In the clink

What gift do you give to friends you’ve known for years? Our answer… go to London and watch a show together. So yesterday we did. We went to watch Six, the stories of the six wives of Henry VIII. It’s a concert as much as a show. Each wife tells her story and tries to earn the sympathy of the audience. The point, though, is to ask how they are to be remembered. You’ll have to watch the show to find out what they say! Before we travelled home this morning we went to The Clink Museum, the museum of the oldest prison in England. We like to spend our time doing things that will cheer us up! Although it wasn’t something to cheer us up. Not really. It was a trip through the things people did to other people that weren’t very nice. Not nice at all. And lots of it was done in the name of religion. Sad, but true. You could perhaps say it’s about how badly you could treat someone if you happened to disagree with them. Or, how badly you could treat someone who chose to believe something different to you. The list of inmates included many who found themselves on the wrong side of the prevailing religious view of the time. Most of the methods of torture and death focused on how those on the wrong side of the prevailing religious view were treated. It’s actually shocking. The good news, of course, is that we’re not like that today. Hmmm. I wonder how true that really is. If we look around at the world today and ask the question how much of the trouble is about different beliefs, I’m not sure how much better we are. It’s a sobering thought. Apparently one of the main reasons people are put off the Christian faith, is the violence they read in the Bible, which they understand to be perpetrated by God. And, as they look around the world today, it appears it still happens in the name of God. It would be true to say, I think, that the vast majority of us are not violent towards others. And will never be. But we are, perhaps, left with the question of how we will treat and respond to those who are very different to us, and whose beliefs are very different to ours. Trips to The Clink at least make me think about it!