Photography by the author. The text has been amended for accuracy.

About a year ago, I stopped telling people I was Christian, even though I have always been told I was “born Christian”.

I toyed around with the term “free-thinker” for a bit, but never liked how overly general it sounded. What am I supposed to be thinking freely about, anyway? So instead, over the past year, whenever anyone asked what my religion was, I would simply shrug and say, “I’m open.”

It’s not so much that I don’t want to be Christian; it’s that I just can’t get into religion (or more specifically, organised religion) at all. In fact, it’s been 18 years since I left church out of boredom and disinterest.

Throughout the years, I’ve accepted invitations to friends’ churches in hopes of finally becoming the ‘good Christian’ that I was supposed to be. In university, I even briefly hung out with people from a campus varsity Christian fellowship. (I never felt more out of place.) And then there was the year I told myself I would start reading the bible again but lost focus after a few pages.

No matter what I did, everything reminded me of the reasons I stopped going to church in the first place: religion and its people were simply too rigid for me.

Nonetheless, I am told God works miracles even on the hopeless. So this year I decided to give City Harvest Church’s (CHC) Christmas service a shot.

I’ve heard a lot about CHC’s service, replete with high entertainment value stage productions, professional laser lighting, and impeccable audio quality. People say that a megachurch can resemble a cult, but at least it adds variety.

Besides, nothing else has worked so far, so I figure I have nothing to lose with this last ditch attempt.