I Read This Once: Augustine's Confessions

I had rather answer 'I know not' to what I know not than raise sport at the expense of he who asks deep things, and gain praise for him who answers false things.

-- Augustine, Confessions

Augustine's Confessions is one of those books you feel you should probably get around to when you have the time to do something noble and fulfilling. It's very famous, very long, a bit overwhelming, and it's from about 400 A.D. If you think about it, there are a lot of those books, actually. Are the Confessions worth the trudge through the thirteen books translated from the original Latin?

Well, I trudged through them all, and honestly yes, they are one hundred percent worth it. It's tempting sometimes, from our perspective atop millennia of human achievement and advancement, to look back on writers or thinkers of this time period (or earlier) as somehow backwards, as if we've moved past the problems of that era and the ruminations of some fourth-century rhetoric teacher are irrelevant to our day.

But what was most striking to me about this book is how relevant it actually was. Augustine struggles with the very same problems and questions that every person (and every Christian) struggles with today. And it's strangely comforting to know that the same things that we deal with each and every day are the same things that other people have been dealing with for centuries.

We must endure the trials, not love them. Love that you endure them, but do not love what you endure.

-- Augustine, Confessions

Verdict: 4/5. Every Christian should read this, at least once. Actually just everyone in general should read it.