When home-grown performer Kit Chan was young, she attended Fairfield Methodist Girls’ School. She had a teacher Ms Joy Nga whom she described as “very nice”.

Ms Nga told her students that she would be doing Bible Study before class started, and invited them to come along if they were interested.

“I liked her a lot, so I went. We had this sense that we were part of something special,” Kit told Salt&Light.

To date, the renowned singer and performer has numerous albums to her name, and has performed leading roles in many stage musicals, including Snow.Wolf.Lake with Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung, Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress and The LKY Musical.

She is probably best known as the singer of the beloved National Day ballad, “Home”, which she first sang at the National Day Parade (NDP) in 1998. This year, she will also be returning to the NDP stage to perform its theme song – “Here We Are” – for the SG60 show, alongside other Singaporean singers Charlie Lim and The Island Voices. 

Kit Chan played Mdm Kwa Geok Choo in The LKY Musical, opposite Adrian Pang who played Lee Kuan Yew.

Ms Nga shared with her young students the story of Jesus and how He died for all of them.

“You’re thinking, why would this man die for us? She said He loved you so much that He died for you. Then you’re just like kind of overwhelmed by the love,” said Kit, now 52.

After a few gatherings, she and some other students were so moved by this love that they cried, and received Jesus into their hearts.

Kit also had another teacher who used to play Christian films for the students whenever there were free periods after exams. 

“It really moved me forward (in my faith). I would go back home and repeat everything that my teacher said, and that was how I sort of converted my two sisters,” she added.

Kit travelling with her big sister.

When Kit brought a Bible home, however, her mother was furious. Her parents believed in another religion by tradition and they saw Christianity as “the Western faith”.

“She wanted to throw away my Bible, so I had to hide it. That made it feel even more special. I definitely had a rebellious spirit,” said Kit.

What made her question God

That streak of rebellion again arose when Kit – a Literature student at Raffles Junior College – started questioning the Bible.

“I didn’t like all the stuff about women in the Bible – it’s so patriarchal. It was so very easy to misunderstand,” she said. 

Many of the literature texts that she read in those years led her to question God. In particular, she remembered In Memoriam, by well-known poet Alfred Tennyson. It is a requiem written for Tennyson’s friend, Arthur, who died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage.

The poem explores themes of faith, science, nature and mortality, and touches on spirituality, existentialism and the philosophy of death as the poet grieves the death of his friend.

“He was very angry at God and kept questioning that if there is a God, this won’t happen. But he raised the idea that faith lies not in conviction, but in doubt. In the end, he actually came back to faith. What he’s trying to say is that the questioning is good,” noted Kit.

Having a teacher who also explained that blind faith is sometimes not good faith, Kit came away from those discussions concluding that it was good for her to question her faith.

“Then I told myself, it’s okay to question, and it’s even okay to go away, because if God is real, you, you will come back,” she related to Salt&Light.

Kit still enjoys getting cosy with a book.

At that time, Kit also found herself largely influenced by existentialists, who assert that “God is dead”.

“I was declaring that God is dead to anyone who would hear it, thinking I was very clever,” she said.

“The idea that there is no meaning in life and you have to create your own purpose, you have to create your own meaning – that really spoke to me (at that point).

“Because I was trying to do something that was against the norm in the arts, so that fired me up and gave me the drive to be one of the first few persons in my generation to be a professional singer,” she said.

Back then, Kit was one of the rare few individuals in junior college who wanted to pursue a career in music. Even her friends advised her to stop dreaming, as everyone believed that no one would be able to make a living in music.

When Kit hit 18, it was time for her to replace her identity card (IC) with a new one. She went to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to get it done.

“So, there’s a human there who will write down your name and ask you questions. He asked for my race and dialect group and I answered. Then, he asked what was my religion. I just went ‘free-thinker’. It just came out,” said Kit.  

As the officer was writing it down, she hesitated for a bit.

“I was a bit like, ‘Should I stop him?’ And then I thought, ‘No, no, this is it. I’ve said it. This is it.’ So, then I was really proud of it. But at the same time, there was the fact that after I said it, I was bit scared. But then I thought, ‘Okay, the stone is cast, right? That’s it’,” she said.

From then on, she started telling her friends that she was not a Christian anymore. “I have turned my back on God,” she would tell them.

Kit denied God for the next 10 years.

A big, God-shaped hole in her heart

Yet, Kit found herself continually trying to find something to hold on to. She had a big, God-shaped hole in her heart that was waiting to be filled.  

“I was reading all kinds of things about the cosmos, the universe and energy, and playing with crystals. I realised it’s not enough to just walk on earth. I don’t believe that’s all there is to life, and that’s why I keep looking. But nothing could satisfy so I would move on to the next thing,” she said.

On hindsight, when she looked back at her journals, she realised that in those 10 years she had written poems that addressed God and were about God.

 “Actually, I never stopped looking for Him, and He never stopped tugging at me,” she told Salt&Light.

“There were so many poems I wrote that were questioning, looking for Him, and that’s kind of like believing, like sort of acknowledging that He’s there.” 

I Write a Page, the poetry book and CD that Kit published in 2000.

Perhaps it was her subconscious awareness of His nearness that prompted her to instinctively turn to Him whenever there was trouble.

When she was building her career in her 20s, Kit travelled often. In a year, she could be spending about nine months living in various hotels.

Part of living life on the road for her was running into evil spirits in her hotel rooms.

“They would come out in various ways, like your radio or TV turning itself on suddenly, or the light bulb in the room exploding,” she recalled.

“The director and producer kept insisting I change rooms, but I was too lazy to. I don’t know why, somehow I wasn’t scared. During those times, I would literally shout very loud: ‘In Jesus’ name!’ or say the Lord’s Prayer.

“(To me) He was like the father that you maybe don’t talk to but when something happens, you can just fall back on Him, almost like no questions asked,” she added.

Kit at the age of 21.

During those 10 years that she renounced her Christian faith, Kit’s career took off in a big way. When she was in her 20s, she focused on her singing and acting career, releasing albums and acting in musicals. She was just 25 when she first sang the classic National Day song “Home” in 1998, firmly carving for herself a place in national history and memory.

Yet Kit remembers her 20s as her toughest years.

“There was a lot of striving, and feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness. That’s why I was completely burnt out. Everyone was very shocked when I suddenly said I was taking a break because I had just had my major concert,” she told Salt&Light.

“I didn’t have God and I was absolutely exhausted and running on empty. Every day, it felt as if I was just like some sort of animal that had to work,” she added.

In 2001, Kit staged her first concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Kit never expected to go back to God.

“It’s like the Chinese saying that the horse won’t eat the grass that it has turned its back on. I had already denied God and I didn’t think I could go back,” she said.

The flames of faith in Africa

When she was 28, humanitarian aid organisation World Vision opened an office in Singapore. When World Vision approached her to work with them, she agreed as she liked the work they were doing to help children in Africa.

She went to Ethiopia to shoot a video for the organisation so that more people would understand the work that they do and step in to support the children.

While her team was there, they stayed at the World Vision headquarters.

Every morning, the people at the headquarters would hold a 6am service. Kit’s team was invited to join in and they politely went. Kit stayed there for seven nights, and she attended the service at 6am every day.

“We thought we better go, if not it’s not very nice. The whole service was conducted in their local language. The Africans were all such great singers so I enjoyed the singing. Then they started to pray and they prayed for 20 minutes,” she described.  

She wondered how she was going to sit through it, as she did not understand their language at all.

Kit’s humanitarian trip to Ethiopia with World Vision was the start of her return to God.

“But it was really weird. I was not bored. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I was with them for 20 minutes. I was just focused and I was following the flow of the prayer. I felt moved. I also don’t know why,” she told Salt&Light.

Kit and her team also went into the community to visit the children and distribute food.

She noticed that the children were really skinny and they held little cans to pick up every grain of rice that they spotted on the floor. 

“Yet they were happy. It was very easy to just play with them even though we couldn’t understand each other. The accompanying Singaporeans and I talked about it and wondered: Why is it that they are in dire straits, yet they are so happy?

“God spoke to us during the trip. After I came back, I just kept thinking that it’s so good to have God again,” said Kit.

Still, she did not do anything about it, though faith was arising in her heart once again.

The time to state her “identity” again

That year, the time came for her to change her IC once more, 10 years from the time she called herself a “free-thinker” on her IC.

Once again she went to ICA and again, she was asked what her religion was. This time, Kit replied: “Christian”. This time, she felt its significance.

“I was like, oh my goodness, that’s it. That’s it. I’m back (to the faith). I like drama and poetry; I really like how poetic this whole journey was, and almost funny. And if you think about it, it’s in your identity card, literally,” she said.

“God knows me, that I am a performer, I am expressive and have a rebellious streak. So maybe having to declare my faith in this way was God’s way of dealing with me.

“On hindsight, He was always with me. But I was being irritating and trying to assert my own identity in the past,” she added.

She told Salt&Light: ““I am not the best example of what a Christian should be like… I just hope that my ordinary journey with God can speak to and encourage others who are similarly broken.”

Growing in faith

Having returned to the faith after being in a spiritual desert for 10 years, Kit knew that she had to make some changes in her life in the years thereafter.

One of it was to learn more about God’s word in community.  

In 2014, Kit joined a Bible study class in Covenant Community Methodist Church, a church that she had been worshipping in for a number of years.

“I had a lot of feelings, a lot of heart about God but very little head knowledge. What’s interesting is others who grew up in Christian families shared that they have a lot of head knowledge but they struggle with faith. For me, I have very little knowledge but a lot of faith,” she said.

The Bible study classes that she attended helped her bridge the distance between her heart and head, and gave her a more holistic understanding of God.

“Bible study helped me a lot. One of the reasons why I renounced God was because I could not reconcile what I felt in my heart with what I was reading in the Bible. There’s so much of it I didn’t understand and I needed to learn how to interpret it. My rational side must be satisfied also,” said Kit.

Kit’s disciple class.

During the class, the Pastor asked all the participants what they liked most about Jesus.

“I like that Jesus was a rebel,” Kit answered candidly, to the amusement of her fellow study mates.

She enjoyed the Bible study classes so much that she ended up being the one with the highest attendance in class, despite her frequent need to travel for work.

“What was very amazing was that during those 35 weeks of class, every time there’s a new lesson, something would happen in my life that allows me to apply what I learnt,” she observed.

One of the lessons that her class touched on was on idolatry, of people worshipping other forms of idols in their lives apart from God Himself.

At that time, wax museum and tourist attraction Madame Tussauds had just come to Singapore.

“In our industry, people were excited and thinking if they would be invited to make their own wax figurines to be showcased there,” said Kit.

Kit was invited to do so, and she knew it was supposed to be a honour as the wax museum usually only showcases the movers and shakers of the country, in addition to key global figures.

Kit would have made a glamorous wax figure but she said no to Madame Tussauds as she felt it was not right to say yes to an idol of herself.

“Thinking purely for my profession, it’s something that is supposed to be good for you, for your public profile and career. I would simply do it without thinking at all. But then I started thinking because I had just studied about how not to erect idols in our lives,” said Kit.

“Something about it didn’t sit right with me. People go there, they take photos and get excited and then what? The figurines just stand there forever and it felt kind of eerie,” she added.

Not wanting to be rude, she told her management to decline the invitation, citing clashes in her schedule that did not allow her to take up the timeslot which they designated for her in order for her figurine to be made.

After a while, Madame Tussauds came back to her again and offered her another slot for casting.

Kit wavered a little but eventually declined it as she felt uneasy. It felt like she would be “erecting an idol” of herself.

Kit tries to live out her faith in her work.

When Madame Tussauds officially opened in Singapore and unveiled their wax figurines, some reporters asked her management why her figurine was not there.

“Even the management was thinking whether we did the wrong thing – now it looks like I was not important enough to be in there. But I am glad I made that decision because I would be very uncomfortable if I knew there was this figure of myself standing there,” said Kit.

Her manager later explained to the media that Kit had declined the invitation to be casted. Kit was quick to clarify that it was her personal decision and did not mean that other celebrities who had done otherwise were wrong.

To her, it was an action borne out of her respect for God, and it would not be the only one.

She told Salt&Light: “Along the way, there have been many big and small decisions I made in my profession that I have taken because I am Christian.”

Click here to read Part Two of Kit’s journey with God through the toughest episode of her life as a singer.

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