You don’t need to be Gordon Brown to know that the title today is from the Arctic Monkeys CD. You may wonder why I have used it… a blatant attempt to capture a few unsuspecting monkey’s fans who stumble upon my blog when looking for articles on their heroes, perhaps? If that is you then I am sorry to disappoint you but do stick around and have a read.
I would like to continue with theme of my last 2 posts. Yesterday in bclc we started looking at this months theme – Interfaith relations. As you all know by now the first week is through the world’s eyes. Today, of course, is the 5 year anniversary of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, a bit of a landmark event in interfaith relations terms. The discussion basically came down to concluding that the agenda for relations between faith groups is largely set by the fanatics on the edge of the groups. Where ordinary people meet there are usually very good stories to be heard of people just getting on regardless of their differences in belief.
Then someone made a very good point and one that relates to some of the things I have covered recently. This was that there would be fewer problems between people if we didn’t identify ourselves so much by what we are interested in or believe or like. For instance, I am a person who holds broadly christian beliefs, likes Manchester City, is the father of 3 great kids, works in IT, enjoys a drink and used to smoke. So I could be lebelled at any time as a non-smoker, a drinker, a geek, a dad, a city fan or a christian. The truth is though that I am all of those things and more besides BUT you have to know me to know which of them is most important to me.
I won’t put a fish on my car because it tells people I am a christian and I would rather they found that out about me (along with everything else) as they go to know me.