car, or bus, or train, or subway. . .This week I have been thinking about convenience. This thought is closely tied to transportation. I'll get there soon. . .
In the days after the presidential election I was asked by many people in the U.S. what the reaction was in Taiwan. Overall, I got two reactions: #1: Most Taiwanese don't care about U.S. politics and #2: Obama ran a really slick ad campaign. I wish I had more to report. Keep in mind, these results are not statistically significant or even remotely reliable as an indicator of the Taiwanese political mindset. Although uninterested in U.S. politics, over the few months we have been here I have discovered an issue the Taiwanese will discuss with passion: convenience.
Convenience is usually how the value of things are gauged. Consider these (not-so) hypothetical scenarios:
#1: I am talking to a student at NTU who is from Kaohsiung (southern Taiwan).
Me: Do you like living in Taipei?
Student: I guess so. It's very convenient.
#2: Discussion with cathedral members about English Bible Study
Me: We are holding the Bible study at 7:30pm on Tuesdays. Late enough for students coming from classes and early enough for students to return to study.
Cathedral member: Thursdays are not convenient times for students. Maybe a weekend will be more convenient?
#3: Taiwan has more than 4,000 7-11 convenience stores. Plus almost as many Family Mart and Hi-Life convenience stores. Taiwan is an extremely small country. It takes 4 hours by train to go from northern to southern tip.
Back to transportation: On the evening bus ride from NTU to Xindian (where we live), the bus is always packed with middle and high school students. These students leave school anywhere between 4 and 9pm at night. The students then travel by subway or bus often 30 minutes to an hour each way to their homes. (This is true because the school system here is run completely on tests. These tests decide what school you go to. Students are tracked into vocational or college-prep high schools by the time they are 13/14 years old)
Perhaps convenience is so highly valued by college students and adults because they spent half of their own childhood traveling back and forth to school. Or maybe they are simply exhausted by going to school for 12-15 hours per day (plus Saturday school in high school). I can understand the appeal of getting a good job and wanting everything (and 7-11's have just about everything) within arms reach.
But is this the reward for such hard work and intense traveling for 18 years? Convenience? Are we allowing convenience to decide our quality of life? Students like college because it is convenient!? Students only go to Bible study because it is convenient?
If there is one major thing I have learned this year is God is not convenient. Jesus spoke of a narrow path and the eye of the needle, not convenience. Certainly not the easy life.
What does this mean? For many emerging church writers, this means a revolutionary way of living. For some like Shane Claiborne, this means living the Simple Way. Simple, but not convenient. This means working on long-term relationships, reaching out, traveling, stretching ourselves into new ways of living, being, interacting. We (I) have to be willing to take a bus 15 minutes, transfer to the Subway for 20, walk for 30 minutes, talk with strangers for 2 hours about the love of God and then make the journey in reverse. And then wash, rinse, and repeat for the next 8 months.
That doesn't sound easy. And it certainly isn't convenient. It's not even fun. But it is what God is asking right now, in this place. So I'll get back on the bus tomorrow and keep praying for love, not convenience, to take over.
Love,
Seth
The night time pictures are from our excursion to the Opera! The CKS Memorial Hall is pretty at night. And, I got to wear my jacket! The video is a man playing the harmonica outside the hall. I think he was better than the opera! (I'm serious, very very serious. It was a bad opera. . . and the harmonica man is pretty good.) Also, we had pasta with marinara sauce and garlic bread for the first time in over 4 months! It was absolutely breathtaking. Good enough to post online!
2 comments:
I understand the traveling and walking thing a lot. I have actually learned to really enjoy walking and just riding around town. I'm sure as a long term thing it would get annoying, but for now it's a great way to relax and ponder. Anthing from what I want for lunch to what I want to do three years from now. The way things are in Ghana with street sellers, sometimes I wonder in striving for convenience, other than gaining safety regulations we actually have lost convenience in the western world.
First I thought of how happy I am to be a 12 min walk from work. It means I spend very little of my life alone in a steel box waiting to be somewhere I want and do something I want. (I can't think of any upside of single-occupant commuting, but trains and buses...) Then I realized this convenience is a kind of a selfish pleasure -- being able to stay on one task (my work) as long as possible before going home, without being forced into something else (chatting or reading on the bus, etc.) that might have a surprise joy or a God-task in it. So my convenience is also a form of environmental, social, and maybe spiritual blinders.
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