Responce 3a: Badum-CHA!

The obvious advertisement in Augustine's Confessions is for Christianity. In relation to himself, the ultimate punchline is: "I was a heathen, but then I found God. My life is a great example of how the average man can become saved by Christianity." Badumcha! Of course, Augustine doesn't go too far. I think there is a lot he doesn't write about; this book is a front, not backstage. Is stealing a pear really the worst thing Augustine did in his lifetime? I personally don't think so, but it's a GREAT example. It's docile enough that it doesn't brand him as a downright evil sinner. He didn't sleep with another woman or hurt a bum on the street for fun. In fact, as PTJ mentioned in class on Tuesday, there really is no victim to his fruity crime. Augustine didn't specify if it were some rich fellow or a poor family of sustenance farmers. If this had been specified, say as the latter, the context and effect of the theft would have been harsher. Everyone can identify with stealing a pear, but what turns this into an example for conversion is how he delves so deeply into it. He sees in the act what the normal man wouldn't: that the act of committing a sin just to commit one is the worst of all because it puts no reasonable motive above the evil one. Augustine does chastise himself profusely for this, but we can forgive him because after all it was just a lousy pear.

We also have to remember that Augustine was writing Confessions to save his own hide from persecution by other Christian leaders of the time. The docile story of the pear thievery is just tame enough to swing by his religious colleagues and developed enough to show his development into a proper Christian follower. This also explains why EVERY OTHER PARAGRAPH IS AN UNNECESSARY ODE TO GOD. It's even laced in the stories of his infancy. So the sub-punchline would be: "I'm an above-average Christian because I can even see God in my breast milk." BADUMCHA!