COMMENTARY
By Ng Tze Yong

I GREW up in an unusual place, a Chinatown shophouse filled from floor to ceiling with Taoist idols.

It was here, amid the sandalwood and incense, where I spent my childhood, watching my dad make and sell Taoist idols.

Today, however, I go to church.

In other words, I belong to the group of Singaporeans mentioned by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally speech - the ones who leave their parents' religion - when he explained the importance of religious tolerance, in society and within families.

Indeed, when it comes to God, everyone has his or her own answer, sometimes eloquently expounded, sometimes quietly profound.

I found my own somewhere between the church and the little Taoist shop.

Mine was never a religious childhood, even though you can say I grew up among the gods.

My parents sent me, somewhat ironically, to a kindergarten at the Young Women's Christian Association.

I learnt about Jesus. But in my teens, I drifted away.

In fact, I even felt annoyed with Christians for the way they often stopped me on the streets (usually when I was late for a movie) to talk about heaven and hell.

In my university years in the US, however, I started pondering the meaning of existence.

I started going to church, tentatively at first, but faithfully afterwards. There, I found solace and, more importantly, a meaning to this life.

I also joined an evangelical Christian student's group on campus. But there was also something about their religious zeal I was never comfortable with.

Through the lens of fervour, the world became a simple place. It brought comfort to some. But it unsettled me.

I remembered the little Taoist shop, even though I was half a world away.

Searching for a different sort of answer, I volunteered with an inter-religious group working with the homeless.

There, I discovered action, rather than answers, to be an equally, if not more, meaningful expression of my faith.

When I returned to Singapore after graduation, I tried to continue this involvement.

At a casual meeting once with some Government officers to discuss funding for an inter-faith project, my friend and I were asked at the end of a two-hour-long discussion: What was our KPI?

I understood the importance of Key Performance Indicators. At the same time, I felt disillusioned.

Did we think that everything, even religious harmony, could be measured with KPIs?

I later came to realise another thing about inter-faith dialogue in Singapore: They tend to be conversations only between like-minded individuals.

In a top-down society which treated religious issues with kid gloves, inter-faith work somehow started to wear me down. After a while, I stopped. I couldn't find the energy to carry on.

What made it worse were the chances I had, both as a student and journalist, to travel to places where religious strife is a very real part of daily life, where inter-faith dialogues, while intense, somehow felt more authentic.

As a student in Beirut, Lebanon, I attended church, singing hymns in Arabic and hearing, for the first time, the Christian God referred to as Allah.

When volunteering in Kosovo, I had tea with the priest of a Serbian Orthodox church garrisoned behind barbed wire and a US Army Humvee.

On assignment in Israel, I attended a Hamas party and interviewed the family of a suicide bomber.

The experiences gave me a first-hand look at religious strife. What it didn't give me were better answers to religion's most vexing questions.

Who goes to heaven? I still don't know. It's not my call.

Is homosexuality okay? I think there are many, many more important things to worry about.

What about marriage outside the religion? I'll marry a religious non-Christian over a non-religious Christian.

These are my answers. I'm not sure they're the right ones, but they are the ones I've searched for and found.

And I'm still searching - and finding.

Last year, my aunt died of cancer. She was a spinster and I had to lead the Taoist rites.

I carried the joss sticks, the pole lanterns, the plates of chicken and fruit. In the mornings, I helped prepare a toothbrush, a basin of water and a face towel, and placed them beside her coffin, just as the priest instructed.

The rituals were meaningless to me, but that didn't mean they didn't matter. I did it because the funeral was not about me, but about her.

Later, in the privacy of my church, I would always remember to pray for her.

tzeyong@sph.com.sg

>> National Day Rally 2009

This article was first published in The New Paper.