Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. He was a wise defender of traditional values as they pertained to the family, united by the bond of one man and one woman. He wrote books on the need for science and faith, that rather than at odds with each other (or teaching us new values as progressive liberals tirelessly assert), actually allow us to understand 'things' and support meaning - science takes things apart, while religion unites them!
My first introduction to him came when I tuned into a conference on the Family hosted by the Roman Catholic Church in 2014 called, “The Complementarity of Man and Woman”. An incredible conference with speakers from many Christian denominations, and leaders from many world religions.
In his address he said of marriage:
"....beginning with the birth of sexual reproduction, then the unique demands of human parenting, then the eventual triumph of monogamy as a fundamental statement of human equality, followed by the way marriage shaped our vision of the moral and religious life as based on love and covenant and faithfulness, even to the point of thinking of truth as a conversation between lover and beloved. Marriage and the family are where faith finds its home and where the Divine Presence lives in the love between husband and wife, parent and child.
What then has changed? Here’s one way of putting it. I wrote a book a few years ago about religion and science and I summarised the difference between them in two sentences. “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.” And that’s a way of thinking about culture also. Does it put things together or does it take things apart?
What made the traditional family remarkable, a work of high religious art, is what it brought together: sexual drive, physical desire, friendship, companionship, emotional kinship and love, the begetting of children and their protection and care, their early education and induction into an identity and a history. Seldom has any institution woven together so many different drives and desires, roles and responsibilities. It made sense of the world and gave it a human face, the face of love.
For a whole variety of reasons, some to do with medical developments like birth control, in vitro fertilisation and other genetic interventions, some to do with moral change like the idea that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does not harm others, some to do with a transfer of responsibilities from the individual to the state, and other and more profound changes in the culture of the West, almost everything that marriage once brought together has now been split apart. Sex has been divorced from love, love from commitment, marriage from having children, and having children from responsibility for their care.
You can view the entire address HERE
Brian+
