A Fresh Start

I don’t know about where you live but the children around here went back to school this week. I saw some of the younger ones trooping past my house, clutching tightly to their mums’ hands. Some seemed excited, some a bit nervous; all were on the verge of a new start.

It was a same at the bus stop around the corner with the older kids. Pushing, jostling, fighting, texting, doing what kids in or approaching their teens do. Every one of their young lives had changed in the last few weeks of summer. All were advancing a school year or in many cases moving up to a brand new school. Some were starting formal education for the first time. They all had different histories and different things to look forwards to but the were all the same in one crucial respect: they’d all grown up a little.

On the same day that I saw this our national news showed images of people in Belfast hurling missiles and abuse at police and other people who have different views to their own – mostly religious ones. Then they showed images of people in the Middle East doing pretty much the same thing.

So in the twenty-first century we’re still playing the ‘my god’s better than your god’ game? And the people involved think that they’re showing the world how great their god is by attacking anyone who thinks differently? I’m shaking my head in genuine bewilderment as I type this.

I’m no history student but it seems to me that religious intolerance has been the cause of more wars than any sneaky land grabs or political assassinations. And we all know who to blame, don’t we? It’s ‘the other guy’, the one who looks strange or has customs that seem entirely alien to us. It’s easy to look at a ranting fanatic and think that he’s an idiot who should simply take a chill pill. But isn’t that thought in itself a kind of religious intolerance? And aren’t supposedly-enlightened atheists and agnostics just as guilty of this thought crime? Casting my mind way back to my own schooldays, I was taught that The Crusades supposedly ended around seven hundred years ago. Looking at the state of the world today I’m not so sure.

Those children walking down my street showed signs of growing up. It seems that many alleged grown-ups are yet to follow suit.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie

Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘Make Easy Money from Writing’ and several other books – available from Amazon now.