The Son of God

My desire in reading "Confessions" is an understanding of the Son of God. After hearing Dr. Clark speak of his three encounters with the novel as a result of his changing desires, I contemplated what kind of encounter I wanted to have with Augustine. I was weary of reading something so personal between a father and his son, like I was somehow eavesdropping on an intimate conversation, but the further I read the more personal it became. I was no longer a third party, but somehow an extension of the speaker. I realized that, although Augustine was writing from his personal experiences and trials with God, he was expressing it in a way that any human, compelled by God, can relate. It is sincere and vulnerable to the point that it seems as though the stories he tells are from a personal past that I have forgotten. Augustine is a vacuum for all the human waste that resides within me and by reading his confessions he draws me in so close I don’t even realize I am confessing my own past transgressions. In this sense I understand a little better the role that Christ plays in our relationship with God. He is aware and compassionate to our human failures and he purges them for us so that we may share the intimate relationship that he has with his father.