Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.
Interpretation
Religion fosters community, which in turn encourages selflessness and a focus on the common good.
In this quote, Jonathan Sacks emphasizes the vital role that religion plays in fostering a sense of community among individuals. This communal bond cultivates altruism, inspiring members to move away from self-centeredness and work towards the greater good, ultimately enhancing citizenship and neighborly relations.
In practice
During a community service event, someone might invoke this quote to highlight the positive impact of coming together for a common cause.
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.
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
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.
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
When we are unable to receive, we deny someone else the pleasure of giving.
Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.
Whoever is in the distress can call me. I will come running wherever they are.
That first year I was doing 'Grey's,' I didn't know it was possible to fire the creator of a show off their own show, so I didn't behave like somebody who was afraid of being fired.
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