One of my favourite authors is Brian McLaren. I came across this quotation that I'd jotted down from one of his book   though I can't remember whch one:

                   "what you look for determines what you see
                    what you focus on determines what you miss 
                    the way you see determines what you are blind to and what you render invisible"

All of us are myopic in our vision. We're conditioned by experience, culture, upbringing, education to look at the world in a particular way and this conditioning can box us into thought processes and perspectives that close us to challenges and other perspectives. A famous example of this is Albert Einstein who actually changed a mathematical equation because he couldn't let go of his conditioned belief in a static universe. He called this his biggest blunder. 

I've been very much aware of this in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo affair,  In an article in the Scottish Herald journalist Ian McWhirter spoke out strongly in favour of freedom of speech while declaring quite categorically that he was anti-Islam but also anti- Christian, anti- Hinduism, anti- Judaism ........indeed anti-religion. He said this was because he was a humanist though I'm not too sure that follows.  For me religion and humanism are not mutually exclusive and I would want to maintain that true religion is humanist at its best. To dismiss religion so readily is to see only its dark side and ignore the contribution of religion to peace, social justice, culture, community support, meaning, value. Religion can encourage people to be aware of the misfortune of others, to pray for them and work to put this concern into practice. It puts before believers an ideal and encourages them to live up to the best they can be.  Take this excerpt from the Bahai scriptures:

" be generous in prosperity and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbour and look upon him with a bright and friendly face ..........be  unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victims of oppression ...... Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a hoeame for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring."

Of course no-one  will live up to these ideals perfectly as we are all incomplete and sinful people but it's good to have the ideals placed before us and to know that we have an ideal to strive towards. 

It's also true of course that to focus on the positive and idealistic side of religion blinds religious people to its dark side. It's easy to want to render that side of religion invisible.  This is dangerous as denial of the negative, oppressive and violent  can easily lead to a suppression which will burst out in unacceptable and even violent behaviour.  It's important for religion to face up to the negative side of its history - its tendency to exclusiveness and violence, competition, dogmatism, intolerance - all the negatives that lead it to be criticised and rejected.  To face these honestly and squarely is healthy and helps those of us who are religious  move beyond them to live the positive, acknowledging our own negative tendencies and breaking their power over us.     

Of course to see only the bad in religion and the good in humanism and other secular philosophies is eqally shortsighted. Secular philosophies were responsible for many of the atrocities, wars and violations of human rights in the last century and certainly haven't offered the world a better way towards peace and harmony. 

To focus on one side to the detriment of the other is to render invisible much of reality.  It's to see the world in black and white, to separate it into them and us, to operate an either/or system rather than a both/and. Both/and is just the way things are.  There would be no light without dark, no day without night, no man without woman, no peace without war. And because of this everything is interrelated and whether we like it or not we're in solidarity with all human beings and sentient creatures. After the Chalie Habdo affair people wanted to show their solidarity with those who were murdered by proclaiming :  Je suis Charlie ..............   They could also have said: 'Je suis terrorist'  because  our fellow human beings expose to all of us the seeds of sin and violence that live within all of us and whether we like it or not we are implicated in
their violence just because we share a common humanity and are interrelated. If one human being can act in such a way any human  being can do it.  Perhaps its only in facing up to this fact that we can develop the virtues of compassion, love, respect and understanding to ensure that our contribution to the world is a peaceful and not a violent one.  

There's much in the news about liberty, freedom of speech and democracy in the light of the shootings at the offices of the satyrical jounal Charlie Hebdo in Paris last weekend.  There's a sense of outrage at extremist groups who plan and perpetrate such violence in cold blood, stating that they are doing so in the name of God and religion.  And  there should be outrage and horror at such things. Politicians, religious leaders and members of the public have been very clear that this has nothing to do with Islam. Muslims have decried the atrocities in the name of God as debasing and distorting their faith. Islam is a religion that offers a way of peace and faithful muslims want to live in peace with their neighbours.  For them the idea of jihad is to fight against our own evil inclinations to live an upright and principled life, not to kill other innocent people.  So we are all standing up for - what?  Democracy, freedom of speech, the right to say what we want and satirise other people and institutions that they hold dear?

This weekend a Muslim member of the Scottish Parliament wrote in a Sunday newspaper that satire was not an excuse for murder and while all right minded people know he is right and would, I am certain, agree with him I do feel a bit concerned about absolutising freedom of speech - particularly when it happens in a public space or is spread by the media.  Do we not have the duty to use our freedom of speech responsibly and to avoid encouraging hate of those who are different? In this country we have legislation which outlaws hate crimes.  I'm not sure about France. But why would people deliberately publish cartoons that they know will cause real offence to some people and that there might well be a violent reaction to them. Why provoke people like this? Laughing at what people hold dear is akin to laughing at them, akin to dismissing their commitment to their faith as foolish, akin to suggesting they and what they believe are not worth respecting, are in fact stupid, akin to turning them into the other, the enemy. And it's this approach which leads to violence.  Cartoons of the Pope during the Reformation contributed to anti- catholic feeling and a hatred between Catholics and Protestant that has taken centuries to overcome.  Cartoons against Jews contributed to the anti-semitism which led eventually to the Holocaust.  So why not use satire to laugh at ourselves and use the media to inculcate respect of others?  We know that relationships with the Muslim world are fragile and yet we never seem to ask why young Muslims are so disaffected by life in the West that they go to join the Islamic State.  We never seem to want to dialogue or consider their concerns, or feelings of alienation or  marginalisation. 

Wouldn't it be great if the 40 heads of Government  walking arm in arm in Paris on Sunday had done so for peace, for dialogue, for understanding and respect for other faiths. The attack on the Kosher restaurent and the murder of four Jews has not had the same publicity as the attack on the offices of Charlie Hasbo offices. They were not murdered because of anything they had done but simply because they were Jews who happened to be shopping at that time. Today a Jewish friend pointed out that the BBC in reporting the situation in Paris talked about alarming trends in France : Jews leaving for Israel because they do not feel safe, more hate crimes against Muslims reported,   armed police men in front of Synagogue, 2 not armed, plain clothes policemen outside Mosque but no mention of what had happened to the Jews in the supermarket and  James Naughtie said, talking to the person of The Active Change Foundation:” The man who lost his life in the supermarket taking hostages” - no mention of the man being a terrorist or killer or that it was Jews who were taken hostages. Language is powerful in forming attitudes - in what is said and what is not said.  As are atlases sent to the Middle East by Harper Collins that simply omits the State of Israel from maps of the area.  

And let's not forget those 2000 old, young and sick people who were massacred in Nigeria by Boko Harem last week or the people who continue to suffer in Syria and Iraq.  Somehow they don't arouse our sympathy or outrage in quite the same way.  Perhaps too far from home

It's a long time since I've gone into town to bring in the new year. Now I'm content to stay at home and listen to the jollifications from afar. I don't really understand all the excitement, after all it's only another moment, another day.  But we do seem to like beginnings. They allow us to let go of past regrets, disappointments, failures and enter into a future that hopefully will be better,  It's a moment of conversion - when we turn from the past to the future and have the possibility of doing better. New Year resolutions show our desire to do better even if they don't last very long.   

On New Year's Day the BBC magazine had an article by Roman Krznaric with Leo Tolstoy's philosophy of life - very  appropriatefor a new year. It offered an approach to life that the world could well do with heeding - as could organised religion. 

1. Keep an open mind
We grow up with beliefs and philosophies that have been given to us by our familiy, teachers, religious communities culture etc. We're conditioned by those beliefs. They determine what we see and how we interpret the world and our place in it.  They also limit how we see the world because by focussing on them we're in danger of being blind to other philosophies and wisdoms.  We can even deny reality like Albert Einstein who distrusted his calculations about an expanding universe because they contradicted his given beliefs - his greatest blunder he called it.  Beliefs if held by a closed mind can confirm prejudices and superstitions. Beliefs held by an open mind can see through and beyond the words to the meaning and truth within them. An open mind can recognise truth and wisdom wherever it is found - in other faiths and philosophies, even in the most unexpected places.

2. Practise empathy
Aticus in ' To Kill a Mockingbird' famously said that we don't  understood another until we have walked a mile in their moccasins. The adventure of interreligious dialogue is to enter into the world of another faith - its beliefs, its rituals, its concerns and to see the world from that perspective. It's to try to understand the beliefs of those who are completely different from our own. It often strikes me that those who strongly hold beliefs that are not just non-religious but anti- religious do so as a result of a bad experience of religion.  And it's important for religious people to understand and acknowledge this. Even today when religion is implicated in so much violence it's good to consider the motivation behind some of this violence. For example, why would the State of Israel not be afraid for its existence when a publishing firm like Harper Collins erases Israel from its  map of the Middle East because the Atlas is used in Arab schools? What is this saying to students about peace in Israel/Palestine?  What is it saying to Israel about the intentions of its neighbours?  It certainly isn't helping any peace process. And so too for young people going to Syria to join the Islamic Caliphate. It's easy to condemn them and debate whether they should be allowed back into this country but what is it that motivates them. Should  we try to understand this?  

3. Make a difference
It's become common place to speak of face to face and side by side when describing interfaith relations.  Side by side is about social justice and working together for the common good. Many religious communities are committed to making a difference in their neighbourhood through soup kitchens, homeless shelters, centres for old people, youth groups etc. The Scottish Government recognises the social contribution that religious communities make as do others and some would see that this alone as sufficient reason to engage in interfaith relations. But do face to face conversations also make a difference?  Well of course I think they do. For one thing common social action, if it is to be truly common, must emerge from face to face dialogue.  But face to face dialogue in itself also offers an alternative vision of how religious people can understand and respect one another. It offers an alternative narrative that suggests religions are in competition with one another and opposed to one another.  It is this kind of dialogue that leads to an open mind, to a transformation and expansion of our beliefs  

4. Master the art of simple living
Religion advocates a simple life. All religions recognise the temporary nature of this life and keep alive the notion of an afterlife whether that be described as a heaven or as a future rebirth.  What we do in this life will have consequences in the hereafter in some way or another.  And this will not depend on possessions or wealth but on the virtues and values we have practised in our present existence. Religions encourage us to develop and promote a loving energy that seeks human flourishing and the common good and we know from science that such energy affects not just the world but the cosmos in which we live.  Perhaps this energy is all that we have to contribute to our world even when we are trying to make a difference in more practical ways. It is to be content with little and to recognise that consumption, materialism, greed, power can lead to a selfishness that could destroy our planet and harm future generations. 

5. Beware your contradictions
It's easy to be idealistic but we fail time after time. For example Tolstoy preached universal love yet was constantly fighting with his wife. St Paul tells us that the good we try to do, we don't do and the evil we want to avoid we end up doing. It's something I'm sure we all recognise. Religions tell us that we are incomplete, sinful human beings with tendencies to selfishness and greed. It's good to have the opportunity to acknowledge this, to confess that we don't live up to our ideals, to recommit to starting again.  And we have to do this over and over again as individuals, as faith communities and as communities in dialogue. It's easy to talk about interreligious dialogue as though it just happens. It doesn't. It needs working at and part of the dialogue is to be aware of the prejudices and contradictions we bring to the table.

6.Become a craftsman
Roman Krznaricolstoy suggested in his article that If Tolstoy were alive today he would be suggesting  we get some craft into our lives rather than spend so much of our leisure time tweeting and texting. While I don't do much of the latter I'm not an artist or craftsperson apart from the odd bit of knitting. I do get my hands dirty occasionally in the garden and recognise when I do how wholesome it is to feel my connection with the earth. Is this an area for development in the coming year? 

7. Expand your social circle
We all have a tendency to live in closed communities, whether religious, professional or whatever. We might emerge from time to time but tend to retreat back into the circles where we feel comfortable. However as Krznaricolstoy said,  "The most essential life lesson to take away from Tolstoy is to follow his lead and recognise that the best way to challenge our assumptions and prejudices, and develop new ways of looking at the world, is to surround ourselves with people whose views and lifestyles differ from our own.......... Cosseted within our peer group, we may think it perfectly normal and justifiable to own two homes, or to oppose same-sex marriage, or to bomb countries in the Middle East. We cannot see that such views may be perverse, unjust, or untrue, because we are inside circles of our own making. The challenge is to spread our conversational wings and spend time with those whose values and experiences contrast with our own." 

What better way to do this than through interreligious dialogue?