Reading Augustine's Confessions is like taking a walk down memory lane for me. I spent a long time being extremely confused about the same things that he discusses in his writings. These "unanswered questions" acted as stumbling blocks, limiting me from seeing the power and truth of Scripture. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church that taught sound doctrine directly from the Bible, but many questions fell into the typical "gray area" that churches tend to avoid. Reading about Augustine's inner battles of Good vs. Evil and Spirit vs. Flesh offers a new perspective of the situation for me. I spent so much time desiring to understand everything I could about what I claimed to believe, but a lot of aspects only confused me just as they did Augustine. Ultimately, faith was the secret answer to most of my questions. Faith allowed me to trust God and view the world through a different pair of lenses than before. There was an instance very similar to Augustine's singing voice during his moment of conversion, and although there was not an actual voice, my faith in God was awakened and I realized that trusting Him was the only way I could ever put a cease to my confusion. A lot of the answers became much more apparent to me through the reading of Scripture, but many still exist because some secrets simply belong to God. The desire to know everything about a limitless God still exists, as does Augustine's deep desire to understand Him, but I no longer question my faith because it only makes me seek after Him even more than before.
I commented on Amanda's "Compassion vs. Pity"
Tyler, I had the same struggle last year during Mashburn's philosophy class. I just had a problem with the concept of the merciful God allowing suffering, and in an even viler accusation, causing suffering. Allowing suffering for the sake of growth, I can tolerate. God being the source of evil, no matter how great or small, was an accusation I could not accept. So I went on a discourse in my head. I deduced that there were two types of evil. The first type of evil is moral evil. I summarized this to one word: sin. To discover the reason for sin, I traced history back to the first human sin. In the garden, Eve was tempted by the serpent to eat from the fruit of the tree of good and evil. According to the serpent, once she had done that, she would have been like God. That disobedience led to a fallen state of humanity where everyone is subject to moral evil. After I looked at the origin of human evil, I examined the origin of evil as a whole. The serpent is generally believed to have been used by the fallen angel Lucifer. Lucifer decided that instead of following God, he would be his own God. Because of this, he was excommunicated. His choice through free will brought was the origin of moral evil. This type of evil is not caused by Gid, but through both instances, were caused by decisions to BE God. God is not evil, but anyone who is not God trying to be God is evil. Moral evil is trying to be God. love. The second type is called natural evil. This group includes natural disasters and illness. Moral evil is responsible for natural evil. Because humanity is now in a fallen state, it is now subject to the laws of a fallen world.
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