Lately I've been reading old books. I started in on The Confessions of Augustine on my last trip and I'm amazed by how similar to me he is. I suppose that this is a common reaction to The Confessions since it is even mentioned in the Preface of the book but it is amazing how little is new since he lived. The book was written about 1600 years ago in Italy and although I am unable to fathom that amount of time I find that the book speaks to me as though Augustine just lived around the corner here in town.
I love the way that Augustine puts things sometimes. Like, for example when he talks about his boyhood and going to school and says:
But whereas the frivolous pursuits of grown-up people are called "business," children are punished for behaving in the same fashion, and no one is sorry for either the children or the adults; so are we to assume that any sound judge of the matter would think it right for me to be beaten because I played ball as a boy, and was hindered by my game from more rapid progress in studies which would only equip me to play an uglier game later? Moreover, was the master who flogged me any better himself? If he had been worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, would he not have been racked by even more bitter jealousy than I was when my opponent in a game of ball got the better of me?
He is absolutely correct! I just came from taking my oldest daughter to a chess tournament and the adults who are there smile and shake their heads at all of the kids who are so vexed by losing to one of their peers, but yet most adults are only above such behavior not because of their own greater maturity but rather because they simply don't care about that particular game. In their own games (meetings at work, for example, where I see this on display all of the time) they are just as vexed as those kids are, and maybe more so, by having one of their peers be proven correct about something after some heated discussion (thus: worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, as Augustine puts it). It is pitiful, really. It is more pitiful that Augustine knew this 1600 years ago. But one of the gifts of reading The Confessions is an enhanced appreciation for Ecclesiastes:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. (Ecclesiastes 1:2-8)
The fact that we don't read Augustine in school and the fact that I am shocked at how similar he is to me when I discover him makes me think of just a few verses later in Ecclesiastes:
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. (Ecclesiastes 1:11)
Does this mean that there is no hope for humanity to progress out of a constant repetition of past mistakes? Unfortunately I think that it must be so. We know that we can progress if we follow the Bible:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. (Proverbs 3:5-7)
But Jesus himself tells us to"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)" We require a lamp (Psalm 119:105) and therefore how can we find our way in the darkness without it? If the majority of the world is to remain in darkness then what hope is there fore the honest spiritual progression of the bulk of mankind? Across the world there are so many who deny that progression of the soul requires the light of the Bible. Some say that the light comes from a different book or a different leader and others say that it comes from human knowledge, but this book that I am reading from 1600 years ago speaks of philosophies and ideas we are taught today are new (what Augustine calls the Academics, for example - those who believe that truth cannot be known for certain, and the fact that the Manichees stated that the New Testament writings had "been falsified by unknown persons bent on interpolating the Christian faith with elements of the Jewish law"), and so the Bible which has always reassured me that in such matters humanity does not progress on its own but rather precesses is all the more sweet to me for the truth that it contains.
