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Last weekend, I went off in search of answers. It’s usually questions of a trivial nature that keep me awake at night: Why is there only one monopolies commission? Is there another word for synonym? If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?

This time, however, matters of a less trivial nature were vexing me and so I decided to turn to God. Well, one of them. The Christian one in fact.

Now, Christians often have a rough time around this neck of the woods. Over in Malaysia, they have recently come under fire — quite literally — for their use of the word “Allah.” Closer to home, bigotry and the mob mentality often predominate over pluralism and churches are often blockaded and denied permits. Over in Bekasi, Muslim residents recently closed a local church after complaining that it was disturbing their sleep, which I found ironic, to say the least.

As a result of all these shenanigans, Christians are often to be found hiding in churches located deep within shopping plazas and commercial estates in Jakarta. These do not seem like ideal locations, given Jesus’s attitude toward money changers and the like, but on another level, perhaps entirely fitting if you subscribe to the opium of the masses argument. Aren’t shopping plazas our new churches, after all?

I decided to make my way to one of these retail houses of worship last Sunday to see what goes on and do a bit of clapping. I soon found myself down at the Bellagio Plaza in the Mega Kuningan area where the Jakarta City Blessing Church sits on the top floor.

I strolled inside the hypermodern house of the Lord and passed a door marked “Sunday School,” which immediately gave me flashbacks to the many tedious Sunday mornings of my youth. Inside, a mix of ethnic Chinese and Indonesians were gathered, waiting patiently for the service to begin.

The mall church’s interior was fully carpeted and crammed with plasma TV screens. A four-piece electric band sat in the corner, ready to rock out below a painted ceiling mural of fluffy clouds and blue skies, which looked something like the Sistine Chapel, Walt Disney-style. Basically, it was the complete antithesis of the cold pews and dour piety of the old British churches of my childhood and more redolent of the American mega-church phenomenon.

As if to confirm my USA for Jesus thesis, the female pastor stepped up to the altar, the band burst into life and the congregation leaped to its feet, ready to bellow out a Bon Jovi-esque soft rock power hymn. Rather than hymn books, the worshippers followed the words karaoke style on the TV screens.

The pastor skillfully worked up through the gears and into a religious semi-frenzy as she implored the congregation to pray for people from “Pulau Nias all the way to Pulau Roti.” Many members had closed their eyes at this point, with palms held forward, as if warming themselves with the Lord’s divine light. Yes, it was all very American, of course, although the assembled parishioners stopped short of speaking in tongues and going all wobbly before falling over backward.

Eventually, it was time for the collection. Envelopes were distributed with a handy BCA account number printed on them should one wish to make a convenient transfer or set up a monthly debit payment.

God is dead, according to Nietzsche back in the 19th century. Well, he certainly seemed to be alive down at the Jakarta City Blessing Church. What Mr. N meant by this bold assertion, though, is not that there aren’t people who still claim to believe. Rather, he meant that this belief is simply not of the type that people used to have. It is not the central pillar of our lives anymore, as much as some of us might want to insist that it is.

Our materialistic culture and our scientific rationalism have riddled such faith with the bullet holes of doubt and reduced it to a compartmentalized Sunday morning social club, after which the congregation retreats to the parking lot in order to compare their new cars.

At the other end of the religious spectrum lies the Muslim suicide bomber. Are they any surer of their faith? Perhaps, instead of rabid certainty, they are in fact trying to draw a line under their own unconscious doubts with a final, ultimate act of affirmation. So where does that leave us? Ho hum. Well, I guess it’s another week of existential dread and nihilism for me then. Happy Easter.