The carpet feels prickly under my feet. I think I am shaking, but I don’t know if it’s actually happening or if it’s all in my head. I walk up the steps to the microphone. I am terrified of saying the wrong thing, even though I already know what I have to say. The pastor asks me a question. Its cadence is different from the questions he’s asked the people before me, and I am thrown, but I manage to spit out the words I know everyone is expecting me to say. I agree.
I am led to the right of the microphone, where I kneel on a red cushion, and place my bowed head into the bowl-shaped receptacle in front of me. The pastor holds his Bible aloft, recites a few sentences, drips water onto my head, and before I know it, it’s over. I hear the sound of applause, someone hands me a tissue to wipe the water from my forehead, and I stumble back down the stairs to my seat.
Chinese culture and Christianity make for a good fit. They both espouse conservative values, and the importance of community
None of this was really my choice, because I was pressured into getting baptised by my youth group’s adviser, a woman I had called 姊姊 since I was a child. This sort of pressure was different from peer pressure, because it didn’t pull on a need to be accepted into a peer group. Instead, it called on deep-seated cultural expectations that I didn’t really understand.
Chinese culture and Christianity make for a good fit. They both espouse conservative values, and the importance of community. I grew up calling anyone who is older than me 哥哥 or 姊姊, 阿姨 or 叔叔, just like we are brothers and sisters in Christ. There is also a strong emphasis on family. The first part of the fifth commandment, “honour your father and mother”, in Chinese, is “孝孫父母”. It seems relatively innocent, but 孝孫 means more than just honour. It means honour, respect, and obedience, all rolled into one. It means you should be filial. It means family comes first, and you will be damned if you see it any other way.
My youth group was part of this family, and my youth group leader was my elder. I didn’t think I was ready to be baptised, but she insisted, and I didn’t know how to argue back. There were so many other kids in the youth group who were younger than me who were already baptised, she said.
I didn’t know how to tell her I was going through a crisis of faith, that I didn’t know if God existed, and if he did, I didn’t know why he hadn’t helped me, or answered any of my prayers. I didn’t know how to tell her because I didn’t know how to tell anyone that I had been bullied heavily at school and I didn’t have any friends and I thought I had depression because there was a period of time there where I wanted to kill myself. I didn’t even know the words in Mandarin for depression or suicide or bully.
I didn’t know how to tell them that a childhood full of internalised filial piety and respecting your elders meant I didn’t know how to say no
I don’t even know if any of this would have changed her mind - maybe it would have made her even more insistent on my baptism. Maybe I agreed to it because some part of me hoped that sprinkling of water and those murmured words would bring back my faith, that it would ignite the type of change I had been looking for. It was the first time my parents got upset at me for anything related to church. 'You shouldn’t have let anyone pressure you into getting baptised', they said. It’s supposed to be your decision, and yours only.
As if I didn’t already know that.
I didn’t know how to tell them that a childhood full of internalised filial piety and respecting your elders meant I didn’t know how to say no. That I felt like I couldn’t say no.
I get baptised, and nothing changed.
Maybe I put too much faith in that little sprinkling of water. Maybe I put too much faith in my elders, the people who I was supposed to trust with my spiritual and physical upbringing. Maybe my life would have turned out differently if I hadn’t been baptised – there’s no way to tell.
If I could go back and do it all again, I’d like to think that I would stand my ground a little more, be more resolute in my convictions. But then again, there’s a reason Chinese culture and Christianity mesh so well together. I just don’t know if hindsight is powerful enough to overcome that pairing.
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Christians Like Us airs over two nights at 8.35pm, Wednesday April 3 and 10 on SBS.
