I moved into a new place three months ago and am still recovering from the hassle and stress of the moving experience which included the packing, and unpacking, opening the wrong boxes anxiously hunting for misplaced items – and worst of all, forgetting where I put this or that  but I could swear I saw it yesterday, forever facing little irritations like: “Where’s my scissors? It should be somewhere near – didn’t I just use it to snip off a price tag?”

Another interesting observation I made from our move experience is this : It’s not hard finding a comfortable new home but it’s much harder finding a new church you feel comfortable with. To tell you the truth, I’ve gone to four different churches this past three months and now cut down to two.

The problem is not because there aren’t enough churches in Toronto but I think it’s the opposite. It just struck me that in Toronto, like in Singapore, New York, London and other major cities in the world today, Christians will have this problem – I call this “Spoilt for Choice”. Well, I’m not denying having the privilege of choice is a good thing but what I’m saying is, having too many choices can be tricky and adds unnecessary stress to our daily living.

Imagine what life used to be for people who lived in a village in the pre-industrial days, made a livelihood out of farming, enjoy gardening and getting excited about attending church and meeting other folks in their village church every Sunday. Only one village church – where they used to attend Sunday school with their parents and grandparents ! Everybody knew everybody. There were no acquaintances – only friends!

This sounds like a fairytale to our ears! So unreal! Let’s face the reality but be awakened to potential negative influences that can spoil our lives.

People living in US and Canada have far more choices than elsewhere in the world. Growing up in Asia and in a very small country, Singapore, I feel the vast difference! Well, I did say that there are lots of churches to choose from in Toronto as in Singapore. OK, that’s true for churches. But when you consider the rest of things, the choices you can find in Canada far supercedes any place in Asia. Generally speaking, the bigger the country is, the wider the choice.

In Canada, every day I’m confronted with multiple choices when it comes to even simple daily decisions like:

Which route should I take to get to my destination faster?

Which supermarket is giving the best deal for my groceries?

PS. In a small city like Singapore, there’s usually only one obvious route to your destination and no other that makes a viable difference.

Yes, I can treat this subject lightly or otherwise. In fact the problem of being spoilt by choice has permeated and eroded all pillars and corners of our society and will continue to do so. Look, today the field of choices are so wide open that people are permitted choice in all these areas, for instance :

– Single women can choose to impregnate themselves, have a baby with help from a sperm bank.

– People can choose what they feel is their sexual orientation

I sense that too much choice and leeway given in this generation is probably a major root cause of many of our social woes.

It’s naturally human nature that people everywhere love to be given choices and options. Truly, this is the undergirding foundation upon which our practice of Democracy and conduct of Elections rest.

My take on this today is :

Let’s be mindful of the “burden of choice”. And remember, we can be very spoilt by choice !