Taiwan Church News

3207 Edition

August 12 - August 18, 2013

Editorial

When Jesus brought the gospel of Kingdom of God to Galilee, he mentioned a parable about the misfit between new of old. Thisparable suggested: when a new era began or a new thought leavened, the outer environment also needed to be reformed. Otherwise, new wine would ruin old wine skin. And this parable also reminds us, when old wine skin is ruined, new wine would also run out.

When we saw 250,000 people showed up on Katagalan Boulevard, we cannot help but ask what drove these amateur activistbravely took to street, asking for truth and justice for the families of Corporal Hung Chun-chiu. Some people attribute this extraordinary citizen event to the communication power of social media or a common experiences; some even conclude that the traditional demand of political superstar is over, and the crowd mobilization through political party is out of date. However, no matter what people take their stands, a detailed social analysis is necessary. Otherwise, this would only collapse into a passionate one-night-stand social event without significance. So, how we Christians should react to this event?

Seeing so many young men took to the street, no more familiar faces shown up in the demonstration, and so many Taiwanese gavetheir hands to the needy, it made people felt in a great relief that there is still hope in Taiwan's future. But, the problem is that we have never seen such a mass crown turned out for the cold blood murder of Dr. Chen Wen-chen and Lin Yi-shiong families; never heard the mass voice to stand by the labor whose wages were still suspended by the employers. Such a bigdifference in treatment is not because the suffered did not deserve our compassion, but due to the alienation engulfed between the people and the suffered.

This alienation came from an highly authoritarian milieu of Taiwan politics. The ruler monopolies the information by mediacontrol; forbids the assembly of people by an unreasonable assembly law; fools the people with extremely complicated terms and conditions as in the "bird-cage" referendum act. Alienation also comes from people's own short-sight. For example, problems of land justice are almost could be found everywhere on this island, why people only concerned about the Dapu farm land and the Wang in Shelin? We have to think it over about this alienation, and not limited ourselves to some individual case. To solve the problem, we have to started from the particular case to overhaul the system. Otherwise, we would chase after each issues one by one like a squirrel and exhausted ourselves.

When the economics slowed down and the human rights index downgraded, do you still expect this complacent government to self-upgrade? Is regime change the only alternative? Or is it time we should use our new idea to make this country normalize and let our citizen movement to focus on the institution reform? The story of burning bush in OT Exodus reminded us that God heard the suffering voice of the Israelite, summoned Moses as His prophet, and started the history of salvation. How God sees the sufferings of we Taiwanese? Doesn't He called us to be His servants to speak out on various public issues?

At last, we have new wines. Facing the leavening new wine, the old wine skin can no longer hold any more. But, if no newwine skin, our new wine will also waste in vain. Indeed these new wine is in volume, but how strong their leavening power? How long they could carry on their reforming power? Nobody knows. We need to do our action, in addition to pay our attention to TV and newspaper only. Let us no more wait and watch! Let us be brave enough to pull our stakes for reform and do our best witness for the Lord in each social issue of Taiwan!