Confessions of St. Augustine

Confessions of St. Augustine

St. Augustine was born to a Christian mother and a Pagan father. He was somewhat lost in the realm of religion and always strive to find a deeper meaning to life. St. Augustine analyzes his life and his conversion to Christianity in a autobiographical manner pertaining only to his spiritual journey in "Confessions," St. Augustine. He explains his insightful journey and inspires many Christians. I will discuss the manner in the following paragraph's in which St. Augustine came to believe Christianity as his religion.

St. Augustine starts off his spiritual journey by reflecting upon his youth. He says that even though I can remember this I have needs and wants ordained by God, "For even at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full, and to cry when in pain--nothing more,"

( http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.html).

When St. Augustine reflects on being a toddler he says he has been told that he goes into the tantrum and throws his arms and legs all over the place to get what he wanted. Then reflects upon this later as man not being born with out sin and even at the toddler stage, he had sin. This

sin is the original sin and goes back to the days of Adam and Eve because any human is not born without Sin.

In the first stage of infancy St. Augustine also asks his parents about how he acted and from them he learns that he tried to communicate with adults. This leads St. Augustine to contemplate the thought if a person existed, as a person before infancy. He comes to the conclusion that God only knows this, and through God we find there is no past, or future, and only present eternally. This makes St. Augustine grateful for the gift of his body, and everything that is along with it noting how God has such a excellent order of all things.

The next stage in St. Augustine life was childhood. In this stage he learns to us words to express himself, and get what he wanted. He was sent to school to learn. He was also taught Christianity buy his mother, Monica. When Augustine became ill as a child he begged to be baptized. In the years of the early church it was thought to let a child experience life and decide later on to get baptized. This concept was called catechumen.

During Augustine's child hood he also reflected upon getting beaten if he was disobeying. He was beaten by his parents and school officials, and while he was beaten adults scoffed at him. Augustine did note that he deserved to get beaten because he was disobedient. "They are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire them to grow up to be able to give such shows," (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.html).

Augustine also notes that he had hated Greek writings but loved Latin. He did not like to study and quickly learned that non factitious literature is what led him to become misguided with religion. These writings offered factitious stories and gave a sense of confusion to there readers. These books he read; Augustine claimed are hollow examples, and gave him nothing real to follow. Augustine admits to being a trouble maker during this time, but liked the occasional pat on the back.

As Augustine grew into a teenager he surcame to the lust and spoke of being sexually active and boastful of his experiences. His mother frowned upon this behavior and considered finding him a wife because then his experiences would be legit. She decided against this because it would have affected his career in life. If she waited he could marry a heiress or something of that manner. She wanted her son to be able to experience a great career. She did try to tell her son like most mothers do, who are religious, the effects of sinful acts before marriage. When Augustine contemplated this in the future he decided that he was being to us, in modern day terms, a "typical teenager" and he was getting talked to by God through his mother.

Another important milestone in Augustine's life was when him and some friends went into the neighbors yard to steal some pears. When he reflects on this he said he was sinning for the pure choice of doing wrong. He got somewhat of a thrill from this. He said that this type of sin is revealing against God. "Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it,"

(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.html, St. Augustine).

About the age of 18 Augustine goes back to school to study and continues to sin by being miss-lead by the pleasures of the flesh. Augustine puts a lot of emphasis on lust. Augustine was away at school, in another city, indulging in plays, women, doing well in school, and is well liked. Augustine became friends in with a group of wealthy kids but try's to distance himself from them because of there behavior towards other kids.

It is important to acknowledge what Augustine see's sexual acts as in his journey to God. He sees it as the ultimate sin because it is intertwined with the original sin. He often thought this as the root cause for him to be wandering from God because this sin is the original sin.

Augustine starts to to feel empty and some of the activities that he used to take pleasure have suddenly become empty to him and he now searches for answers. This is when he was introduced to Hortensins and considered one of the critical turning points in life. The author of this book was a pagan but Augustine took the words the author wrote to heart. Not wanting to abandon his religion he looks to it for answers and truth, leading him to an "intellectual species of Christianity: Manichean," (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/St-Augustine-s-Confessions-Summary-and-Analysis-Chapters-1-5.id-166,pageNum-26.html).

Augustine finds the Bible boring and simplistic but later decides that it is because of his intellectual vanity. He was not able to see the true glory

behind the simplistic words. This was also known as the reason to Augustine's first conversion to Manichean.

Augustine mother grieves

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