Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that humanity's existence is tied to the intrinsic value of storytelling, highlighting the divine appreciation for narratives.
Jonathan Sacks asserts that God's creation of humanity is rooted in the love for stories, implying that our lives are narratives filled with meaning. This perspective emphasizes the significance of storytelling as a fundamental aspect of human experience and our connection to the divine, suggesting that our stories are not only important to us but to the fabric of existence itself.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of storytelling in religion.
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.
One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.