Book 1, Ch. 13, 21

Yes, I am still “reflecting” on the same section of The Confessions as the previous Reflection. Not my fault. Blame Augustine.

He continues to lament that he wept for the characters in fictional stories while not regarding his own depraved state.

For my own condition I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who “sought death at the sword’s point,” while I myself was seeking the lowest rung of thy creation, having forsaken thee; earth sinking back to earth again.

The lowest rung of creation is, of course, death. Death, as Augustine points out, is man returning to the dust from whence he came, a dramatic reversal of God’s original creative action.

Death is an abomination, the evil intruder into the otherwise good creation of God. The ultimate enemy, it is also the ultimate natural consequence of sin.

Sin, literally “missing the mark”, is failing to live up to God’s original purpose for us, as his image-bearers. In rejecting this vocation, we are rejecting the very purpose for our existence, and therefore we are welcoming, as Augustine did in his early life, death.

Thankfully, Jesus showed us what it was like to be truly human, to live up to the original vocation. He shows us how to hit the mark, and instead of welcoming the evil reversal of creation (earth going back to earth), we can help spread the new creation where death itself has been reversed.

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