Note: Before you think I’m basing the religion or ALL Christians, hold your horses. I am not. I’m referring to the few bad apples who go around making everyone else look ugly.

From the episode Damned If You Do, House, Season One

Nun: Just because we live in a monastery and we spend most of our time in prayer doesn’t mean we don’t find time for drama. 

Drama it truly is.

Thanks to The Da Vinci Code fiasco going on in the big “C” of my life, I am now officially the black sheep of this establishment. (I call it an establishment because over the years, I have to grown to see it as an antithesis of the term “bride of God”.) Now how do I know this for sure? Lets just say that the people on the mailing list regarding the book avoided me and pretended as if I was the wall when they saw me on Sunday helping Mum out with her kitchen duties, especially the more “senior” Christians there. The “uncles” and “aunties” don’t even bother with their usual early morning greeting anymore.

However, they did have all the time in the world to stop and annoy the hell out of Nil with incessant questions and that glint in their eye which read “fresh meat”. (Okay, so I could be assuming but Nil felt it as well.)

Several people on the mailing list and I don’t get along well. We share too radically different perspective on life and this world. Here are but a few examples of the things I have heard since I came back from Australia.

• Some say that the media is the tool of the Devil; I’m a media graduate who depends on the media for survival.
• Some say that it is a Christian’s god-fearing duty to tell homosexuals that what they are doing is sinful and that it is “our” responsibility to guide them back to the path of truth. I believe that each person is accountable for their choices in life and the best thing God ever gave us was free will, apart from a brain.
• Some say that we should not concern ourselves with the ways of the world. I say that we should because until we die, we have to live here and deal with the mess of the world as Christ did.
• Some say that knowledge of God is better than knowledge of the world. I say both are equally important.
• Some say that religion is the only thing that should matter in a relationship; “God will solve all conflicts between you and your partner”. I say that love, respect and communication matters first.

It is okay that we don’t see eye-to-eye. Religion, I have always felt, was a personal matter between me and God. That I alone will answer for my wrong-doings in this lifetime.

What irks me the most is the hypocrisy I see around me. I know people are fallible but this is just beyond fallibility, itself.

• The willingness to embrace a non-believer more than a believer who doesn’t agree with them on a few things.
• Piling up work on another believer so that they can relax and bask in the supposed title of “working for God” – whatever happened to working as a team?
• Talk about service to God but younger ones avoiding it at all costs.
• Complaints of afforable breakfast where the money goes to the big “C” being expensive (how is RM2.50 for a bowl of noodles with fishball, chicken meat, fishcake slices and taugeh expensive?) but is willing to dish out RM9 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks?
• Insulting a long-time missing member for coming back.
• Blaming a stranger for the problems in one’s own family.
• Telling people that “if they don’t like this place, they can jolly well leave”.
• Talk about people being equals but cliques exists in the place and we all know about it.
• Talk about God being the center of the relationship but in actual fact, the credit card is more important (ie girl sponging money off the guy).

Whatever happened to not judging? To caring? To looking inwardly first before looking externally? To embracing all despite religion, health, creed or race?

I could go on and on. I have come to the point that I am so disgusted about it all that I just don’t want to be apart of it anymore. Even if I do go to be with God, it sometimes feels as if I am already a lone ranger, fighting my battles alone with Him, supporting myself the best that I can by gaining more knowledge and by my supportive non-Christian boyfriend.

Yes. Nil is not a Christian yet he is more supportive of my faith than my fellow churchmates.

Ironic, isn’t it?