My parents are religious people. I’m not sure if this is at all apparent from the writing that I’ve done here, but they are — they go to church every week, my mother reads from her Bible every day and hums hymns while she irons, they keep me in their prayers, and up until several months ago they also attended or hosted a weekly Bible study meeting where they and a group of old church-friends gathered to share testimony, discuss matters of theology, sing loudly in cracked voices, and munch on yummy things.

My mother has been a Christian (of the Methodist variety) ever since she was a little girl, when her mother converted from Buddhism — but my father’s faithfulness was more lately won, and it has evolved over the years. During my childhood I remember his interest in the church being almost exclusively intellectual — partly a function of his passion for ancient history and philosophy. He read the scriptures, but even more he drank deep from scholarly interpretations of the Bible. He didn’t use to take communion. He judged the quality of a sermon by the rigor of its argument, not by its emotional persuasiveness. He seemed to be pretty comfortable engaging in religious life as long as it was mostly a life of the mind. (Also, he loved music of all kinds and I think he enjoyed services as much for the opportunity to participate in choral singing as for anything else.)

Little by little his heart and soul began to be won over as well, and a few years ago he decided to get baptised. I’d say these days he’s as spiritual as my mother is, although they still manifest their beliefs in different ways. But he’s still my intellectual father, and he still approaches the text of his chosen faith with the eye of a critic and analyst. He is constantly asking questions and seeking out new answers. He loves theological debate. And while he does enjoy being on the winning side of an argument (where I get it from, I think), he is about as curious and open-minded a thinker as I know. It is one of the most wonderful things about him.

So I was a little perturbed this morning. I got an email from him telling me that he thinks perhaps (or rather, my very perceptive mother gently suggested to him that perhaps) one of the reasons a treasured family friend may have left their nearly 20 year old Bible study group is that my father had a habit of bringing up too many controversial topics for discussion. He prefaced this note with a reference to a book he’d recently heard about, entitled The Argumentative Indian. Nothing if not a sense of humor.

Well, I was a little perturbed but mostly proud. I love my argumentative Indian father, and I hope he knows he’s got himself an argumentative Indian-Chinese daughter to battle with whenever he wants.