Augustine and My 'Not-Goodness'

Not long ago I came across a section in St. Augustine’s Confessions that discussed the nature of the human will. During his time the Platonic notions of willing the good represented the rational opposite of the irrational desires to will the not good, or the evil. Augustine, never one to settle with a simple answer to a complex problem, began thinking on what leads a person to will what is evil. Did an outside force influence the weak minds of humanity? Can one blame the spiritual realm for the sins of the material realm? Regardless of why one sins, Augustine accepted the thought that one still must will what is evil for there to be evil.

That is until Augustine began paying attention to his own thought life. Because of his past, largely spent womanizing and enraptured with lustful struggles, Augustine would experience bouts of lust, where thoughts from his past assaulted his mind. As these thoughts came, Augustine recognized that he did not will these thoughts to come. They arose without his will and afflicted him without his desire for them to do so. Nevertheless, they were his own thoughts, coming from no other source than his own fallen past. From this he concluded that something inherent in human nature naturally tended toward the evil. The matter of sin was not a simple problem of irrational desires.

What does this mean for our own lives? Augustine’s thoughts on this issue later developed into his concepts of original sin and inherent depravity, ideas still with us today almost two thousand years later. Secular society would have us believe that we are really good, even if it is deep down. Some churches would likely argue the same on our behalf. Despite what Fox News and CNN would have us believe, the world is largely populated by good people. The evils of the world are results from radical extremes on the fringes. With these radical images of evil from mainstream media and twenty-four hour news coverage, however, America has fallen into a pit of comparative morality.

I certainly cannot nor will not try to speak for the hearts of almost three hundred million North Americans, but are we a good people? Forget the news, forget the murders and atrocities, rapists and shootings. Are we good when no one is looking? At midnight, in the early morning, in our cars, in our minds, in our thoughts, in our secret desires, in our darkest secrets, are you and am I, a good person? My gut instinct, my knee-jerk response, is a deafening, “No.” I am not a good person. Without even attempting to explain the theological framework for what is good in the first place, namely God, I know I am not good. And for Augustine, whatever is not good, is evil. Therefore, I am evil. That’s not exactly a word we toss around lightly, I know. Evil is reserved for the ‘crazies,’ the demons, and anybody else besides us.

Augustine is not concerned about those others; he is concerned about himself and what God knows about him. If anyone knows our secrets, it is God. Therefore we have the cry of the tax collector, tearing our clothes and begging forgiveness while the Pharisees thank God they are not like us and those others, those ‘evil’ people. I am not good. Therefore, I am evil. Only in the recognition of that evil, however, can one repent. This is Gospel. God cannot forgive the unrepentant; it is illogical. If we are a people certain of our own righteousness, we will not receive the righteousness of Christ. To speak of the Gospel any other way makes the Gift of salvation just one more bauble for the well behaved brat on Christmas morning.