Experimenting - #17 – Test Tube #1 – Example #2

          We are reviewing a few examples of people “hearing” from God through the Bible.  Last time we reviewed an example from the Bible.  In this entry we review a famous example from the late 4^th century AD.

Example #2 – The Conversion of Augustine

Augustine of Hippo was a famous Christian leader who lived in the latter stages of the Roman Empire, living 354 – 430 AD.  He wrote a book called “Confessions” which is very famous and is primarily an autobiography of his early life [you can find the whole thing here].  In it he describes the steps of his conversion to Christianity.  As we break into the text, he is describing his struggle with letting go of his desires to live his own life on his own terms.  His life has been full of drunkenness, lust, and so on; but now he wants to change.  But he finds that he can’t.  He is trying to figure out how to believe in God, but he finds that he can’t make himself believe.  Here is what happens as he struggles mentally…

Various excerpts from Book 8 of “Confessions” by Augustine

“While I was deliberating whether I would serve the Lord my God now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it was also I who was unwilling. In either case, it was I. I neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling. And so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself…Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken.

I kept saying to myself, “See, let it be done now; let it be done now.” And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it--yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve--and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense.

Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. … And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: “And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord?”

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which--coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.”

Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon.

So I quickly returned to the bench where … I had put down the apostle’s book... I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.”

From that point on, as far as I can tell, Augustine never looked back.

In this case, the passage of scripture fits within an entire situation.  It is highly likely that Augustine had read that particular passage of the Bible before.  But it came in the midst of his struggle, when he was struggling with exactly the issues dealt with in the verse, that it hit him as so obvious.  And it also came after a very unlikely direction to go read the Bible, from a child singing some random song that Augustine had never heard before.  It is this collection of events, each one on its own rather pedestrian, that together resulted in Augustine’s belief.

As we saw before, these events could all be coincidences.  If you are approaching Christians beliefs, or belief in God at all, with some reasonable skepticism, then you will conclude that this event is surely coincidence.  Of course you will – because this series of events was not put together for you – it was put together for Augustine.  The point of these examples is not that you would believe because of the example but rather that it would motivate you to seek your own personal example – one that is sufficient for you to believe.  Is there any such series of events that would cause you to believe?  That is the whole point of this series of entries.  Right now we are focusing on the Bible as God’s primary means of communicating with human beings.  We saw God using the Old Testament to speakto a man from Ethiopia in the few years after Jesus’ death andresurrection.  Now we see God using a passage from the New Testament to speak directly to Augustine’s condition in such clear terms that Augustine dropped all of his remaining inhibitions at believing and served God the rest of his life.  Next we’ll review an event that happened in 1978 – to me.