Riding the Subway and Staring at Subway Maps
When I have visited China, at some point I end up riding the subway (地铁, dìtiě). This is no doubt because I tend to visit big cities and because riding the subway is so inexpensive and convenient (方便, fāngbiàn). In my occasional travels to big cities in other countries, I often ride the subway too. I actually enjoy it. There’s something about riding the subway that makes me feel less like a visitor and more like a local. Although I can’t tell for sure who is local and who is not, it’s likely that many of the people I see in the subway station and on the subway are locals. They are going to work, on their way to meet someone, running an errand, coming home, and more. Being surrounded by so many people doing something so ordinary and routine for them gives me the pleasure of participating in a small part of daily life for urbanites in China.
Of course, I am not really a local. Besides the way I dress and talk, my inquiries at the subway information desk and my struggles with the ticket vending machine reveal that I am no regular. Likewise, my standing in front of the large subway map posted on the station wall shows that I am new to this. Unlike locals who are often going to and from the same places, I need to study the map to figure out how to get where I am going. This is not always straightforward. First, I need to figure out where my current station is on the map. Then I need to find out how to get to my desired destination station. If it’s on the same line as my current station, then I need to make sure I get on the train that is going in the right direction. If it’s not on the same line, I also need to know where to transfer. Sometimes there is more than one way to get there, and I will need to determine the best one.
My first impression of a subway map is to feel a little bit overwhelmed. There’s too much information all at once—so many colored lines in different directions, and even more stations, each with its own unfamiliar name. Yet this impression slowly fades because I know deep down that this map represents a carefully designed subway system whose purpose is to transport passengers like me to locations all across the city. After staring at it for a minute or so, I am usually able to figure out how to get to my destination.
Besides using these subway maps to decide how to get from point A to point B, there have also been times when I have simply admired the map for what it is as a whole. My favorite subway map is the intricate and colorful Tokyo map. Its many colored lines are not independent but are linked by transfer stations. Many of these stations are situated at the intersection of two lines. As such, they are part of both lines but also allow passengers to transfer from one line to another. Some larger transfer stations sit on multiple lines and likewise allow convenient transfers among them. Transfer stations are what make subway systems the transportation networks that they are, rather than a mere collection of independent, unrelated transportation lines.
Subway Theology
When I read the Bible, sometimes it can also feel like there’s too much information all at once. The Old Testament in particular has so many different kinds of literature in it—stories, poems, laws, genealogies, proverbs, and more. What is the relationship between all of it? Is there a relationship between all of it? It turns out that these are questions that scholars have sought answers to for centuries. The subject area that tends to address these questions is called “biblical theology,” sometimes subdivided into “Old Testament theology” and “New Testament theology.”
As an Old Testament professor, I especially want to understand how the different parts of the Old Testament fit together. There are many helpful ways to demonstrate this, such as tracing themes or historical progression throughout the books of the Old Testament. At the same time, probably because of my experiences riding the subway and staring at subway maps, I realized that the metaphor of transfer stations in a subway system can also be a way of explaining the unity of the Old Testament.
The opening lines of my book, Wonders from Your Law, state:
“Every passage in the Bible is connected to other passages in the Bible, but some passages are much more highly connected than others. For example, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1) is a far more highly connected text (see Isaiah 65:17), ‘Behold, I am creating new heavens and a new earth’; (Revelation 21:1) than, say, ‘These are the sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran’ in Genesis 36:28, or the like.”
The book identifies ten Old Testament passages with especially high connectivity and explains how they display the Christ-centered unity of the Old Testament. Using the metaphor of a subway, I explain that these “nexus passages” are to the Bible what transfer stations are to a subway system. Whether or not you are interested in the deep dive into the “subway theology” that my book provides, learning how to rightly identify and relate passages in the Bible to one another will certainly help you to see how it all fits together. Next time you are riding the subway, in a transfer station, or looking at a subway map, be reminded that the Bible has also been carefully written and designed as an interconnected whole.
