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It’s this kind of stuff that manages to bring out the sulky
child in most of us. And it’s the stuff
that makes working for a Thai Christian school come into its own.
Yes, it’s –
Hallelujah! – Spiritual Revival Week.
When I was at primary school we used to be similarly
besieged by all of this Christian rubbish, but it didn’t work. Why?
Because our school used old-fashioned Christianity as its focus point,
figuring they would bore us into submission with those god-awful church
services and R.E. lessons taught by old fuddy-duddy vicars. The perfect way to get children to turn
their backs on the Lord.
I was worried, then, when I discovered that during the week
of 15-19th June 2550 (as it is here in Thailand) our school would be
over-ridden by trendy young new-age Christian pop singers attempting to woo our
boys into the arms of Jesus; I was worried that they might be won over by this
strange religion our school claims to promote.
I needn’t have fretted though. Sitting in the chapel, yawning through rotten plays with deep
Christian moral messages, I had to conceal my relief as the students’ nudged
one another, sniggered, and groaned with disdain as yet another hopeless,
spiritually lost, alcoholic traveller fell into the arms of a missionary with
the light of the Lord shining from his eyes.
It seems our kids have already been saved – saved by Buddhist families
and a healthy cynicism that seems to be creeping over children at an
increasingly early age. Or maybe
they’ve overdosed on the rants about hellfire and damnation that come through
the P.A. system every morning (on Thursdays we get to listen to these charming
sermons in English).
Revival Week doesn’t, unfortunately, begin and end with the
students. We teachers are being
subjected to the same Biblical nonsense, only we get it in the adult
version. This involves us spending our
lunch hours pretending to sing along to happy-clappy tunes accompanied by
electric organ and acoustic guitar, and being pelted by lectures on why it
would be simply ignorant and wrong to continue to deny the existence of
God. There is proof – PROOF, GODDAMMIT!
– that Jesus WAS God; didn’t he rise from the dead, just like he said he
would? It says so in the Bible! And, of course, we are told that we are all
sinners, and our preacher for the day (actually a foreign teacher) tells us
that sinning is in our DNA (although he didn’t offer any proof for that
one). Hobbes would have been delighted
by the support.
There are Christian teachers at the school; I counted four
of them among the forty or so that were congregated for today’s session. You could tell by the way they sang out loud
and nodded in agreement during the sermon.
I, having been well brought-up, am tolerant of these people’s bizarre
customs, and I go about my duties within the system for the most part
uncomplainingly. I accept that the Thai
Education system is ironically named, that education will always come second to
ritual. But what I don’t, and can’t,
appreciate is being told I’m ignorant because I don’t share some fellow
farang’s belief in God. I don’t
appreciate being kept back at lunchtime to be told I’m a sinner by people who
are not just in it for the ritual, but who actually believe the rubbish they’re
spouting. I don’t run around telling
people it’s ignorant to be Christian – oh dear, but I think I just did.
Forgive me.
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