Vocation

I have been thinking about my faith more seriously recently, and am slowly reading The Reason for God by Tim Keller with my friend. I have wanted to get into this book for a year now, and am really glad to have finally started reading it! One discussion on the divisiveness of religion and how people may be inclined to keep their religion out of the public sphere stood out to me from the first chapter. To what extent does the division between church and state extend to? How does religion influence public policy? How do we engage with people of different faith backgrounds? However, Stephen L. Carter of Yale responds that it is impossible to leave religious views behind when we do any kind of moral reasoning at all:

Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to those of organized religion that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider the most vital. 

Keller continues on to discuss marriage and divorce laws as a case study:

Is it possible to craft laws that we all agree “work” apart from particular worldview commitments? I don’t believe so. Your views of what is right will be based on what you think the purpose of marriage is. If you think marriage is mainly for the rearing of children to benefit the whole society, then you will make divorce very difficult. If you think the purpose of marriage is more primarily for the happiness and emotional fulfillment of the adults who enter it, you will make divorce much easier. The former view is grounded in a view of human flourishing and well-being in which the family is more important than the individual, as is seen in the moral traditions of Confucianism, Judaism, and Christianity. The latter approach is a more individualistic view of human nature based on the Enlightenment’s understanding of things. The divorce laws you think “work” will depend on prior beliefs about what it means to be happy and fully human. There is no objective, universal consensus about what that is. Although many continue to call for the exclusion of religious views from the public square, increasing numbers of thinkers, both religious and secular, are admitting that such a call is itself religious.

I am really interested in how different religious views have impacted the formation of laws and beliefs in the public sphere. This prompts me to reflect on how I have shared my faith with others, and what I can do as an individual. In addition to questioning my beliefs, I am also wondering what my friends and family, my ancestors consider the purpose of marriage to be.