Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me Dan Nah. He has been married to Minna for 28 years and have four children ages 19 to 25. I’ve had the pleasure, Dan, of meeting one of your children out in San Diego at Patrick Cho’s Church. It has been wonderful to get to know her a little bit. He has been in pastoral Ministry for over 25 years, and he’s been ACBC certified since 2017. He’s also served as an ACBC Training Center Director, completed a Master of Divinity from the Masters Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry in biblical counseling from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dan, it is so good to have you here in the podcast.
Dan Nah: Thanks so much, Dale. It’s great to be here.
Dale Johnson: Listen, we are together, and it’s so interesting as I get older, that your topic today becomes more relevant. As we think about midlife and what that looks like and the different things that we experience—It’s so weird how that works. Dan, to be honest, one day, you look up and you think you’re still 20. You think you’re still 20, but you know you’re much more like your parents. And that’s such a weird thing that happens to me. Like I just remember back, my dad being 40 and 45, and here I am 45 and it’s like, “Wow, what I thought was so old, it’s not so old now.” But here we are. We’re going to talk today about some of the midlife issues that we see. And I’m just curious, what got you interested in studying this particular topic about middle-aged, midlife issues.
Dan Nah: I really first became interested in studying counseling issues related to middle-aged believers at the suggestion of Dr. Robert Jones at Southern Seminary. I was in the DMin program at the time, and Dr. Jones mentioned this was an issue that the biblical counseling movement where we haven’t really done a lot of research and writing and teaching. If you look at the subject of counseling middle-aged people, you’ll find a lot written from the perspective of secular psychology. You’ll find some written from the perspective of Christian integration, but very little written from the perspective from the Biblcial Counseling Movement, those of us who hold to the sufficiency of Scripture in counseling. And when he mentioned this as a research topic, it really clicked for me. I was in my mid 40s at the time, meaning I had reached our 20th anniversary as a married couple. We had teenagers in the home and life just looked a lot different than when I was in my 20s and my 30s. And I wanted to know what I was heading into and middle-aged. I was also pastoring a church where a large percentage of our members were in that group of middle-aged. I was shepherding and seeing a lot of common themes and common issues arise in ministry. I wanted to be a better shepherd and counselor, and so I spent the next number of years researching and studying the subject.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s interesting. And this resonates with so many of us. And if you’re not there yet, it will resonate with you very soon. Talk about some of the common pressures that you described, that sort of grew your interest in these types of issues of midlife. What are some of those common pressures that believers experience in middle age?
Dan Nah: So, a working definition I use for middle-age is around 45 to 65 years of age. That’s not an inspired, inerrant statement. If you look at the literature in from secular and Christian authors, there really is no consensus on when it’ll age begins. It’s interesting in our society that you go to kindergarten when you’re five, you start high school when you’re 14, you become a legal adult when you’re 18. But when you become middle-aged is sort of this not well-defined area of life, but I use ages 45 to 65 as a working definition. If you want to push that age range five years earlier or five years older, you’re not going to get much pushback from me. We’re just generalizing here. But time frame of life has named a few issues that as a pastor and shepherd, I’ve seen. We could see the obvious is that middle-age is a time of increasing physical limitations. I like how author Paul Tripp puts it: “Midlife is when the delusions of invincibility began to fade away.” And Dale, I’m in my 50s now, and I can say that any illusions of invincibility I used to have are now long gone. I was with my daughter the other day and she was drinking a Coke, and I thought, “hey I’ll have a Coke.” Then I thought, “Well, my body doesn’t really deal with sugar, it doesn’t really deal with caffeine. Well, I need to have protein and I’m going to crash, and it just seems so complicated to have that coke.” I just stuck with water and that’s such a simple rational, but there are physical limitations in middle-age.
I think in the midlife, you generally have parenting difficulties. Parents are dealing with older children in this life stage, and that could be a hard transition for many people. These cute little babies you’re holding in your arms are suddenly young adults with real problems, struggles, and thoughts about life. And I’ve never had a counseling session with a person said to me, “Dan, can you pray for me? I’m just doing too well at parenting my teenager. Cause I’m just having so much success. Can you just pray for my humility?” I’ve never had a counseling session like that. And thus, you have parenting difficulties in midlife.
In middle-age you have marital difficulties. A marriage looks different 25 years in. I have been married 28 years. Now, we recently become what people call “empty nesters.” Our children have left the home, and it’s a different season of marriage. We’ve noticed many marriages struggle in this season of life. You can see in society that many marriages end when the children leave the home. They stayed together for the sake of getting the children through school. Many couples have unresolved differences through the years: But you’re busy. You’re raising children. And all of a sudden, you’re living with someone you don’t know very well, and the marriages can struggle.
I’d also mention the pressure of caring for aging parents. And you know, Dale it is interesting. When I surveyed a number of my church members who are middle-aged, I found that caring for aging parents was the number one challenge faced by the members of my church. They call this the “silent trial.” The responsibilities of caregiving increase incrementally. So, it’s not a crisis, like an event where you have the entire church to pray for you. And a lot of middle-aged believers are dealing with twin pressures of raising teenage and young adult children and at the same time, they’re bearing the responsibilities of caring for aging parents.
I’d mentioned singleness as a middle-aged believer looks different than singleness as a young adult. And so, you have many singles in the body of Christ in the 45 to 65 age group, those who have never married, those who have married and divorced. They are in need of compassion and care. And then those who are widows and widowers, whom the Lord has a heart for.
A couple more pressures I would mention is that vocational disillusionment is common in middle age. A lot of people spend their 20s and 30s climbing a vocational ladder, only to realize they’re never going to get there. Other people spend their 20s and 30s climbing that ladder and then they get to the top of the mountain and realized there’s nothing there: “I spent decades studying and working for this and there’s nothing satisfying here in the midlife” It can be hard in that way. And middle-age can also be a time of emotional grieving, just generally speaking. Our twenties and thirties we’re attending weddings and baby showers. In our 40s and 50s we’re attending more funerals, and we lose more heroes who have gone before us. We lose more loved ones, family, and friends. And there’s a weight of sorrow that people are bearing in middle-age. And all of this is to say that this is just a brief survey. We could do so much more. But all that to say that middle-age, the ages 45 to 65, can be a time when there are unique pressures and difficulties faced in life. And I think as pastors and counselors we want to be sensitive to that and be equipped to counsel in this season of life.
Dale Johnson: That’s so helpful. And I think you’re really putting your finger on some of the very specific things, you know. I appreciate that you’re not talking about this in some sort of generic way. You bring it down to reality. These are legitimately some of the things that we wrestle with and they are not described as being good or bad, they just are the reality. You know, several things that you mention resonate personally with me. The older you get, the more you figure out your human weakness, physically speaking. But then also limitations of knowledge and intellect; all those things you start to realize. You’re okay with the fact that, you know, “I don’t know everything. And you know what, my body is not what it used to be.”
Talk about raising children and learning that relationship between parent responsibilities to be a parent, and now I’m sort of a friend giving wisdom, guidance, and counsel. And then, that’s a hard transition and figuring out how to do that, to do it well, and to the honor and glory of God, for the good of your child, but also for your sanity as well. And some of those things are difficult, like dealing with aging parents. And how do we approach that in a way that’s pleasing to the Lord and honoring to our parents, with all the other things we feel like we have to do it. So, man, a lot of things that are resonating, really. Well, that’s led our culture to describe these moments, that are very normative as you’ve described, as a midlife crisis. So, talk about that idea. Where did it come from? And why is an idea like that significant? Because obviously, if you have a title, a lot of people have experienced similar things. So now, we’ve captured this label to sort of describe it. Talk about where this came from and why it’s significant.
Dan Nah: It’s interesting that the term midlife crisis was coined by psychoanalyst, Elliott Jaques, back in 1957. And Jaques claimed that people in their mid-thirties typically experience a type of depression. He pointed out that back in the 14th century Dante’s protagonist in The Divine Comedy, declares in the book: “Midway upon the Journey of our life I found myself within a forest, dark for the straightforward pathway have been lost.” And so Jaques interpreted Divine Comedy as Dante’s experience of the midlife crisis. So, that’s sort of the origin of the term today. The term midlife crisis is really used by many secular writers to describe the intense struggle people experience in middle-age. I have one reference from New York Times journalist, Jane Brody, who remarked that, “Midlife crisis is often marked by self-doubt, marital discourse, divorce, extramarital affairs, abrupt career shifts, personality changes, sexual problems, depression, and newly awakened anxieties about health and mortality.” And this term has become sort of a catch-all term to describe the fact that people can struggle intensely in middle age. And so, I borrow from the framework Heath Lambert has laid out in his work, A Theology of Biblical Counseling. He says, Secular psychology can make accurate observations about how people behave, but they can’t make accurate interpretations of why they’re behaving the way that they are behaving, because they don’t understand that out of the heart flows the issues of life, and the heart of man is always responding either rightly, or wrongly to God. But when the secular world says, “People tend to struggle intensely in middle age and people tend to behave badly or in extreme ways in middle age,” I don’t doubt that they behave in this way. I think what we need to do is the work in biblical counseling to evaluate this behavior biblically and seek to biblically interpret: Why are people struggling in this way? What is the source of the heart issues that are being exposed in middle age, as they encountered the pressures of life?
Dale Johnson: So that’s exactly where I want to go and I can’t let you leave it at that point, right? Because up to this point, we’ve been thinking, man, I don’t have a lot to look forward to when I get 45. And my goodness, if that’s what the experience is like, and certainly the culture has described that, you can expect a midlife total meltdown and crisis of faith, belief, and whatever else. That’s pretty despairing. That’s pretty difficult to address, but we have a lens by which to see through and what we need to get to is, okay, biblically, how do we think about this? Walk us through specifically how we biblically think about this concept of midlife crisis?
Dan Nah: What’s been so encouraging is that I don’t think we need new biblical counseling principles, convictions, or truths to evaluate what’s happening in midlife. And what I’ve done in my study is sort of go through just basic biblical counseling principles and apply them to what are we seeing in midlife. So, Jeremiah 17:7 is a common passage we use in biblical counseling classes to teach these principles. God says, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
So, there you have the believer like a tree; A very common picture of the tree has roots which are unseen, and the tree has fruits, which can be seen. And so, we’d see that the believer has behaviors, actions, words, and emotions which we can be seen. And those behaviors are the overflow of the issues of the heart, the issues the heart are unseen. And so, this is the basic biblical counseling principles of the distinction between root issues and fruit issues. We also see the distinction between heat issues and heart issues. And so, the heat described in this passage as the external circumstances, which put pressure on the tree. The heat is used by God to draw out the purposes of the heart. And what is so encouraging about this passage is that this tree in Jeremiah bears good fruit. Even when the heat comes for its roots, its roots are in the right place. It is rooted in a trusting relationship with the Lord. And this is just one passage we use to teach biblical counseling principles; there are so many others. But even with just those basic concepts in place (the difference between root and fruit and heat and heart), I think we can have a basic understanding of what is happening in a so-called midlife crisis when I read secular author, Jane Brody says, “people in midlife crisis’ are experiencing marital discourse, divorce, extramarital affairs, abrupt career shifts, personality changes, and sexual problems.” I don’t doubt that people actually behave like that. I’m not going to look at a secular description and say, “Well, no, that never happens in this world.” We know that happens in the world because people bear bad fruit. They bear bad fruit because their roots are in the wrong places.
The promise of this is that the believer can bear good fruit, even when the heat comes. So, what are the heat issues in the life of middle-aged believer? We’ve just talked about a number of examples: Physical limitations, parenting difficulties, marital struggles, caring for aging parents, singleness as middle-aged believer, vocational disillusionment, emotional grieving, etc. I think we could say that any one of these issues can put a lot of pressure upon that tree. And if you combine two, three, or even four of these issues, that’s a lot of pressure being put on the tree. That’s a lot of heat that this tree is experiencing. And we would note as biblical counselors that in middle age the heat and life can get very hot. So, if someone says, “I think I might have you having a midlife crisis.” My first response is not, “Well, there’s no such thing as a midlife crisis; that doesn’t exist.” My first response is, “Friend, tell me about the heat you’re experiencing: What are you dealing with? What are the struggles you’re facing? What are the heart issues that are being exposed as you encounter this heat?” So just a real simplified example. I’ll use the purpose of illustration of: What is in a man’s heart if he values and treasures success in his career above everything else? If he desires and was constantly thinking that his vocation was going to bring him security and joy. And then, in his midlife, he hits the Heat issue of his business failing. Or even his business is succeeding, but he just finds no fulfillment in it. You’re going to see as he walks through that heat that they’re going to be some heart issues that come out. And this man, if he has valued his career throughout his life, may experience a struggle in life that is so intense it may look like a crisis. People may look at him and say, “he’s having a midlife crisis.” But those heart issues didn’t show themselves in his 20s and 30s. They showed themselves in his 40s and 50s because that’s when the heat issues of midlife expose what was in his heart. It’s a simplified example, because there’s not rarely just one heart issue and one heat issues in midlife, there’s usually a number of heat issues and a number of heart issues going on. I think those basic biblical counseling principles of, “Let’s just look at what are the root issues and the fruit issues. What are the heat and the heart issues?” With this, I think we can understand that the heat of midlife brings out heart issues. And what God is doing through that is He is working on our hearts. He wants our hearts to be submitted to Christ. He wants our hearts to treasure Christ above all else. He wants our hearts to be at a place where we see that Christ is satisfying above everything else that we have in life. When the believer’s heart, and roots are in the right place and we’re rooted in Christ, we will bear good fruit, even when we encounter these midlife heat issues and even as the heat comes and puts pressure upon the tree.
Dale Johnson: That was brilliant brother. And I’ll just say it: If my students are listening or whoever you are out there listening, what Dan has just done is a master class in helping us to understand how we’re not dismissive of people’s experiences. But what we firmly believe is that the Bible explains those experiences better than any other system that’s out there. And so, what he just did was to help us to see how these experiences that we’re feeling, and that we’re going through at a given moment, that the Bible has actually helped us contextually to understand how and why these things are happening. And so now to give insight and ear to what the Bible is actually the way we’re feeling and why we’re acting the way we’re saying—It reconceptualizes a paradigm that helps us to better understand why we’re feeling and acting and why we’re so despairing in a given moment. So, brother. That was very, very helpful in giving concepts that just make sense of our life. And that’s what the truth of the bible really does. Is it gives context and truth to that reality that we’re experiencing. But we don’t want people to stay there. I’m not just content for them to sort of understand conceptually, “Well, this is what’s happening to you.” We have to move them forward. We want to move them forward to take what God has given us insight on, why they’re experiencing those things. Give some practical encouragement about how to counsel someone who is a middle-aged believer in Christ, as they’re wrestling with heat issues, as conceptually now, they start to understand, “Oh, well, that makes a lot of sense. This is why I’m seeing this come out of my heart” Give us some practical examples about how we address those.
Dan Nah: I really want to encourage biblical counselors to proceed with Biblical Ministry, to have confidence in God’s word, to not be intimidated by what the world is saying about what’s happening middle age, to be aware and not to be intimidated. And you don’t need to be an expert on what the secular world is saying to minister to middle-aged believers. I think you need to be an expert in the Scriptures. And you need to become wise in ministering to hearts and discerning heart issues. But I really want biblical counselors to feel confident in God’s word, and feel confident that Holy Spirit is with them, and that God will use you to minister to middle-aged believers in Christ. And so, the basic biblical counseling methods that we teach in intro to biblical counseling apply to middle-aged believers in Christ. We want you to give a lot of hope, to do good inventory, to ask good questions, to be involved in your counselee’s lives, to show compassion, to understand the heat issue—that it is really hot—and to enter the counselees world and to see life through their eyes, but to proceed with biblical ministry. I would emphasize in those methods that we have a lot of hope to offer to middle-aged believers in Christ. This can be a tremendous season of life, and that even as we walk through the heat, God is working on our hearts. He’s working on our hearts to bless us, to transform us, and to make us more like Christ. And the spirit of what I would say to the counselor, even to any listener today who is struggling with middle age issues is: Brother, sister, welcome to being middle-aged. It may be true that your body doesn’t work the same way that it used to. It may be true that you may be struggling to relate to your older children. Your marriage may be more difficult than you thought it would be. Your parents who are aging need attending to. Or you may be unexpectedly experiencing singleness in middle-age. And you may be emotionally grieving the loss of a loved one or a friend. We just want you to know that our hearts go out to you, that the heat of life can get very hot in this season of life. We also want you to know that God’s grace is sufficient through the person and work of Jesus Christ, And through the power of the Holy Spirit, middle-age can be according to the Word of God, a time where you bear much fruit to the glory of God. You can know God more than ever in your middle-aged years. You can become more like Jesus more than ever. As you walk through these challenges and difficulties the Word of God can be sweeter than it ever has been to your soul. Even as your outer man may be wasting away, your inner man is being renewed, day by day. And friends, let’s do the heart work together. Let’s submit ourselves to God’s word and let’s pray that God would do a gracious work in our lives; that we would bear much fruit to the glory of Christ. I just think yeah, we have a lot of hope to offer to the middle-aged believer in Christ. And I pray that we would, in biblical counseling movement, will be faithful to minister that hope to others.
Dale Johnson: Well said, brother. Thank you so much for your time, thought and effort on this subject that impacts lots and lots of people. Thank you for helping us think about it biblically. So, thanks for your labors.
Dan Nuh: Thank you so much.
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