All Talk, But No Substance - AnnaKate Burleson
Alright, before I get started discussing Confessions... it's the first blog post of the semester! Woo! I'm so excited for all the reading and discussing and debating (read: arguing) ahead of us!
Chapters 6 and 7 of book 3 were the parts of this week's reading that resonated most with me. Augustine is discussing the friends he made and the struggles he faced in finding out what "truth" really is. But the opening lines of Chapter 6 are what really caught my attention.
"And so I fell in love with a sort of people who were arrogant in their madness, too fond of the flesh and too fond of talking, in whose words were the snares of the devil and a kind of birdlime compounded out of a mixture of the syllables of your name and that of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. These names were never out of their mouths, but only so far as the sound went and the pronunciation of the words: in their hearts, there was no truth whatever."
Augustine has finally found a group of people that he thinks he can relate to and truly have a deep spiritual connection with. They speak of the God that has piqued Augustine's interest, and that excites him so much. He's so excited to find common ground with these people that he fails to realize that they were leading him astray. He goes on to say that in all honesty, these people are teaching him fantasies that couldn't be further from the truth. They discuss, they debate, and they deceive themselves.
Personally, I found this to be really interesting. To be quite honest, the discussions he and his friends have about God sound awfully similar to the ones we have in class sometimes. They present questions that are usually outside the scope of what we as humans will ever know, then argue with each other over the answer. The questions are usually not of major theological importance, either. But Augustine admits that he was only led astray by the things they said because he himself was ignorant of the nature of God. For me, this serves as an important reminder not to let my ego or my intellect get in the way of pursuing God's heart. After all, what use are theological debates if you don't even know the heart of the God in question?
P.S. I commented on Spencer and Zane's posts
I really enjoyed your blog post because it speaks to a common problem we all face. We all get so caught up in theological debates and making sure our opinions on religion are heard, that we spend more time trying to make our opinions and thoughts heard rather than living by them or thinking about what holding that opinion on religion really means. We can never truly now the answers the some questions because we only have limited knowledge of the world, so though it might be interesting to pose them to each other, we should never lose sight of where the unanswerable questions come from and how He is the only one to know the answers.
ReplyDeleteWith our human nature we seem to think we are wise enough to solve “the world’s biggest questions” (questions we ourselves deem the big ones) by ourselves. Because of that we all come up with different answers, all of us thinking we’re right. But only one among us has the truth and we don’t listen to Him. He is the truth but we close our eyes to Him and we don’t even know why or that we’re doing it. It’s actually laughable that we think so highly of ourselves at times when you realise the actual truth is beyond our heads.
ReplyDeletei agree and can use my own life as an example. i believe that relationships are holy and created by God for God and us. even in the garden God 'walked' with his creation, and even now he seeks a relationship with us. ever since i came to the university my friends have been better than i culd ever imagine and my walk with Christ has been more.
ReplyDeletespencer wood