Augustine

Well, it appears that this state of boredom isn't going to leave me tonight. Thankfully I have plans for my Friday evening, so my non-existent audience will not be bothered by me until at the earliest.

Well, you (I don't know if there even is a you, but I can play pretend) remember how I mentioned in my last post about the different reasons people go to college, etc. etc? Well interestingly enough we had a discussion that seemed to illuminate for me why all of this works the way it does. We're currently reading St. Augustine's Confessions. (This will be my third time-ish going through it, thank you HFCC Honors Program) My professor was talking about what makes us who we are, and what motivates us to do what we do. There was a quote from Augustine that I really liked, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you". We seem to have this idea that we need to go and "find ourselves", that we have a certain identity, that there are things that we are and that we aren't. We arrange our priorities around the identity we construct for ourselves. But are we really who we think we are? How authentic is this identity we've constructed?

The thing is, everything we think we are, everything we make ourselves into, it's not us, it's not real, it's fake and it's empty if it's not centered on Christ. You can be going to college and working and volunteering at church and you can be completely off track if you're doing this because you think it's what you ought to be doing. And we'll never be completely happy and satisfied until we figure out who we are in GOD's eyes. Our true identity rests in him, and all that we can come up with for ourselves is at best only a shadowy reflection of what He has planned. I guess the idea that it comes down to is this: We are able to truly be ourselves when we are loving the right things in the right way. I think that's all I have to say for right now. Horrible way to end it, but there it is.