The fault in our faith

(And yes I will use this title until I find that it gets old. So far it hasn't).

Over the course of my time in Singapore I met a lot of different people. The school policy has a quota on how many foreigners are allowed in the country, but they do not have a quota of how many non-Catholics are allowed. As a result there are about only 30% of Catholics in my year, and that percentage goes even lower as we go down to the younger grades.

But this experience has allowed me to see what God is like in the eyes of other Christians. I got to see how different people see God, and it made me realise how traditional the Catholic faith is relative to other religious faiths. My Methodist friends often describe how vibrant their faith is to the youth, and how many go there not only to worship God but also to worship God together with their friends. 

Having lived in Jakarta for so long, I have lost contact with all of my church friends, and few of them come to church anymore. I find that the Catholic faith fails to touch the youth, but the middle aged to senior citizens, and this is not only seen in my church, but in many other churches in Singapore. The mass itself is boring, being a tradition that has been unchanged for hundreds of years, and makes the assumption that all members of the congregation are fully aware of what is going on during the mass which upon interviewing of the young and old, have no idea of what the mass is all about. 

So of course it makes sense for young people to hate going to church! These masses are not centered around them, but for the older people who look towards God towards the end of their lives (as morbid as that sounds) despite Jesus making a huge emphasis of the younger generation. 

I thus made it a quest at the end of the year to visit other christian churches. I want to find out what it means to worship God and any Catholic would agree that there are multiple ways to worship God besides the mass.

And so my dear readers, if you ever want to share your way of worshipping your Christian God to me, please drop me an email! Let me see your view of the supernatural through the eyes of your religion.



Cheers,
Matthew Tan