"This is not a book about Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about you. It's a journey with Augustine as a journey into oneself." So writes James K.A. Smith in his introduction, who goes on to say "I've been on a ride with Augustine. Here's what I've seen; here's what he's shown me (about myself); here's why you might consider coming along."
We're all (metaphorically) on the road in life. We are looking for something or someone. We know something is missing; we're looking for home. And where we end up resting "is a matter of what and how we love."
We often look and rest in the wrong places. We focus on the finite, with unrealistic expectations. It never satisfies, but we never stop. With Augustine, maybe we should consider that "the finite is given as a gift to help us get elsewhere." Things here are "doomed to disappoint if you've been made for another shore." As Augustine spent a lifetime learning, "you [God] have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
When we look to God, it changes everything. But we are still in the world. Still subject to futility, tragedy, and sorrow. "Conversion doesn't pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel." "The key is to know where we are, and whose we are, and where we're headed, and not be surprised by the burdens of the road."
After the above introductory content, Smith looks at topics through Augustine's eyes, to include freedom ("how to escape"), ambition ("how to aspire"), sex ("how to connect"), mothers ("how to be dependent"), friendship ("how to belong"), enlightenment ("how to believe"), story ("how to be a character"), justice ("how to protest"), fathers ("how to be broken"), and death ("how to hope"). It turns out the ancient bishop knows a good deal about our contemporary world and these matters.
Select highlights:
- on freedom: "coming to the end of myself is the realization that I'm dependent on someone other than myself if I'm going to be truly free." And true freedom is not a freedom from rules or boundaries but graced empowerment for a purpose.
- on friends: "the true friend is the other who has the courage to impose a conviction, who paints a substantive picture of the good, who prods and prompts you to change course and chase it—and promises to join you on the way."
- on story: "The point of a story isn't originality or ingenuity . . . [but] to give a gift to the listeners, to create a world in which listeners could see themselves, orient themselves, and maybe even see a way forward, a way out." "Your story is only useful because others have lived it and will live it again."
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Ultimately, this book "offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes" (from the publisher's dust jacket review). This is a way to learn about who you are and what God offers, not from a recitation of facts but through analyzing the struggles of Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430), an African who spent years spiritually wandering until he found his home in Christ. He invites us to do the same, not in a heavy-handed way, but through his famous Confessions (and many other works) where he openly acknowledges his failures and wanderings. He's been there; he knows what you're going through. And he knows the way out.
James K.A. Smith is an excellent writer, offering profound, hard-hitting, and succinct statements of truth in a compassionate, inviting way. It took me a while to understand the approach/point of this work, but if you keep his stated goal in mind, it makes sense. Recommended.
Rating: A
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