Religions Woes

Today while reading the Straits Times, I saw this article "Religion: The Big Switch". It mainly addressed the issue faced by both parents and their children’s. As children grow up, many of them start to have their own belief and through Internet, books, newspaper and friends, many will be influenced by the various source of information. In the article, it quoted a national census that 80% born a Buddhist will stay as a Buddhist and Christianity had shown an increase of nearly 3% since 1990.



The above table shows the stats of the various Chinese religions in Singapore. It shows that Christian and Buddhist had one of the highest retained rate. Furthermore the article also addressed the issue of parents worrying that their child is unable to perform funeral rites for them. As one of the parent (named Z)(Buddhist) put in, her daughter wanted to convert to Christian but keep asking for her blessing. But Z refused as it would mean that her daughter will be unable to offer her last respect (joss stick) during her funeral rites. When her daughter insists a few more time, Z tell her to do whatever she is happy, so the daughter converted and was baptised.

During Z's mother funeral, Z's daughter refused to hold joss stick or take part in other rituals for her late grandmother instead she "help out" by distributing food and water to her relatives. Z's daughter mentioned that it goes against her belief and religion. During her daughter wedding, the couple refused offering joss stick to the ancestral altar or the Goddess of Mercy and they also refused feng shui master advice on their new home. Now Z (with 3 children) can only hope her youngest daughter would stay as a Buddhist to perform funeral rites for her.

This saddens me very much as each religion needs to be respected. It doesn't mean that by converting to another religion, the respect for other religion can be ill-forgotten. Furthermore, parents are our caregivers since birth; I believe we should respect what they really want when they leave the world which is to help them perform their last rites to help them to another world. It will sad for any parents whose child refused to perform the last rites due to their respective religion and beliefs.

I don't believe that there is such a law that forbids fellow believers to meddle with other religion as I believed that there is a democracy among religions. I respect other religions but please don't force me to accept a religion that I don't believe in. As long as a religion I feel comfortable with, I will not changed coz I believe in it. I encountered a few times when there are some religion worker came to my house trying to spread her beliefs to me. I knew the religion from the book she was holding and I kindly said that I'm sorry that I am not really interested in it. But she kept insisting that I spared her some time to listen to her and encouraged me to come for gathering.

Well to me, she should have some sense that I am not the guy she should try to influence and should go on to try other units. One reason, I believed in what I believed and don't required any changes to my religion (Buddhist). It had served me well and I have utmost respect for my own religion. If u haven't been respecting other religions, maybe is time to start respecting them.

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