Podcast: The Good Life
Here is my first podcast (reposted). Right-click to download: [download#1#size].
Here is the text of this broadcast:
Hello, and welcome to the Agabus.com podcast. I’m Mark Adams, and this entry was published Aug. 26, 2008 at Agabus.com, a theological blog. This podcast is called, “The Good Life.”
We live with too much ease. Of course, as I write this — well, technically I’m speaking it, using MacSpeech Dictate, having a hand injury — I’m sitting comfortably at home, a small portable air conditioner cooling my house, and I’m drinking coffee and listening (in one ear) to some tunes on my iPod. Life is good.
I had an epiphany the other day. I was listening to a song which I had purchased on iTunes after having heard it on the radio. It occurred to me then how convenient life had become. When I was younger, and if I wanted a particular song, I’d have to go down to the record store. If I didn’t know the title of the song, I might hum it to a friend or else wait for it to come back onto the radio. Today, if I hear a song I don’t know, all I have to do is take out my iPhone and run Shazam, which somehow can identify nearly any popular song and transmit its title to my iPhone. For 99 cents and a short download, I can listen to any song. Thanks Apple.
I’m a new Mac owner, having purchased a MacBook and an iPhone recently. Previously had purchased an iPod. These are modern marvels, so excellently designed and conceived that I truthfully cannot say I’ve found better products in their category. Apple Computer represents all that’s good — in the technical sense — with modern invention. The age-old idea to make life better is quite realized in their products.
This is contrasted against the experience I had only a week or so ago. I worked two weeks at Camp Victory, staying in an old trailer (being quite comfortable, though), and having to walk 100 yards to bathroom. I slept on a blowup mattress (again being quite comfortable) and walked at night by flashlight. The simple pleasure of taking a shower was quite an exercise. I’d wake up especially early in order to find an open shower stall, lug my stuff up a hill, and squeeze into a tiny stall. The water came out as a mere trickle and was not consistently warm. But even that was a luxury, even contrasted against the luxury of home.
Some years ago, on a short-term missions trip to Guatemala, my church visited a small town called Trapichitos, nestled somewhat high in volcanic mountains and quite distant from any paved road. It was a town without electricity.
How very different our lives were in that town. You rose when the sun came up, and went to bed when the sun set, for otherwise you sat before a candle in the darkness of a small, windowless room. The Guatemalans worked hard in their fields, which were miles away, and without transportation to get them there, they walked.
On one occasion, I was honored to teach their high school class. There were 24 students, all of whom had open notebooks into which they wrote their precious words; they were learning English, or a bit of it at least. One of the students had a tape recorder, no doubt a luxury in this town, and, after the class, he and several other students listened again to the lesson.
I got to know a number of the students despite their broken English and my limited Spanish (only a few words and phrases). One of the students told me he walked four hours each way to school. I asked the teacher who spoke better English to clarify. Was it really four hours each way? He replied that it certainly was.
So what is the purpose of this narrative? Nothing more than to illustrate how easy or how difficult the activities of our life can be. In a modern society, we are moving closer and closer to a kind of lifestyle that requires almost no exertion or discomfort. I don’t think that is very bad, but it is not very real. As I contemplate the many wonderful things I have in my life, I begin to realize that they are but a mere taste of what is to come.
If you read the book of the Revelation, you will find quite nearly cities with streets paved with gold. There is never darkness, for the Father and Son shine continually and perpetually. There is no suffering. There’s no hardship — hardship, that is, in consequence of sin. (Whether the afterlife is one of complete ease, I do not know. But it is certainly not toil, certainly not weariness.)
So what of my epiphany? I sat there in my car marveling at how easy life had become, and I was struck by how counterfeit it was. Again, don’t speak negatively about modern inventions, but sometimes we live with too much ease. Sometimes a little difficulty helps us to realize how human we are, how frail we are. Modern conveniences make us a little less mindful of our humanness. We have too great sense of our abilities.
Some might conclude that we ought to live altogether primitive, all by the sweat (literally) of our brow. That might be helpful to some, but I can’t but imagine that life could always be a little more primitive, a little more difficult.
No, I am reminded of a passage in the book of Proverbs:
Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. — Proverbs 30:7-9
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© 2008, Mark Adams. All rights reserved. For inquiries press here.
