Anne Zagursky-The City of God

Augustine and Sin
Saint Augustine spent a lot of time talking about sin in his book The City of God. He begins by talking about original sin, or the sin Adam and Eve committed that is now passed down to all of us just for being born into the human race. As he talked about sin, he inevitably had to talk about free will as well. St. Augustine seemed to suggest that original sin caused us to be blinded from the light of goodness and God, and therefore our choices would almost always result in sin or darkness. This darkness causes us to continue to choose sin over God and brings us further and further from the truth. I think that Augustine had a good theory about sin. If you have ever been around small children, you come to realize that even kids as small as a year old are selfish and mean and can even be found lying to adults or other kids. This makes me believe that we are probably born with the innate nature to sin. Also, as we grow older we start to search for “the light” and often find our selves far from it. We end up trying to fill the need and desire for God with other, superficial things such as sex, alcohol, drugs, porn, and so many other things. We all have this yearning inside of us, whether we are willing to admit it or not and therefore find ourselves in need of something to worship and focus our time on.

We fall into the trap of sin so easily, and then it seems like many people can’t find their way out. We keep going deeper into the darkness because it is easy and fun for a moment and it seems like it fills us. Augustine seemed to understand that about humans. Perhaps he was playing off of his own life experiences of sinful behavior because he never could find a way to reconcile sex to God. Augustine could not see how God could ever approve of sex because all of his personal experience was outside of marriage which probably caused him a great deal of guilt. He never experienced the true unity of man and woman through the consecration of marriage.