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This week: Interfaith Friendships Edited by: NaNoKit  
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You don't have to believe exactly the same things as your friends. Diversity in views can enrich your life.
This week's Spiritual Newsletter is all about friendship, and what it's about.
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I was born into a Christian family. That meant that I was sent to a Christian primary school. That, and the fact that it was close, I suppose. And that my mom and my uncle went there when they were a child, which wasn’t always a bonus because there were still a couple of teachers there who remembered them and their mischief. The good thing about that school, though, is that despite its Christian nature there were quite a few kids there from other religions. And I didn’t see them as my Muslim friends, Hindu friends and so on – to me, they were just friends.
Sometimes we’d celebrate different religious festivals, which mainly came down to having a chat about it and having some good food. I was all for that. Especially the food. And when you are a kid, you don’t worry about any differences. If anything, they are interesting. Just like it was interesting that either my friends or their families came from Surinam, Morocco, Pakistan, India, China, New Zealand... it was cool to learn what life was like there and their stories took me all around the world.
My high school was less diverse, but I did have a good friend whose parents were from Morocco. She and I were both into the same bands, and her father was quite strict – she wasn’t allowed to put posters on her walls because of her faith. I could kind of sympathise, because whilst most of my family were quite relaxed about their faith, my great-aunt was rather full on and often insisted on going on about sin – something I was definitely guilty of in her opinion because I didn’t just want to marry and have kids and be a stay-at-home mother. It taught me that people embrace religion in different ways, just as they do anything in life.
Maybe I’m getting to that age now where I think that everything seemed so much simpler back in the day. Or maybe it is simply because when you’re younger you’re often less aware of what’s going on in the world. Maybe it’s also because news is so accessible now that we have the Internet. Just... it seems that there’s a lot of division going on. A load of assumptions about how if people are Christian, they’re this, and if they’re Muslim, they’re that, as though it is impossible for us to get along. It’s silly, really. Just because some of our beliefs are different doesn’t mean that we cannot have a lot in common. That we cannot be friends.
I have, to this day, friends of different faiths. Buddhist, Wiccan, Muslim, different Christian denominations, Jewish. I also have friends who are atheists and those who are agnostic, and those who have a spiritual life that cannot be easily labelled. It has never been a problem for us. When we do speak about religion and faith we respect the other’s views. It can still be very interesting to learn about different beliefs. Mainly, however, we chat about the kind of things that we have in common, and our day-to-day lives, like friends do.
It doesn’t matter what faith someone has when you’ve had a bad day and they’re there to cheer you up. Or when something good has happened and they share your joy. Same goes for the other way around. It doesn’t matter if your religious beliefs are slightly different when you can have a laugh with someone, a cry, a rant, when things happen in life that anyone can relate to. You’re there for the other, you care about the other, and that is what is important.
If it were possible for life to be filled with carbon copies of yourself, it would soon get boring, in my opinion. As that isn’t possible, there are always going to be differences between you and those around you. Like, many of my friends like dance music, whilst I’m a rock chick. Hardly any of my offline friends are bookworms, whilst I am. We watch different movies, different TV shows. It doesn’t matter, so why should faith?
I’ve heard it said that it’s because faith shapes your outlook on the world, and that may be true to a certain extent, but it doesn’t shape your personality. Someone good and kind is going to be good and kind whatever their religious beliefs. Someone deeply unpleasant is going to be deeply unpleasant no matter what their faith may be. If you meet someone good and kind, who you click with, I feel that it’s a shame to dismiss them just because they follow a different religion. It’s a missed opportunity, as it may have led to a great friendship.
As long as people can respect their differences and embrace their similarities, we needn’t stand divided. I think it’s nicer to live as we did when we were kids – to not see the other as Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Sikh, but as potential friends.
NaNoKit
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Spiritual: February 22, 2017 Issue [#8144]
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