A friend told me the other day, a new kind of teaching, nothing similar to currently available religions is sweeping the globe and he has whole-heartedly embraced it.
Uh oh! What comes to my mind immediately is Jim Jones and his Jonestown in Guyana with images of 909 people that perished in the so-called mass-suicide circa the end of 70’s. And how could I forget Jaafar Patola, the Batu Pahat folk that ran amok and attacked the Police Station some time ago? Please, not another one. All of us must take precaution to this new religion, whether you’re Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Bhuddist, Shintoist etc. Even atheists should pay caution. And your kids. Oh! Your kids. Please, love them.
Not wanting to be prejudicial, I ask him in a rapidfire sequence how sure he was, what the teaching was about, how long it has been around and his family’s opinion. He said he’s 100% sure and there’s nothing to be worried about its teaching. It stresses on friendship more than anything else. It has its sacred compound somewhere in the USA and he said he wanted to visit the place someday. Sort of like a pilgrimage. I say, get real please. The only pilgrimage they do in US is that place called Disneyland. You know what, suddenly Ayah Pin and his large teapot, large boat and what have ya seemed to be walking in front of me at that time.
According to my friend again, it appeared to have begun recruiting not long after the turn of the recent millennium. Initially they pooled up university students because these are the people who have all the resources ‘up there’. After all has been worked out, they spread their wings further. But they were warned to approach people that they know ONLY. It worked better that way. My friend had told some friends about it and asked them to join him. Some agreed, some needed time. But he didn’t tell his family though. He said he had some reservations about telling his family because it just doesn’t work that way.
And he asked me to join him. I said NO! THANK YOU!
He said never mind and don’t worry. I don’t have to decide now. He reminded me that we are friends. And we have been friends since long ago although we rarely met. That’s why he wanted me to join him. He confessed about being devoted to it. How he would spend hours attending to its sayings, writings and prayings. And night time is the best time to do it. And when he mentioned statistics that they are now reaching a billion followers, my jaw dropped and crashed like those cartoon from the pilgrimage place I mentioned before. Whattt!!!! Excuse me, but I don’t see ‘your’ people in robes or whatever walking about anywhere. That’s pretty far-fetched ain’t it. And a stupido claim too. He countered me immediately, that’s the point of it, he said. You don’t go gong up about it. They don’t need places to worship. No bells, no Azans, no bamboo-tong-tong. He said they treasure their privacy and would not communicate with complete strangers. Do it quietly and it does wonders to you, he said.
We stop communicating for a while after that.
Then we bumped into each other applying for a job at some place. We talked again. And while filling up the form given to us, there’s a section that I see for the first time in Malaysia that says “The section below is optional. If you decide to fill in this section you will not be discriminated against, rather it will be useful for you e.g. when applying for religious holidays”. I was titillated and hope very much that he would fill up the section that includes religion. Trying to keep as straight a face as possible and pretending not looking while trying to steal a glance, I saw him gleefully scribble in that section that says .....
Religion : facebook.
First...
ReplyDelete