they did, doing what they did in Jim Jones camp in Guayana. Those weren’t people we would have considered bad people until something happened. The wall was breached, and they became the worst version of themselves and a horror to the rest of us. I believe we are wrong when we think that couldn’t happen to us because we see miniaturized versions of those extremes happen every day, all around us. You never get too old for this battle.

Humans have a natural gift for belittling others and seeing others as less than themselves. I saw it in the clicks in high school. I see it in the clicks in church. I see it in the way we gravitate toward those who make us comfortable and away from those who make us uncomfortable. Within that natural, unthinking, sorting is the ability to see those different as less. There is an unspoken human trend to feel like people who are “less” can be treated as less to varying extremes of degrading thought and action. Follow the joke trends through the years. Who do we choose as targets for humor? How do we talk to or treat persons we think aren’t worthy of our respect or friendship. In extreme situations any of us might behave in extreme ways. I don’t think I’ll ever be too old to face this fight.

Is there a happy thought, as Peter Pan recommends, to help us take flight in this dire set of possibilities. Absolutely. There is a God who is far beyond the strength and temptation of man who has proven Himself victor over all the failings of man. Jesus faced everything we face and won the battle we continue to fight. The great joy is that He has not left us alone. He is with us every day, in every way to give us the resource and power to be what we would prefer to be instead of the worst we could be. You can see that in history too. There have always been the courageous who stood against the horrors of the overwhelming evils without wavering. We have tons of examples of people who loved when hating was the easier choice, who respected when degradation was the common way. Every generation has seen the face of Jesus among those who left us with the example we want through the strength He gave them. Jesus is alive, and He is here today with us. I’m not too old for that either.