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When I was a child, we'd be sent off to the local fleapit for the children's morning matinee – the serial, a cartoon and a full-length film.

All this for sixpence each! On Sundays, scrubbed and starched, we'd be despatched to Sunday School. Not so much for the good of our souls, I realise now.

So Mum and Dad could have a lie-in and a little bit of nookie.

This week's Write Space by Jenny Argante.

I was thrown out of Sunday School one year when they told us the Easter Story. I never returned. Crucifixion is an agonising death. If that was the price demanded, I said, I'd prefer to redeem myself. Any god who let this happen to his own child wasn't someone I wanted to know.

Though I express myself less openly nowadays, I remain ambivalent. The Bible claims God created man in his own image. Not so. Man has created God in his own image – and different men in different regions of the world still present us with gods to suit their own purposes.

Durkheim says religion is about 'social cohesion” – a force to bring us together. 'Religion,” he argued, 'is an expression of our collective consciousness, which then creates a reality of its own.”

So we go to church or temple or mosque to worship ourselves. How arrogant we are.

Unfortunately, that force which interconnects people within one particular society often conflicts with how that same force expresses itself elsewhere. This is our modern dilemma. Religion is too often the misuse of a neutral energy for destruction not productivity.

I hate the term ‘non-believers'. Non-believers are believers who just happen to believe something different from us. Labelling others as heretics or infidels is a first step towards extremism – the attempt to impose your faith on others by any means whatsoever.

I dislike Christians who quote the Old Testament to shore up adherence to statements such as ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.' Aren't we named ‘Christians' after Jesus Christ, and wasn't His a brand-new covenant based on love and forgiveness and mutual aid? His testament supersedes the old, whose relevance now is mainly historical.

If we think of divine energy as something universal we can all tap into, then ‘god' in any society takes on a shape and form that believers and followers are happiest with. We can be universalists, working with each other to utilise our shared precepts of compassion, charity and care.

And, yes, tolerance too often morphs into indifference. But, really, the only way to judge a religion is by how its followers behave. History has proven that no one religion is free of intolerance, cruelty, bigotry and the desire to control and dominate.

So let's forget our obsession with beliefs, and concentrate on individual spirituality and the common good. Then it becomes irrelevant what god we worship, because that remains a private matter.

Allowing us to see leaders like Jesus Christ, Buddha and Mohammed as manifestations of divine purpose. We can decide to whom we relate, respecting the choices others make.