If I read about another sexual harassment case, I will consider resigning from the human race. ‘He touched me on the knee thirty years ago’. ‘He lay on top of me thirty-five years ago’. ‘He put his hand on my buttocks at a party’. Shock! Horror! The world, amidst terrorism, war, hunger, killings, genocide and a hundred other terrible (and redeemable) things, gasps in disbelief. The results of these sometimes baseless or exaggerated accusations are that careers and reputations are destroyed, or you are elected as President of the USA.

We rarely read of men complaining that ‘She touched me on the knee thirty years ago’. ‘She lay on top of me thirty-five years ago’. ‘She put his hand on my crotch’: unless we are reading depositions to the courts in relation to pedophilia involving institutional figures. It happens, but it is rarely an issue.

Take another view: male to male. I could, if I wanted to, point my finger at my scout master, a priest, my music teacher, a fellow theologian, an applicant for a position in Jakarta, a war lord in Pakistan (offering safety in his bailiwick in return), and men on trains and buses across the world.

Did I respond? No. Would I jump on the bandwagon? No. If I was pressed to? No. If he were rich? Hmmm. That makes you think.

If every ‘improper’ advance was catalogued, there would not be enough paper in the world on which to record them. Sex is a biological function inadequately contained by social and moral laws. For every star, MP or priest brought down, there are trillions more who are never charged or accused. What makes the difference? Fame and perhaps the possibility of fortune. Or maybe ‘success’ makes us jealous? Tall poppies?

I am not trivialising sexual advances, but an advance is not of itself a physical, sexual act. It might hope to end up as one, hut that is another issue entirely. We might just as well consider shooting a dog who sniffs a bitch on heat. The bitch might accept the advance or reject it. It is her decision that is as much an essential component of the action as the advance.

Morals set constraints on Nature. That creates tension. By nature, we are human. If we behaved according to the considered dictates of our joint brain and our heart, then our world would be far more wonderful. We do not.

Our rationality as part of our interdependence in the cosmos, demands rules: morality. We have the seventh commandment. Most agree with its intent. The same is true of the Q’uran: Do not go near adultery, surely it is an indecency, and an evil way (of fulfilling sexual urge]. Our agreement is largely in principle only. When it comes to ‘lust’, we can readily suppress our decency.

Infidelity? If you truly love your partner, regardless of your type of relationship, you stay true to them, if for no other reason than, if you were to do otherwise, the relationship gets complicated.

However, when our vagina or our penis rules, our moral judgement dissipates. This applies to all humans. Physical attraction is biologically normal, If we were to give in to every physical desire that naturally and regularly occurs, chaos would and does result, be it eating, killing, hatred in its various interactive forms, sex and so on. When our desires override out social and moral sensibilities, we resile from the essential reason we have to exist: respect for others and for ourselves

Sadly, we seem to prefer to operate on our baser drives. We abhor the result amongst our leaders and those we respect. We bring them down.

We largely ignore what the neighbours—even we ourselves—get up to.

Double standards perhaps?

TOLERANCE

Living today in the IT age presents far more challenges than we thought. We all expected things to be easier. We were wrong. As in every aspect of life, for every positive introduced there is a negative. That is the way the universe works.

In the 21^st Century, we are a world community bound together across the boundaries we have arbitrarily established to identify ourselves, and found that we share so much, and that we differ so much. The tragedy is that we treat those differences as further boundaries. They become the subject of derision, pity, disgust, intolerance: a rage of negatives that threatens at individual and social and national levels to create firestorms of discontent. Differences in culture, religion, morality, expectations, understanding: these enhance rather than coalesce, community/social/cultural variations. It becomes too easy to say: I don’t do things that way: that is odd/bad/evil and so on. Instead of appreciating differences, we exacerbate them by exaggerating what divides us to the point of distaste.

On a personal level, we are capable of responding to jingoistic calls for national service and loyalty in times of war, even though we may disagree with, say, war. We abhor violence, but we take up arms. This is where we fail. Unless people are able to see differences as spices enhancing the basic flavour of the human cake, we will continue to be willing participants in the march towards total breakdown.

This may seem extreme, but think on it for a moment. Politicians and their business surrogates (or vice versa depending on your perspective) stir up our parochial eed to be unique and great and wonderful and loyal to the point where our own sense of right and wrong is ground under foot. When trouble looms, loyalty is something we give to our own kind: not to others.

We are stirred up in fiery speeches by adept politicians (demagogues?) who paint the opponents we allegedly have—often those standing in the way of international business—and any love, compassion or humanity flies out the door. We resort to anything but love and tolerance and understanding: we fervidly embrace violence as the only solution. It happens internationally and inter nationally. Society ends up as a force to impose force and violence as the only way. It has always been that way. We are supposed to learn from the failures of wars, violence and the machinations of history in which we are the fodder. War achieves nothing. Violence achieves nothing. Except reciprocated violence. We fail to learn from history, and as Geroge Santayana observed: that condemns us to repeat the mistakes of the past. “We are in the right: therefore you must be in the wrong”.

Consider what happens between faiths. Consider the bane of todays anti immigrant policies. Consider the impression the rhetoric gives that Islam is our greatest foe. It is not, but the more we back violent or even divisive rhetoric towards them, our fears will become self fulfilling: not because Muslims are evil, but because we pushed them into reaction.

There is so much more to living than building a wall of exclusivity around what we are. Multi culturalism has, it must be said, not always worked. But in so many respects it has made our countries far richer. If we could only learn respect, tolerance and interest without dogma and judgement, we would be far better off.

The word we should champion is tolerance.

“So you don’t do things the way I do? Fine. That’s your prerogative. I’d love to talk to you about it someday if you are interested”.

Of course, that is hard to do. I have lived in Islamic countries for over forty years. I have travelled the world. I have seen dozens of cultures, practices, belief systems and so on—all of which are ‘strange to me”. Do I deride them? Do I say “I know better because of what I am?” That was the first lesson I had to learn. If I go into your home, maybe I don’t like the way you have decorated your home or I dislike the habits you display in bringing up your children. Do I criticise? Of course not. I might talk about it to someone I trust—and that is not a good thing, I suppose. But it underlies the tolerance and respect of which I speak. We stand to learn much more than we can teach from those who differ from us.

Perhaps in a confrontation, the other party may attack our values. Fine. Learn to ride with it. Whether we can or net depends a great deal on our individual (and societal/ political) personalities. Therein lies the problem: hot heads can lose it. The result? Disaster. Let people speak. Let them exchange ideas. Everyone has the right to an opinion. Sometimes those opinions will jar with our own principles. So? If we were all the same, it would be a vanilla world.

And the meek? Inherit the earth? Gandhi did. There is no reason others can’t.

The Changing Dmgraphic of Faith

 Most drive ins closed shop years ago. The same is now happening to churches and their ilk: going out of business. Inner city areas are particularly badly hit. So many old churches are now converted to less profitable uses: restaurants, restaurants, chic apartments and so on. That can be understood: populations have moved to the suburbs. Even as the demographics change, and populations move elsewhere, is a continuing decline. Those that continue, do so with congregations of increasingly higher average age.

Of course, some will point to charismatic churches which attract thousands. But even there, statistics show a decline. The average shows a decline in ‘relevance of religion to me’ over the past ten years from 74% to just over 50%. And it continues to decline.

Some would suggest that some of the more arcane faiths (Anabaptists, Amish and so on) would lose relevance in this day and age. The reality is that, when asked about their religious interest, more and more people are responding with the thumbs down. This is not limited to Christianity. Despite the encroachment of Islam, it, too, is declining.

Throughout the world, the number of non-religious people is growing significantly. In some countries, they make up the largest group when measured on a census or a social survey.

In today’s world, which are the most religious countries? Egypt, Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The least?

·      China (7%),

·      Japan (13%)

·      Sweden (26)

A lack of religious affiliation affects how people view death, what they pass on to their children and even how they vote. Trump swept in to power on the back of right wing Christian votes. This is not to say that non religious people are not capable of passing morals and values and the like on to their own children? Of course not. Morals are not dictated by any god or faith. Consider that in the USA, one of the world’s most fervently Christian countries, 96% of jail inmates are Christians. The remaining 4% are non religious. Where are the true moral standards derived from?  

Some people assume that religion will lose its relevance as the world continues to modernize. There is some truth in that view. Current studies show that this is indeed happening—and quickly.

Look at it another way. These ‘western’ countries have a majority of secular populations are:

·      Netherlands

·      New Zealand

·      The United Kingdom

·      Australia

It is hard to escape the conclusion that religion is less important to most people now. But that is not true of all countries. In Africa, religion thrives. Religion peddles hope: many Africans need that. Even in China, now that the shackles of communism are loosening, religion is growing.

Is this majority united? Are religions united? No. Religions and no religions depend on people and most people become so convinced that they are right that enforce their views on others. Islam? A culprit definitely, but not exclusively. More and more information in the social networking age provides a bewildering array of options. People become confused. The human species, when confused, falls back on dogma. They become like a herd with a mentality that asks to be directed and follow shepherds with crooks. We end up with over 4,00 religions. Which one is right? The one you choose.

Agnostics and atheists similarly suffer schisms. Some are avowed atheists. Others are agnostic. Some simply do not care. They are divided in their affiliations to the cause as are those who adopt a religion.

Is god dead? Belief in him/it/she is dying. One statistic is interesting: the majority of non believers are young people. The other is that most non believers are white. The pressure on African Americans stems from the place religion—particularly Christianity—holds in African-American history. The Civil Rights movement based itself in and on religious dogma. African Americans don’t forget the power that gave them.

But like all statistics, they miss the point. It is easy to unite people around not believing in something. It is a negative to start with. “I do not believe in a god”. That will never take the world by storm. Beliefs cannot be created on negativity. Most are created by the accident of your birth in a particular geographic, racial and social society.

Beyond that, we need to grow up and think for ourselves. Once we have decided, fine: you as an individual are sure of yourself. Trillions of others—all with differing views—feel the same. On both an individual and socio/ political level, what is needed is respect. We may—and do—revert to abuse and criticism. Therein lies another truth: when the chips are down and we feel threatened, we lash out. Even priests have been murderers.

Make up your own mind. Keep making it up. You will never reach “total understanding”. Given that, respect those who don’t see things the way you do. So, is religious affiliation declining? It is. Is spirituality declining? No. But spirituality does not need a god.