Retirement

There is one Biblical reference to retirement on any grounds other than ill health. And it's in Luke 12.

Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:15-21, NIV

And it's great to see that John Piper's on the same page...

HT to What's Best Next? for the video.

Were Adam and Eve Historical?

This article is a good summary of the current state of a very interesting debate. Lots of the points made in the debate are very good ones, and some of them see difficult to reconcile with other very good points.

For what it's worth, I'm not compleltely sure exactly what I think, but I want to affirm the following two points:

1. Adam and Eve really existed.
2. The scientific evidence is not deceptive.

It isn't obvious how to reconcile those points - here are a few ideas.

Were Adam and Eve the only people alive at the time? That probably depends on what you mean by "people". I think Biblically it is clear that they are the first real humans, because they are the first ones to be given the divine image, which was subsequently spoilt, and being human is fundamentally about the capacity for relationship with God. Were there other members of the genus homo alive at the time? Maybe, but if so Adam was their representative head and so after the Fall they share in his image, which is fallen from the image of God.

Although the scientific evidence is not deceptive, the study on that evidence may have been done badly for various reason. It may be there are factors of which they are unaware. They might have been using faulty models.