Saint Augustine - Discovering Yourself in the Bible

Part of the reason why people find it so hard to understand why they do the things they do is because they don’t know who they really are, or where they really come from.

V. 46-47 partial application

Part of the reason why people find it so hard to understand why they do the things they do is because they don’t know who they really are, or where they really come from.

When Saint Augustine, some 1600 years ago, discovered the Bible, the reason it so captivated him is because he could see himself, with his own failures and sins and character defects (of which there were many), in the people of Israel. He found his own longings and desires echoed in the psalms, and in the teachings of Jesus. He realized that in the Bible, God hadn’t just told him a story about someone else; he was telling him a story about himself.

James K.A. Smith writes,

“The very notion will scandalize us, we who’ve been encouraged to live ‘our’ truth, to come up with our own story… The notion of a governing narrative that is not your own feels like signing over the rights to your life—which it is! But for Augustine, being enfolded in God’s story in Scripture was not an imposition but a liberation. When you’ve realized that you don’t even know yourself, that you’re an enigma to yourself, and when you keep looking inward only to find an unplumbable depth of mystery and secrets and parts of yourself that are loathsome, then Scripture isn’t received as a list of commands: instead, it breaks into your life as a light from outside that shows you the infinite God who loves you at the bottom of the abyss. God’s Word for Augustine wasn’t experienced as burden or buzzkill but as autobiography written by the God who made him. Scripture irrupted in Augustine’s life as revelation, the story about himself told by another, and as illumination, shining a light that helped him finally understand his hungers and faults and hopes.”

pray to be a part of the story

(Augustine—finding yourself in Scripture)

tell the story to others—this is the story of humanity entire, whether our fellow humans realize it or not.