In which Rabbi Sacks waxes lyrical

I have been banging on for weeks about the book written by Rabbi Sacks called The Great Partnership.  Christmas festivities interrupted my reading but I have now restarted.  I bring the subject up again but instead of me blathering on and probably distorting his words in my paraphrasing I thought I would give a direct quotation thus providing you all with a tasting:

Social cohesion is precisely what religion sustains and much else undermines.  When societies grow affluent, when the burden of law-abidingness falls on the state and its institutions, when people define rights and wrongs in terms of externalities - punishment and rewards - and in terms of what other people do and are seen to get away with, when people focus, as they naturally do, on immediate benefits not long-term sustainability, then society begins to erode from within and there is little anyone can do about it.  The signs are unmistakable:

"People lose a sense of shame.  Rudeness is taken as a sign of sophistication.  People pursue the pleasure of the moment.  They lose respect for elders.  The young no longer defer to the old, and the old behave as if they were young.  The difference between the sexes is blurred.  People get irritated by the least touch of authority and they dislike any rules that inhibit their freedom to do as they like."(*)

A Christian evangelical bemoaning secularism today?  No: Plato speaking about the democracy of Athens.

A law of entropy governs societies.  They rise to power and affluence and then begin to decline as individualism saps the collective spirit that brough them greatness in the first place.  When this happens, only a counter-cultural force can revive flagging energies, renew institutions, defeat cynicism, generate trust and restore altruism.  The Abrahamic monotheisms are the most powerful counter-cultural forces the world has ever known because they speak to something indelible in the human spirit: the dignity of humanity as the image of God.

So Dostoevsky was wrong and Tolstoy was right.  Morality does not suddenly break down when people stop believing.  People do not conclude: God does not exist, therefore everything is permitted.  But they do in the long run, like an orchestra without a conductor, lose the habits that sustain the virtues that create the trust that preserves the institutions that shape and drive a moral order.  That is when you see the first signs of discontent with secularisation.  People, even those who do not practice a faith, start sending their children to faith schools.  Children, even if only a few, start becoming more religious than their parents.  Religious voices begin to be listened to with respect, if only because so many other voices sound cynical or self-seeking.  The moral sense is not a blazing fire but a flickering flame, and it seems to have been the fate of faith to keep it burning even when the winds of individualism are strong.

God and good are connected after all.

Magnificent stuff; quietly passionate, elegantly phrased and mostly, in my opinion, accurate.  I should add that I, personally, still do not believe in God but I do believe in the influence, for good or ill, of what he calls the "Abrahamic monotheisms".  The big question remains: will they survive?

(*) The Republic

 

Comments

[A K Haart]

"The big question remains: will they survive?"

I hope so - I don't fancy the alternative.

[David Duff]

There-in, AK, lies a huge debate!

[Hank]

David

The big question remains: will they survive?

A comment from one of your favorite American cities. I'm not sure if it is optimistic or pessimistic.

"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history."
Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago/

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/
Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings

[rogerh]

The old Ten Commandments are pretty good rules - for the plebs. The real rules are:

1) Mankind consists of Them and Us, Us runs the show, Them does as they is told.

2) Us is allowed to steal, cheat, lie, bear false witness and tax oxen, asses, BMWs and anything that is theirs. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

3) We pinched all the Good Land long long ago, the Wet Horrible Land we mortgage out to Them at top dollar and we take the p*&s royally declaring 'Silly Billys'. Yea verily we never clean out rivers and ditches for the God Green declareth this is good - and cheaper.

4) We keepeth the Priests on side for they understandeth fully the wickedness of the world and the need to keep Them in their place. The Priests playeth ball as they always have and have a rich tithe of privileges, lands and honours for ever and ever amen.

5) We do allow the Good Priests to do their bit in keeping Them in their place which they do verily on Radio 4 at sundry times. For they knoweth the game and do play their part.

6) Sundry cynicals do think this is a wicked system, but someone has to run the show and it might as well be Us.

[David Duff]

Crikey, Hank, that Cardinal of yours is very long-sighted priest - or one with an excellent sense of history. And Chicago is my favourite city because if it did not exist I would have to write about Detroit - my dear, simply too, too ...!

Roger, that sounds like Ayn Rand-lite! The problem is that cynicism, even of the witty kind, contains a truth but not, I think, the whole truth.

[Andra]

Ah, you want the "whole truth" now, do you?
Is there such a thing, I wonder?

[rogerh]

Ah, 'the truth' that slippery little minx.

I love old churches, synagogues, temples and mosques. Usually beautiful and with characteristic smells and 'feeling'. I love too the human ceremonies of hatch/match/dispatch - very necessary and a valuable contribution to society.

Herein is the rub, SFAIK the whole edifice is a bit of a con - hence poking fun at the priests - but a useful con that I think most people accept but do not totally believe but go along with because it is beautiful and useful.

[David Duff]

'The whole truth', I suspect, does exist but we humans will never quite reach it. It is, perhaps, God's little inter-galactic joke that keeps him amused watching us scrabble to understand it!

Roger, you touch upon a notion raised by someone else on whom I reported some time back - can't remember who but you don't expect me to remember all this bilge I slosh about - that in a Godless age we must all pretend that God exists and thus maintain, as well as we can, some sort of moral code.