God
So here’s the story.
As a child, I used to go to this Buddhist temple with my parents. I love that place. It is situated by the river and has a majestic interior with the marbled floor, flying dragons on the wall and all. Definitely a prominent landmark in my town. When I was 19 or 20, I converted to Christianity and have been ever since. It wasn’t like I didn’t like dragons anymore and Buddhism has nothing at all to do with dragons as I later found out. It’s just that I’d been spending so much time with my girlfriend that time and she went to church semi-regularly, so might as well. And I did all of this while living in a Muslim-dominant country.
Such unique experience is hard to come by. If anything, it teaches me about the fundamental notion of religious pluralism and that it’s ok to share a tooth brush with someone of a different religious faith. Ok maybe not the later. When I see a leader from a nation talks, swears or acts by the name of God, I smirk. When I heard from my ex-gf the first question her Caucasian roommate’s parents asked her, upon knowing she’s from Malaysia, was whether she’s a Muslim. Before she could answer, they said they don’t want their daughter living with a Muslim. That I smirked too.
The way I see it, if there’s one thing out of the many that remains absolutely the same about Buddhism and Christianity, besides from the obvious fact that they both (and Islam, surprise! surprise!) teach and preach on the notion of love, peace and care, is my prayer. Throughout the years, my prayer has always been the same, every single word. I pray for the safety and happiness of my family and friends. Of course, I had to change some of the words like ‘Lama’ to ‘Jesus’ and I had also noticed the difference in the way you cup your hand during prayer.
I believe in God, make no mistake of that. But I’d learned from experience that that statement is different from ‘I believe in God and you should too’. And that itself is very different from ‘I believe in God and you should believe in MY God too’. And then (ok, last one), that itself is very very different from ‘I believe in God and you should believe in MY God too or else you can’t go to heaven after you die’.
There’s this guy - Owen. He lives by the simplest faith - do no evil. He is as close to a saint as a living man can be. He cares for his family, makes pancakes every morning for his 2 and 6 years olds, married for 30 years, is planning to have a third honeymoon with his wife somewhere in Ireland, joins Red Cross and been to countries like Kosovo, Iraq and Darfur on humantarian mission. But there’s this problem, he is not a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or a Mormon. He’s spiritual, but not religious. In this world, he would be what we called an atheist. Can he still go to heaven after he dies? Oh did I tell you how he would eventually die? Let say a stray bullet went right through his head while on a mission to distribute food in a refugee camp on some remote areas in Sudan. That’s also the day when his eldest daughter turns 7.
We are living in a society where people look at you differently because you believe in a different God from theirs. Hell we can’t even talk about these things without screaming at each other. And if you believe in religion as my father and mother and friends and girlfriends had taught me to believe it, then maybe you will smirk too. Because then you will start to see the irony of all these connerie.
