Reflection 3

While reading Augustine, the one thing that really bothered me was when he states that his pear theft is much worse than murder, using the reasoning that he had no motive for stealing and "No one would commit murder without a motive, merely because he took pleasure in killing" (30). Did Augustine completely forget about serial killers? Take the BTK Killer, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, even Mickey and Mallory Knox from Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers. Now it did occur to me that maybe the drive to kill wasn't prevalent during Augustine's time in the first century. Although I couldn't find anything online about first century serial killers, the brutality and gruesomeness of the acts committed as many as six hundred years ago has convinced me to assume that these killers were present during Augustine's time. One of the killers that particularly disturbed me was Countess Elizabeth Bathory from Transylvania. After murdering more than six hundred girls, she would bathe in their blood in hopes to revitalize herself and appear younger.

Now what does Augustine have to say about this? Would he still stick to his argument that stealing miniscule pears is worse than countless and brutal murders? He needs to stop being so melodramatic and trying to "relate to the common people." There are zero circumstances where intentionally taking away a human life is more acceptable than stealing a pear. Even if the person did have a motive for killing, it does not matter. I cannot even fathom leveling petty theft and murder on the same scale, let alone stating that theft is worse.