Religion and the Student (in the sixties)

RELIGION and the STUDENT

 Recently, I went round having short discussions with some friends concerning religion. We discussed about their beliefs and the reasons for their beliefs (or skepticism), their feelings and the extent of the influence on them. It was part of a very incomplete study on why so many youths, who were comparatively so well educated, and yet were so apathetic to religion. I must stress that our short discourses were not profoundly philosophical, or to find out the “why’s” but just to know the “what’s”.

Except for the Christians and the Muslims, the adherents of other faiths were just nominal. There was hardly any spiritual training or interest to find out, or any awareness of the significance of their religion. Most of the Chinese, including even Christians, were brought up through the influence of three faiths - Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If the parents were more modern, this trend was not so obvious. The three-in-one religion was characteristic of the Chinese family though the influence was almost defunct. Filial piety only extended during the Chinese New Year when red packets were given. Praying with joss-sticks was looked on with disdain, carried out, merely out of respect for their parents. The deities were often regarded as myths. If we were to take a glance into the class register (there was a column where the religion of each student was filled in), we might be under the false impression that Buddhism was widely practiced. This claim was regrettable as many of us did not have the audacity to voice our beliefs, except when led to an isolated corner. I found this to be so, as out every ten students who wrote “Buddhism” as their religion, nine denied this. Even without their personal denials, we could plainly see the falsity of their claims, by their ignorance of even the basic tenets of the religion. Their only idea of Buddhism was that they had to follow the Wesak procession every year.

The same applied to the Hindus, most of them were unaware of the significance of their various festivals and beliefs. The Muslims, being most closely knit, or perhaps more rigidly controlled, were well versed in their religious teachings. Still I discovered that quite a large proportion of the modern Muslims were forsaking their beliefs, though not officially. It was only with some persuasion that the open confession was revealed. Unlike the Chinese Buddhists, they were liable to be ostracised, or even persecuted, if they tried to disclaim their adherence.

The Christians were perhaps the most faithful followers of their religion. The main reason was that the Bible was in English, and the activities of the missionaries were more prominent. Most of them had read about their religion. Many maintained that Christianity was the only true religion, though there were a few who might say that others were equally important. Most of them seemed to be sincere, and in fact confided with me that they felt different, warm and secure. Their hope was that more of us would be willing to be “saved”. To be fair to them, I must point out that, although they would always attempt to influence others, they had stressed that “compulsion” was most undesirable.

At least 70% of the students were not committed to any particular religion. Some were intelligibly not aligned but many were just being ignorant, and were not making any effort to enlighten themselves.
 We could place the non-adherents to religions into four categories: 1) The atheists, few in number, denied any existence of God and were convinced that religion served no purpose. They believed in self-judgement, the idea of good and evil were to be defined by them, and not by any prescribed text. 2) The agnostics, more common, preferred not to bother their innocent heads over controversies whether God existed or not. There were not many pure agnostics. Most of them believed in a supreme force, indefinable, which did exist. 3) The term “free thinker”, often misused, was the most common claim of identification by the non-religious. A free thinker was actually one who rejected authority in religion. In other words, he did not believe in God although he believed in the moral codes of religions. However, as most of them had not studied religions adequately, they could be considered as “non-thinkers”.

4) I would regard many of us as theosophists, though we did not call ourselves by that name. A theosophist was one who was interested in all religions, and that all faiths and believes were equally good. There was a belief in an “overlording” Power (which need not be called God). Some had come to this conclusion intelligently, in the sense that they had made efforts to read all religions, but had not found any one with particular appeal to them. Unfortunately, many of the theosophists derived it negatively, without any attempt to learn more, but merely because they had broken off from their inherited beliefs (Buddhism in the case of the Chinese). Partly because of the fear of being ridiculed (as Christians sometimes were), some said that they were not impressed by any religion (because of their ignorance). In contrast, theosophy sounded more intelligent, and perhaps it had become widespread among youths. In fact, one was more respected if he said that he was a “free-thinker” than if he were to claim to believe in a religion. There were also difficulties of reconciling their religious beliefs with their science education.

I would like to emphasised that all of us, even if we were devout Christians, should wipe out prejudices and make efforts to read up all faiths, religions and philosophies. Then only could we differentiate what course we should take.

(This article was written in 1964. I was not a Christian then.)