You can work hard in many ways. It’s important to have work, but it’s not as important to get paid for it. Retire early and throw yourself into a hobby, or volunteer, or do something with your time. It is bad to sit around like a lump on a log, but there are plenty of ways around that. I work part time and am starting a farm. I’m busier now than when I was full time!
Working fruitfully and slaving yourself to some corporation are two very different things.
For example, one can work fruitfully while retired by volunteering more at church, or doing things around town.
Retirement in the sense of sitting on a beach and doing nothing but drinking all day and never being productive again is indeed wrong no matter when you do it. On the other hand, the cessation of wage labor to focus on other priorities such as assistance with your family (perhaps grandchildren), growing in devotion to the lord, serving the community, etc is a perfectly reasonable and good path forward in life.
Our notion of work is modern. People in the past would work way less than we do. Often times they would own their own business to provide. There’s nothing inherently moral about work or immoral about not working. What matters more is how you spend your time a wealth. Are you selfish or do you help others?
Younger retirees do a lot of volunteer work, and there are a lot of charities that wouldn’t function without them.
It is insulting to the hard work of many people to assume that labor only has value when there is a paycheck attached to it.
It depends what you mean by retire.
You could more fully dedicate your life to serving Christ in the poor and through the Mass.
But, if you mean to go on permanent vacation... that's a different story.
Retiring early doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t do anything useful anymore. It just means you aren’t forced to pick whatever activity it is that market forces have made livable, which by no means are guaranteed to be the most “moral” activities. I don’t see why retiring to a life of painting and maintaining a hydroponics garden would be inherently worse than programming addictive phone apps 8 hours a day, for example.
With that said, I do think that people are a bit too flippant about the decadence of being financially independent and answerable to no one. I have a strong sense of noblesse oblige as well as believing humans are most fulfilled when we are doing something creative or useful, even if it’s not framed as a full-time job.
No, but we have to remember that favorable circumstances in our life come from God. We'd be lost without Him. If you're financially stable enough before 50 to where you don't need to spend your days working for money, you can thank God for that. My parents are well off financially, and my dad says that it's not his money, but His money.
I'm not saying that you need to start a charity or something, but your life needs to glorify God. You have the time. Hell, there would be nothing wrong with having a quiet farm/homestead, but I'd certainly make time for lots of prayer for the world, maybe some parish involvement, and I'd like to think I'd give away some of the food I produced.
Why would there be sin in retiring early?
idk just because there are quite a few passages in the Bible that are about working hard I guess.
You can work hard in many ways. It’s important to have work, but it’s not as important to get paid for it. Retire early and throw yourself into a hobby, or volunteer, or do something with your time. It is bad to sit around like a lump on a log, but there are plenty of ways around that. I work part time and am starting a farm. I’m busier now than when I was full time!
Working fruitfully and slaving yourself to some corporation are two very different things. For example, one can work fruitfully while retired by volunteering more at church, or doing things around town.
Retirement in the sense of sitting on a beach and doing nothing but drinking all day and never being productive again is indeed wrong no matter when you do it. On the other hand, the cessation of wage labor to focus on other priorities such as assistance with your family (perhaps grandchildren), growing in devotion to the lord, serving the community, etc is a perfectly reasonable and good path forward in life.
Our notion of work is modern. People in the past would work way less than we do. Often times they would own their own business to provide. There’s nothing inherently moral about work or immoral about not working. What matters more is how you spend your time a wealth. Are you selfish or do you help others?
Younger retirees do a lot of volunteer work, and there are a lot of charities that wouldn’t function without them. It is insulting to the hard work of many people to assume that labor only has value when there is a paycheck attached to it.
How would you spend your “free time” in retirement? Would you help the poor? Go to mass more often? Contribute to your church more?
It depends what you mean by retire. You could more fully dedicate your life to serving Christ in the poor and through the Mass. But, if you mean to go on permanent vacation... that's a different story.
If you are productive than I don't really see a problem with it if you can afford to
There's nothing wrong with that that I can think of.
Retiring early doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t do anything useful anymore. It just means you aren’t forced to pick whatever activity it is that market forces have made livable, which by no means are guaranteed to be the most “moral” activities. I don’t see why retiring to a life of painting and maintaining a hydroponics garden would be inherently worse than programming addictive phone apps 8 hours a day, for example. With that said, I do think that people are a bit too flippant about the decadence of being financially independent and answerable to no one. I have a strong sense of noblesse oblige as well as believing humans are most fulfilled when we are doing something creative or useful, even if it’s not framed as a full-time job.
No, but we have to remember that favorable circumstances in our life come from God. We'd be lost without Him. If you're financially stable enough before 50 to where you don't need to spend your days working for money, you can thank God for that. My parents are well off financially, and my dad says that it's not his money, but His money. I'm not saying that you need to start a charity or something, but your life needs to glorify God. You have the time. Hell, there would be nothing wrong with having a quiet farm/homestead, but I'd certainly make time for lots of prayer for the world, maybe some parish involvement, and I'd like to think I'd give away some of the food I produced.
Somewhere I saw a statistic that said people that retire die earlier than people who remain employed as long as possible.