Holiday That Was Not...

 

It's almost the end of the new year period and that means that I'll be back in my job next week :P I had anticipated spending some time during the Christmas-New Year season getting some rest and getting some stuff of mine straightened out.

That never happened.

The holidays this year was ....  very busy... I ended up meeting hordes of people I did not want to meet......:(

After that highly unfortunate incident with that "person from my past" my folks announced that a family friend had died and we were going to attend the wake and funeral. As he was the minister of a church, well, there were hordes of people at the wake. Unfortunately they were all the people that I grew up with :(

It was also unfortunate that we went to the wake on Christmas day :( I had never seen so many people that I had wanted to avoid.

The minister was a good person and I remember him best as an excellent counsellor. I think he had a good understanding of human nature... (something unfortunately that I did not develop in my younger years... and that resulted in me making the acquaintance of people that I today REALLY want to avoid) he certainly could see the issues in the people that I knew... (something that I failed to see for many years)....

However, it seemed (for me at least), this event was like Fate or Karma or something asking me in abstract terms if I wanted to turn back now and return to where I once was... in fact I had people asking me to come back :P 

Honestly... I hadn't thought a lot about why I left it all behind... When I did leave that life so many years ago, I had done so because I felt terribly unhappy about being where I was. Reflecting on my decision, I realised that being with that particular community did not make me happy because my faith as it was back then was based on fear and not on a belief that this was what I had decided to stand for....

The problem with the community I had come from was that for the most part, it attracted people who talked more about hellfire and brimstone than the love of God. In fact, my own father was of the opinion that Hell was an important concept that was not preached enough in some "modern" churches because he felt it helped to "save souls" :P

I should have listened to Mr Cow in the university I attended. Mr Cow was a lecturer who taught a minor module in my course of study... He was a very very strong minded chap who had his own unique views and did not take any crap from anyone... not even the authorities... He was also a man of uniquely strong faith and I believe his grasp of theology was also pretty sound...

One, he had proposed to myself and some students of similar faith the following notion...

Were we believers because of fear... in particular the fear of burning in hell.... or did we choose this path because it was something that we felt was worth standing for?

He was of the notion that it was a poor poor basis for faith... if the reason it existed was because of fear.

Unfortunately, I had not really understood his reasoning back then because I was too deep into the whole thing... I think I even felt a little bit... surprised that he had even raised that question...

I think I asked him if he wasn't afraid of Hell at all... i think he said that... if his faith was based on fear alone... he'd rather be in the fire .....


If I had understood him earlier... I could have avoided all those mistakes.. years of it... 

The problem about having a faith that is based on fear is that... you are always wondering if you have "made it"... so to speak... Honestly, the standard of holiness that was advocated by the community that I was in is... in today's world... unrealistic... Moreover, as the community was fringe and not mainstream... they held to the belief that the religion as practiced by themselves was of far superior quality than in other groups of similar belief.... 

To most other people... the community I was in would be considered extreme or purist... :P

Naturally, being human and Singaporean... I found it terribly difficult to uphold the standard of holiness that was advocated... (there was one time I remembered a view advocated by some members of the community that - going to the movies was undesirable because most movies weren't exactly moral and the environment of the movie theatre was one that led to people, especially young people engaging in immoral acts... thus, some members did not go to any cinemas at all... since movie-going is a national pastime for Singaporeans... you can see how that presents a huge problem) ....that led to constant failure... and constant doubt regarding my own faith... half of my childhood was spent learning religious doctrine from members of the community and my own father... and because of all these views... I was never ever secure in my own faith... 


Kids aren't dumb... and certainly I understood what I read and studied... unlike many of my peers, I never had a problem with Shakespearean english especially when I started learning it in secondary school because the scriptures I read was in the same type of language... (some members of the community felt for the longest time that the only accurate translation of the scripture was the king james version, and rejected all other modern translations)...


Well... I was a thinking kid and really..... knowing all of THAT... never helped me feel like I had actually managed to attain the whole "salvation" thing...


So what happened was that I ended up wallowing in fear, guilt and doubt for years... and when a person becomes afraid and guilty, they also become extremely zealous... I can honestly say that I probably spent more hours "serving God" than my very faithful father....:( 


Seeing all those people made me remember my own childhood... 

I never want to go back to all of that... it was a terrible terrible burden being in that community... I could never ever really be myself in all of that... in fact, I had to invent this person who never really existed.... just so I could have something to show people on a Sunday....:P 

Now, I don't have anything against the religion in general and I think some of the best people I know are in it... but.... it is certainly not my cup of tea... and certainly not with the community I grew up with.... 

I shared my experiences with F who felt after listening to all of it, that.. well... my community was considered a very non-mainstream sect in christendom... 

F was once an ordained minister... it is pretty ironic that she's the one I talk to the most now about spirituality and stuff...


I think I have a huge hangup over this entire "faith" thing... in fact, F noticed that people who were once monks or nuns in their past lives or who are now in a religious order generally DO NOT like me at all... it's like they can sniff out my hangup without even me opening my mouth... 

well... but that's really something for another time...:P