Recently I was…somewhere…and a song came on, the tune sounded vaguely familiar, as if from my ancient past. I paused to listen but couldn’t quite make out the lyrics until the last line, apparently repeated at the end of each stanza.
Ah, but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.
“Now what in the world is that all about?” I wondered to myself. So off to my search engine I went. It roared to life, and I began typing, “What does I was so much…” and the search bar filled in the rest: “…older then mean?” Yep, that’s what I wanted to know. “Enter.”
Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s come up with that question. My search generated “About 950,000,000 results (0.85 seconds),” that is, in less than one second.
I learned that folk singer Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics in his song “My Back Pages” in 1964, when he was the ripe old age of 23. There’s no shortage of opinions on the meaning of the different stanzas, and much disagreement, too, on the specific meaning of the refrain.
Given that Dylan didn’t perform the song publicly until the 1980s, one writer opined that he came to realize how foolishly naïve was his early embracing of the ideology wrapped up in 1960s folk music. Well, maybe he came to believe that, but he wrote the song when he was in the thick of that embrace. So, that doesn’t quite make sense.
What does make sense is the consensus. The refrain reflects the matured awareness that comes with age. When I was in my youth, I thought myself wise beyond my years, confidently knowing so much, having definitive answers to complex questions and issues. It was as if I had acquired a lifetime of knowledge, skill, and wisdom in my few short years. I was “old.” Ah, but years have passed and I’ve come to realize how very little I do know, that I have more questions than answers, that given another lifetime, I’ll never be the “expert” I thought I was thirty years ago. I’m “younger than that”; in fact, quite a juvenile in many respects.
Apparently, this interpretation goes, 23-year-old Dylan had the epiphany that comes to some other 20-somethings:
“I guess my parents were right; they did know some things I didn’t.”
“I should’ve paid more attention in school, taken some of those more challenging classes. Why didn’t I listen to my counselors? Why did I think I’d be fine loafing through school?”
“History actually is important, just like my 11th grade US History teacher tried to tell me.”
And so on.
This brief research exercise gave me pause.
As a wise, old, know-everything 8th grader about to walk to school on a rainy day, I heard my mother call out from the dining room, “Bryan, you need to wear your raincoat. It’s raining out!”
Steamed, I knew it was raining out, but there was no way I was going to wear a raincoat! Mine was, to my fashion-conscious 13-year-old sensibilities, hideous. The kids would laugh at me! My friends would shun me! I’d be the outcast of Lombard Junior High! My entire school career would be ruined!
“I’m not wearing that crummy thing!” I retorted.
“Bryan Scott, put on your raincoat!” Mom’s voice a bit more tense and firm.
“No way! I’m not wearing that thing!” was my even firmer protest.
“Yes, you are!” she insisted.
“No, I’m not!” I nearly yelled, slamming the door behind me, walking out into the rain.
“How could she be so crazy to try to make me wear that dumb old thing?!?” I fumed all the way to school. “Doesn’t she know…?” If she only had my knowledge, my sage wisdom, surely she never would’ve given such an order!
Ah, but I was so much older then….
Years later, I can look back on that dreary spring morning with more than a little regret. I behaved terribly, to my shame. At my ripe old age of 13, after slamming the door and walking away, it never occurred to my wise mind to consider how mom’s heart hurt. To wonder how she felt the rest of the morning as she’d had yet another run-in with her know-everything son. Seven hours later, I walked back in the house and didn’t apologize for my rude rebellion—in fact, I never did, ever. A couple hours after that, I sat at the dinner table with her and the rest of my family, selfishly eating the meal she graciously prepared for me, despite my ill treatment of her. Where was a child-like tenderness and sensitivity?
I’m younger than that now.
At age 24, I’d graduated with an MA from graduate school. I was ready to lead a church, to be a pastor. Three months later, I was duly ordained into the gospel ministry. Now I was really ready! I was a 44-year-old 24-year-old!
Finally, someone saw the light! After successfully maneuvering through the land-mines of a 90-minute Q&A session with a small, rural church in western Illinois, the senior saint of the church—the most respected man in the congregation—intoned, “Young man, you have wisdom beyond your years!” The next week, a nearly unanimous vote affirmed the call, which I accepted. A month shy of my 25th birthday, I assumed my first pastorate. And, of course, I was ready! After all, I was so much older then….
Then, about a week after we settled into the church parsonage came the call. One of the men dropped dead in his living room; his widow needed her pastor.
I remember sitting with her on the living room couch, her lifeless husband lying a few feet away, and my not having a clue what to say. The best I could come up with was something like, “Has anyone called a doctor, you know, to make sure?” Arrrggh.
The next eleven months were brutal. Conflict. Misunderstanding. Power struggles. Moral problems in the church. We left before a year had transpired. I can confidently say I wasn’t the cause of any of these things. But just as confidently I can say now I was in over my head—even though I was so much older then and didn’t think so!
I’m much younger than that now!
While I certainly can’t give a carte blanche endorsement of “My Back Pages” or the music of Bob Dylan, that line in that song does subtly echo the biblical warning against pride, the encouragement of humility, the exhortation to gain wisdom, and the challenge to be always growing.
I find interesting the interchange between Jesus and his disciples one fine day. Some loving parents, concerned for the welfare of their children, brought them to Jesus that he might bless them.
“Go away!” Jesus’s wise, old disciples told the parents. I’m sure in their mature, deeply understanding minds they reasoned, “Jesus is too important to mess with little kids! He has a significant mission to fulfill! There are lessons to teach, adult people to heal, places to go…! He can’t take the time for such nonsense!” They were so much older then….
But the rebukers got a rebuke!
“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them,” Jesus insisted, “for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19:14
Do you get the significance of that? Jesus himself declares that the crucial attitude of those in His kingdom is a childLIKEness (note, not “childISHness”!). Simple, humble faith. Dependent, teachable spirit. Knowing that I don’t know everything. Ever seeking to gain wisdom. Never cocky, confident that I’ve “arrived.”
Jesus calls his disciples to be younger than that now!
Paul got it. Remember his testimony, later in life? Reflecting on his younger days when he was “so much older,” proudly confident of his pedigree, zealously persecuting the church, he wrote,
…whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Philippians 3:7
Then he declares in true child-like simplicity and trust,
For [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:8b-11
These are not the words of a self-assured, arrogant, set-in-his-ways old man who knows it all. They’re the longing of a child realizing he has so much to learn, to gain, to attain!
Oh, that I’d had this childlike spirit when I was so much older, back then. And that I would have it now…when I really am older!
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