It’s been hardly three years since I moved up north from down south. Prior to that, it’d been a rather long time since I’d been in touch with a more “conservative” ethos of the Malaysian life. For one thing, most of my young adult life had been spent in the more urban settings. For another thing, I spent quite a number of years being immersed in life in a neighbouring country that’s utterly modern; in fact, very Western in many aspects.

Although I’ve often considered myself as being very much of a kampong boy (“village boy”), I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps I’m suffering from some form of culture-shock, or rather, a reverse culture-shock.

Here’s one big thing that alarmed me during the first few months here, and continues to alarm me: I realised that people here like to make mountains out of molehills. This is true even in the Christian context (or should I say, especially in the Christian context?)

Heck, it's true even in the context of the seminary where Christian ministers are trained. I know, because I taught in one. So let me just use this context as an example, because this was where I suffered the greatest shock after all.

Imagine, the slightest variance from the prescribed dress codes would earn you a spiritual exhortation (by this, I mean just a negligible difference between a collared and a non-collared t-shirt, between having your shirt tucked in and not tucked in). The slightest defiance of a rule, no matter how senseless it might be, could cost you a spiritual tongue lashing.

I’ve also found that the formation of Christians ministers in Malaysia is centred on rules. It’s not uncommon to hear comments like, “It’s the policy” or “I hope you understand, I’m just following the procedures”, no matter how ridiculous or archaic these policies and procedures may be. No one bothers to review the rules – and when someone does review the rules, you can almost always expect that it means a couple of other new rules will be coming up soon. I can’t seem to get used to such legalism. And I couldn’t get used to telling people that they had to somehow abide by such legalism just because “it’s the way things are”. Some people are busy making rules so that things can start running mechanically without them having to think through issues too much.

Another thing I’ve discovered about the formation of Christian ministers in Malaysia – they’re formed in an environment where every molehill becomes a mountain. Make a slightest mistake, no one forgets and no one stops talking about it. Earn yourself a bad reputation, it almost never leaves you and your reputation only gets worse and worse. Challenge the system when it shows itself to be unreasonable, and you’ll get more people cringing at how you’re not guarding your behind than people who’ll buy into your cause. And what’s worse, it gets blown up, blown up, blown up, until it becomes the talk of the entire community.

And here we are, hoping to see Christian ministers becoming people who have a mind to exercise sensible discretion, who don’t abide by rules simply because they need to guard their behinds, who stand up for what is right. We get frustrated when we see ministers toeing the line just because they’re politically intimidated, even if they know what the right way should be. They’re just not being incubated in an environment that embraces such values throughout their formation. The present ethos is making them become that which we least desire for them to be as spiritual leaders in the church.

When you unthinkingly order people’s lives by rules in the present, it’s inevitable that they learn to unthinkingly order their own lives by rules in the future.

So, that was just an example using a context in which I previously worked. It's unfortunate that this context happens to be a seminary - it makes me wonder where the Christian community is heading towards.

And then, at the wider level, it also makes me think about the state of things in Malaysian society, if this seminary context is not perhaps reflective of a wider reality as well. And to think we wanted leaders in society who could actually think.

Sure, there's a bunch of people who are astute thinkers in the Malaysian society - we call them "opposition". If I'm not mistaken, that's what they call such thinkers in the seminary where I taught too.