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There’s something to be said for primitivity
One of the things that amazes me is how quickly you can do things, that used to take forever. Paying bills is a great example. It used to take at least a couple of days from when you sent off the check to make sure it got there on time. And then it’d be up to a five days before the check would actually hit your bank account. Call it a week to a week and a half all told. Now, you can hit the website for your cell phone provider and have your billed payed in minutes from home.
Or, consider how long you’re willing to wait for a friend when meeting for lunch. I can remember in high school, before cell phones had proliferated to the point where not having one is the exception, thinking to myself “I’ll give him 20 minutes before I leave”. Now, if someone is two minutes late I’m on my phone getting in their ear to see what’s going on.
My most recent phone I bought is a Blackberry. I bought it because it was relatively cheap for a smartphone and was the only smartphone that AT&T would allow me to buy without forcing me into a full-on data plan. The reason why most people have a Blackberry is because it creates opportunities to work and so they (or usually their company) are willing to pay for an expensive piece of hardware and for expensive data plans because it more than makes up for its cost in productivity. But that productivity comes at a price. That price is that every nook and cranny of your life is now filled with productivity. That can be a good thing.
It can also be a very, very bad thing. While we are more productive, can do things that used to require planning from home in the blink of an eye, and minimize the amount of time we waste waiting around for late, but beloved friends it also deprives us of time to reflect, meditate and de-compress.
Consider for a moment that you are a part of the early church, your name is James, or Mary and you’ve got to meet your business partner in Jerusalem in three days. So you leave on your camel with a couple of your employees and family members to go do business. What do you do for that three day journey that is little more than the rise and fall of your camel’s gait? There’s no electronic devices to help you pass the time, not even a bound book that you could easily bring along with you (being a part of the merchant class we’ll assume you’re one of the few people able to read). So what do you do? You’ve got two options — spend some time reflecting on whatever it is you reflect on, or spend some time talking to your employees and family members about whatever it is you talk to your employees and family members.
Lets take it a step further. Because you’re a part of the church you want to spend time reflecting on Christ. So you get out your Bible… except there’s not yet a New Testament written down. And you sure aren’t wealthy enough to own your own copy of the Old Testament, and even if you did it’d be in scroll form, and so difficult to read anywhere but home. Not to mention that because its a scroll, there’s sure no flipping around to the bit you’d prefer to read.
So, what you’re left with is whatever you manage to hold in your head from the gathering of the saints earlier in the week. So for three days your left to either reflect on what you manage to remember from earlier in the week, you talk to your family and employees about what you’ve all managed to collectively retain. As the journey goes on you’ve all mulled these teachings over in your minds, and worked them over in your conversation, and worked out how that teaching applied to their shared lives and experiences.
Now, however, all that travel time, all that waiting, is spent working, or being entertained. And while something is gained by it, something is also lost.