“The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God's image in someone who is not in my image, who language, faith, ideal, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.”

“The idols of today are unmistakable -
self-esteem without achievement,
sex without consequences,
wealth without responsibility,
pleasure without struggle and
experience without commitment.”

“DO YOU believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything for a purpose?”
“I do,” replied the rabbi.
“Well,” asked the disciple, “why did God create atheists?”

The rabbi paused before giving an answer, and when he spoke his voice was soft and intense. “Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: ‘This is the will of God.’ We accept what we should not accept.

That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God.”

Il faut entendre Rabbi Sacks zal mettre de l'intensité dans chacun de ses mots, une telle profondeur dans chacun de ses silences.

“Theology creates an anthropology. Discovering God, singular and alone, the first monotheists discovered the human person singular and alone. Monotheism internalises what dualism externalises.

It takes the good and bad in the human situation, the faith and the fear, the retribution and the forgiving, and locates them within each of us, turning what would otherwise be war on the battlefield into a struggle within the soul.

‘Who is a hero?’ asked the rabbis, and replied, ‘One who conquers himself.’ This is the moral drama that has been monotheism’s contribution to the civilisation of the West:

not the clash of titans on the field of battle, but the quiet inner drama of choice and will, restraint and responsibility.”