Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?
Interpretation
This quote highlights the fundamental questions of existence that religion addresses for individuals seeking meaning in life.
Jonathan Sacks emphasizes that religion plays a crucial role in providing answers to three profound questions that challenge every thoughtful person: the nature of one's identity, the purpose of existence, and guidance on how to live. These questions delve into the essence of being and morality, suggesting that religion forms a foundation for understanding life's complexities and human behavior.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion group, this quote could be used to initiate a conversation about the intersection of religion and personal identity.
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.
People 'demand' the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people 'demand' money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable.
We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.
Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking 'equal' means 'the same' and that we achieve equality by treating everyone identically.
Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world.
Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.
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