I snickered when I saw this in a mall a few weeks ago.

Why are these Christian kids participating in a "feng shui astrology forecast"? Don't they know that feng shui and astrology are non-Christian superstitions and are frowned upon by God? Tsk tsk.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. My grandmother died when I was eight, and at her funeral, my uncle told me about how good the feng shui of the burial site is. I was instantly confused. Unlike him, I had actually been paying attention to Sunday sermons, absorbing fundamentalist Christian doctrines like a sponge. I was taught that only the Bible holds the truth; feng shui, like all other forms of superstition, is a lie!

It took me years to finally understand that the line between religion and culture is often not clearly defined. Feng shui is part of Chinese culture, and people don't automatically stop being Chinese just because they become Christians. Even boundaries between religions get blurred from time to time. For example, two of Christianity's most cherished traditions, Christmas and Easter, both have pagan origins.

Of course, religious nonsense and cultural nonsense do occasionally come into conflict. The dragon is a good luck symbol for the Chinese, but for Christians, it represents the Devil. What is a good Chinese Christian to do? Some fundamentalist groups make their followers burn everything--shirts, mugs, paintings, etc.--that happens to have dragons on it. Other groups don't worry about mythical creatures as much.

As religions and cultures expand and come into contact with each other, war often results. But sometimes, they make love and produce bizarre hybrid babies. Somewhere in Manila's Chinatown, there's a statue of the Virgin Mary in a Buddhist-style shrine. Things like this of course drive fundamentalists to lament the decay of dogma and rigid religious systems. But to hell with them, right? It's a good thing to try to coexist without killing each other.

So kids, go do the feng shui dance for Jesus or whatever. I'm sure Xenu won't mind.