Earned Retirement or Hedonism?

By Dan Miller
48days.com

CBN.com – I ran into a friend I'll call Sam whom I had not seen in several years. You know how the conversation ultimately gets around to "What are you doing?" Sam told me he was retired and was doing absolutely nothing. He had put in his 30 years with a big company, so at age 53 he was getting what he said he worked his whole life for.

Frankly, I was flabbergasted. At a young 53 and with children now just leaving for college, Sam has more time, money, and energy than ever before. And he chooses to do nothing?

Is the only goal of our working life to get to the point we can stop working? If so, then it confirms the picture that work is just a bitter pill to be endured until the moment you can escape it.

Pastor Rick Warren talked recently about hedonism. He said "the number one goal of a hedonist is to feel good, be comfortable, and have fun. It's the worldview that Hugh Hefner founded Playboy magazine on. He willingly acknowledges he is a hedonist. It's not just playboys who are hedonists, though. In fact, someone who lives for the goal of retirement is a hedonist. If the whole goal of a person's life is to simply do nothing, live a self centered life, and make no contribution to the world, that's hedonism."

So how would you like to stand before God on judgment day and say, "When I began my adult life, I spent the first 30 years in a job I hated and then I spent the next 30 years looking at my navel. Now what kind of 'treasures' do I have in store here to enjoy for eternity?" I strongly suspect your "reward" would be to continue the boring nothingness of having no goals and no worthwhile work.

I know that's not what you want for your legacy.

"Work should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God's image, should make things, as God made them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing..... Work is the natural exercise and function of man --- the creature who is made in the image of his Creator."—Dorothy Sayers, in "Why Work."

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Dan Miller is the bestselling author of 48 Days To The Work You Love and a renowned Life Coach specializing in career fulfillment. His weekly newsletter reaches 70,000 subscribers. Dan’s articles are featured here at CBN every Tuesday, and you can find out more about Dan at www.48days.com.