Having just read A Separate Peace by John Knowles and realizing that I am a bit too much like Brinker for my own good, I decided that I needed something to charge me. Like Brinker, who Knowles wrote, developed a sort of general resentment at the war and sunk into himself throughout the last year, I find myself agitated with current events and withdrawing from them. I feel spiritually empty, not necessarily hungry, but aware that something that ought to be there is not. In the darkness I've found myself returning to certain things to bring me back to the light in a jarring sort of way. Christianity has taught us that God is not Zeus, ready with the lightning bolt to strike man down. Christianity has taught me this, but having conceived of God as Zeus, it is hard not to imagine Him that way. Zeus both gives and kills - all the Greek gods and goddesses do. The Lord giveth and taketh away. Having arrived at this conception of God as the man ready to reward or drop an anvil in comic fashion on his creation at a very young age I find myself looking askance at the sky waiting for the anvil in my current spiritual stagnation. In times past, the jarring experiences that have brought me back from the darkness have been bound up in a few important passages - The book of Lamentations, C.S. Lewis, Ayn Rand and Augustine all have accomplished this for me for their own reasons. This time, for no particular reason, I have chosen Augustine as the springboard to leap back from this current spiritual standstill.
Confessions was written, "to excite men's minds and affections" towards God and I need that at the moment. Nothing to me is exciting my mind towards, or really away from God at the moment. But, I know that every step that is not towards God is one that is a step away and I would rather not meander down some dead end path, again.
Book I: Chapter I
- Man carries the evidence of his sin
- Restless is the heart of man until it rests in God. I know the word "restless" well.
- Those that seek God find Him; those that find Him praise Him
Book I: Chapter II
- God sustains all things; is in all things
Book I: Chapter III
- God is present in all things but nothing can contain him.
Book I: Chapter IV
- "Thou recoverest what thou has never really lost. Thou art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains". I don't know why, but this struck me. What is God recovering that was never really lost? Man carries his sin, and yet God draws that man to Himself to recover what was never really lost. Sin, separates man from God. Sin, causes the man to be lost. But if man is lost, what is he lost from if God recovers what is never really lost? This passage struck me as important at this moment. I'm not sure why. I don't feel lost. I don't feel like I'm moving at all. How can one be lost if one is constantly standing still?
Book I: Chapter V
- Tell me God, that you are my salvation. Speak to me that I may hear - I know this plea!
- I am not large enough to contain thee. Enlarge my soul.
Book I: Chapter VI
- "The consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very beginning".
- All good things come from God. People that give good things to others are better understood as people by which God has delivered good things.
- God is the stable cause of all unstable things.
- Augustine rambles a bit towards the end of this chapter about the ever-present nature of God. All things past and all things present and all things future will come, have come and are coming and have passed, will pass and are passing away in that one present day of the Lord. Augustine asks how can we understand this? Even if we can't, it is better to ask and try to understand it than not. He also doesn't become despondent when he realizes that it isn't an easy thing to understand. Instead he asks God, and thanks him.
Book I: Chapter VII
- God created man, not the sin in man.
Book I: Chapters VIII-X
- An interesting social criticism on the current educational system. The teachers punished the boys for playing because it interfered with their learning how to play the grown up games.
- Yet, even though Augustine acknowledges that the education was being given to him for trivial purposes, that he disobeyed his teachers because of vanity, not because of some noble purpose. He acknowledges his sin in the part.
- "Look down on these things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon thee; deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that they may call upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them". For someone who is seen as severe, there is a lot in this early part of Confessions that shows Augustine cares for his fellow man.
Book I: Chapter XI
Book I: Chapter XII
- By his own sin Augustine was punished. That's how it was designed to work by God. "For it is even as thou hast ordained: that every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment".
- That sentence hangs heavy on me. The word, inordinate is weighing down my shoulders. Inordinate: a disproportionately large or excessive. Every affection that is excessive brings about its own punishment.
Book I: Chapter XIII
- "The friendship of this world is fornication against thee". There is the severity of Augustine.
- Let me confess to God what my soul desires and let me find some rest. It is in the confession of the desires that brings rest to Augustine, not the acquisition of the objects of his desire.
- Curiosity, he states, is more advantageous to learning than discipline based on fear. Yet, by God's design, discipline is brought into being against the excesses of freedom. This discipline produces a "wholesome bitterness" that draws us back to God and away from the "poisonous pleasures" that had drawn us away from him.
Book I: Chapter XV:
- Augustine asks God to re-order what he has learned in order to make it useful in His work rather than in some vain project of man.
Book I: Chapter XVI:
- Augustine criticizes Homer for his immorality. In Homer, the gods commit sins like adultery and are unpunished. Men, in turn, use the acts of these gods to justify their own sins like adultery.
Book I: Chapter XVII:
- Augustine bemoans participating in using his God-given talents in trivial matters that he could've used to praise God instead.
Book I: Chapter XVIII:
- Augustine sees man as carried toward vanity and away from God by pride
- "For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that we either turn from thee or return to thee"
- Augustine is haunted by pride, haunted by a desire to be preeminent
Book I: Chapter XIX
- "Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift I had"
- Augustine's sin was to seek pleasure, honor and truth in the created and not the creator. From this inordinate seeking came his error as he fell into sorrow, trouble and error.
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