The Chasm Between

The people I've met up with recently all have different interests. Rock music to varying degrees, astrology, men, women, most of which you wouldn't call very Christian. And if any mention of religion comes up, it's mostly derogatory, sceptic, or the simple "Hah? Say again?". All the while at the back of my mind, I hear the voices in my head regurgitate phrases invoking the death and pain of hell from the Pandora's box of morning messages subconsciously absorbed in the haze of sleep at 8 am in the morning. It is very tempting, and very comfortable, to for once escape the need to code everything in Christian terms, to punctuate every other sentence with "Praise the Lord", to escape from hearing people say that when their body language says otherwise.

Maybe that explains why I rather talk to children - they lack the necessary pretense that comes with being in church. Who can deny that in such an institution, you don't even have to say anything to incur the silent running commentary of criticism that flashes through the minds of the pius, frantic Bible-flipper. (The greatest benefit of studying social work thus far is learning about Neuro Linguistic Programming and how to read people from their eye movements, and it is true that the eyes never lie.)

Back to before the digression.

For a long time now, the pretension and moral superiority of Christians have bugged me endlessly. Maybe it's just the church I'm in, or maybe it's a universal phenomenon. (blame everything on the church just like we blame everything on the government eh?) Until tonight, when I went for the rehearsal at Queenstown Methodist; there were all these old people singing in Hokkien and Cantonese and unintelligible (to me) dialects, and some parts of the songs sounded like the wayang you hear during the Seventh Month street operas. In other words, very Buddhist-funeral sounding. The words of the songs were simple, straight to the point (unlike this entry), but what was most striking, and what made me stop talking to my friends for a while and listen, was how everyone of these old people really believed in what they were singing and showed it.

How did I know they believed in what they were singing? Is there any objective measure, any standard criteria where I can tick off the checkboxes? No. Call it baseless intuition or what you may, some things come across so strongly that to not believe it would make you less a human and more a malevolent spirit. The simplicity of their faith, and their energetic earnestness in getting their message across was, I don't know...touching? It's something I haven't seen or heard for a long time. The singers were technically nowhere. Singing from the throat, no diaphragm support, sandpaper voice, what have you, but it didn't matter ultimately.

After all, to quote W.H. Auden, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Today, I think I actually felt something, which is a start, vague and unsubstantial and hopelessly subjective as it might be.