Thailand's Real Religion

I've only been here in Thailand eight weeks so far. So what I have to say about Thai culture is inevitably half-baked. Also, it's a little dangerous to criticize in the way I'm going to, which is why I'm posting here, not on Facebook.

Riding my bicycle back from the Big C superstore yesterday gave me some time to think... "What is the real religion in Thailand?" I think the state religion here is spirit worship and king worship -- enforced by social pressure and fear. If you disrespect the spirits, you will get a curse on you. If you disrespect the king, you go to jail for maybe ten years.

I didn't put Buddhism as the state religion because I'm generalizing from my experience in Taiwan that Buddhism is a veneer on the outside, with only a few truly dedicated followers, while spirit worship is something that every family participates in, a tradition that started thousands of years before Buddhism came around. Buddhism is more prominent in Thailand than in Taiwan, as monasteries have been centers of education, the king is supposed to be some kind of Buddhist-Hindu incarnation, and every man gets to be a monk for at least a short time once in his life. But I think spirit worship runs deeper and is included in the Buddhist blessings and ceremonies.

So, if spirit worship and king worship are the state religion, what is the folk religion? The heart religion in Thailand? It's got to be romance. Romance, the kind that Thais, especially women, watch on TV every night on soap operas called Lakorns. Romance promises beauty, sex, love, and power... and maybe a happy, committed relationship -- things everybody really wants, to the point of idolatry. Even though these shows are horribly melodramatic, they also have every good thing that Thai Christianity lacks: passion, arguments, violence, truth, love.

These qualities have been banished from religion by Buddhism and syncretism, but not from the life of the people. People get excited when they see something worth fighting for. They will suspend their reason to follow the story because it picks up their emotions and slams them together again and again. It's because in these structured little stories, there is a good guy and a good girl who are destined for each other. And we know that by the end, they'll be together despite the third lovers who try to barge in. That's an absolute truth.

Would to God that we can rescue these elements -- passion, arguments, violence, truth, love -- and put them in their rightful place in the divine romance of his chosen people.