One of my sister’s sent me the link to the song named above on my birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc5AWImplfE.[i] Give it a listen. You need to be a certain age to really appreciate it. My older brother said: He sneaks in. My older brother-in-law says the old man sleeps in his bed.
One of the best lines in the song is “Ask yourself how old would you be If you didn’t know the day you were born”. When I first entered the ministry, you still meant folks who didn’t know if they were born in 1912, 1914, or maybe 1908. A 4 years or so swing in age meant a lot to me then. Now it’s not so much the old man of age that is getting to me but the Old Man.
Of course, the world is only concerned with keeping the old man out not the Old Man (aka Old Adam), but we who know that Death is really the wages of sin and not a biological necessity know that the latter is really why the former is a problem.
Paul links the two. He would see in the decaying of Toby’s old man a bright promise of something bigger. 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NASB77) says, “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” But I don’t start here.
This new ache, that new line, the slowing down that I see plainly in the mirror is not only disconcerting; it’s just plain wrong. I don’t really look like this. I’m not really that old. Maybe Marie Antoinette Syndrome is real. Suddenly I see myself on the way to the guillotine. [2]
Paul plainly says that the decaying of my outer man is a pledge, a token, an indication that my inner man is being renewed day by day and we are heading for “an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17 (NASB77).
But what to do with that Old Man whom we take daily by contrition and repentance to the Font to be drowned once again? What to do about the Old Man when we, with Luther, discover that the little bugger can swim?
This is going to seem like a non sequitur, but have you ever noticed in the Explanation to our 6th Commandment what we don’t say? We answer what does this mean with: ”We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.” We don’t say anything about “in what we think”. Don’t misunderstand. It’s Catholicism not Confessional Lutheranism that says sinful thoughts, lusts are just the tinder for real sin but not sin itself. The 9th and 10th Commandments say otherwise, but why not the 6th?
I think the answer is found in Volume I of Julius Köstlin’s 1897 work The Theology of Luther: “Especially noteworthy is his (Luther’s) declaration that it is not necessary to confess an inclination to pride unless one has yielded to it, since we are all constantly inclined in that direction ; we ought therefore to mourn over it in secret and confess it before God. He maintains, moreover, that acedia (disinclination to that which is good — indolence) being a spiritual infirmity, is not a proper subject for the confessional, but is to be made known to God alone, who is the only one who can provide a remedy. Thus Luther already assumes that there is at least a certain sphere of the inner life which may be exempt from the supervision of the confessional, and that within this sphere the sinner may himself deal directly with his God” (204-5).
The context in Köstlin is the confessional and the indulgence controversy. You’ll remember that on Luther’s way to discovering the Gospel he would be racked with guilt over unconfessed sins and make repeated trips to his father confessor after remembering this or that thought. Luther’s advice here – and it’s important to convey to adolescent boys – is one can’t help the birds from flying over one’s head. One can’t keep the Old Man out of your thoughts. But one can prevent birds from nesting in one’s hair. That’s the point of resistance. Adolescents, particularly boys, need to know that this surge of unwanted thoughts and feelings, and it is a surge, a veritable tsunami, is not something they are alone with. Though they can’t separate themselves from them, God can and does.
I fear we don’t do this for the fear of them learning the world’s lesson that lusts are not sinful, that it’s okay to invite the Old Man in for a sit-down. The Old Man says, “O come on. Let me in for just a little while and I will quick knocking at your door bothering you.” That’s what we don’t want, and no matter what we do he doesn’t stop. He never will. The goal is never to get use to having a houseguest.
Back to “Don’t Let the Old Man In”. Toby sings, “Can’t leave it up to him”, and he’s right. Kinda. We aren’t at the mercy of the old man of age or the Old Man of sinful nature. But whenever we despair of over sin, life, or death we do “leave it up to him”.
[i] Toby Keith wrote and recorded this song at the request of Clint Eastwood whom he had met at a charity gulf event in 2017. It was for an upcoming Eastwood movie “The Mule”. The song was released right before Keith revealed he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. He succumbed to the same (The Bible would phrase it “God took him”.) in 2024 at age 62.
[2] Marie Antoinette syndrome designates the condition in which scalp hair suddenly turns white. The name alludes to the unhappy Queen Marie Antoinette of France (1755-1793), whose hair allegedly turned white the night before her last walk to the guillotine during the French Revolution. She was 38 years old when she died https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/712060#google_vignette).
