This article also appeared on my Medium.
In just a span of 16 years, I have had three religions.
I was born a handog (an offering) in the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) until we were excommunicated for failing to attend worship unexcused for multiple consecutive times.
Turns out, being a member of the ‘Iglesia’ is no different from having a job. If you go AWOL, god will fire you.
The worship service (INC equivalent of a Catholic mass) seems to me as if it was planned by someone who wasn’t toilet-trained as a child and grew up with “anal retentiveness” issues. They were extremely organized and structured (men are segregated from women because men can never be trusted), meticulously designed (each seat had a booklet containing “praise songs”) and utterly formal and boring.
Situated in a large loft just behind the pulpit was the chorale whose exceptionally synchronized movements and voices used to mesmerize me as a child. If you find that difficult to visualize, just imagine the North Korean Military Choir.
Fortunately, our chapel pastor was a fantasy-inducing eye-candy who made the tedium somehow tolerable. In fact, one of my earlier crushes — aside from a girl classmate who looked like a boy and who’s now a lesbian — was our local pastor.
After getting kicked out of INC, I became a pseudo-Catholic.
I said “pseudo” because even though I was never christened, my elementary and high school education occurred within the premises of two Catholic schools which obliged me to participate in their myriad of rituals and whatnots including the extremely dreary yet physically demanding ‘Stations of the Cross’ and the weekly Rosary during the month of October.
All the standing and kneeling and genuflecting made me occasionally wonder if I was attending a mass or a yoga workout.
There was a time in my nun-ran Catholic high school when we were required to do a graceful interpretative dance of a Jamie Rivera song every single day for an entire month (or more). My favorite part of it was internally laughing while watching the macho male students perform the hand gestures that were seemingly inspired by the choreography of Sailor Moon’s transformation sequence.
I also took piano lessons in high school, not because I wanted to learn the piano, but because it exempted me from a brain coma-triggering Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) class. My piano teacher was a nun who has a consuming passion for Korean dramas and sugar.
I don’t really have fond memories of her apart from our dreadful afternoon sessions where she would hit my fingers with a pointer stick accompanied by a loud yell each time I hit the wrong key. The experience briefly gave me a phobia of nuns; a photo of Mother Teresa used to send me to a panic attack.
After graduating from high school, my family and I converted to born-again Christianity, probably because we were bored and needed some sense of “community” in our lives which have become increasingly domesticated.
The religion is pretty laid back, with masses usually held only once a week, unless you’re feeling pretty holy, in which case you can host a “bible study” in your house any day of the week, preferably at night.
Unlike the Nazi-inspired INC worship service, a born-again mass is kind of like attending an alternative rock concert. There are guitars and drums and cute guys and dancing, and the worship songs sound like stuff you’d hear from Nickelback.
I read the Holy Bible from cover to cover during my stint in the born-again religion. Back then, it was Harry Potter to me.
One of my favorite biblical stories can be found in the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. It was about King David and how we would voyeur a bathing woman aptly named Bathsheba. Upon learning she was married to a soldier of his, King David sent the said dude to a war to be murdered so he could steal his wife.
I remember myself feeling horny the first time I read the story. It didn’t help that prior to reading it, I was coerced to watch the 1985 film adaptation in which King David was portrayed by a young Richard Gere.
Of course, during this time, I was in a transition from adolescence to early adulthood; from being a high school student in provincial Pampanga to a college student in one of the largest metropolis in the world.
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My relationship with religion ended several years ago.
Remember how in the movie Oldboy, Dae-su was imprisoned in a tiny room for 16 years and was fed exclusively with Chinese dumplings? And when he got out and had to eat dumplings again, his body literally repelled them?
Well, religion is to me what dumplings are to Dae-su. I can’t take any of it anymore. Not again in this lifetime.
Nowadays, I don’t adhere to any religious belief. Not even atheism which in itself preaches a dogma with no evidence. I have realized that my journey for truth and spirituality cannot be furthered by a stringent adherence to a religious axiom. In hindsight, it has only stunted it.
This is not to criticize those who are religious. I have been there and I’m familiar with the comfort and security it provides, and how it can satisfy our emotional need to belong. It just hasn’t worked for me the same way. I do me, you do you.
Whether which way of life is more truthful — religion or reason — dialectics will decide. History is a debate. And as we move forward to time as a unified human civilization, we could only get closer to the absolute spirit. The absolute truth.
Or not.