The storyline goes like this: I was bad, real bad, then I discovered the Lord, and now it seems okay. Sounds like a classic case of Goody Two-Shoes syndrome, no? Yet despite its proselytizing, Saint Augustine's late fourth-century autobiography The Confessions retains its place among the übertexts of the Western canon, and for good reason. Not only does Augustine convince you that he was just as ego-driven, pear-stealing and concupiscent as the next guy, but his eventual faith in the Lord is so strong and so compelling it makes this reader, at least, want to be a little less lapsed in his Catholicism.
Alongside the current VoiceBox on sexuality and the Catholic tradition, I wanted to underscore the struggle involved in the most influential Church Father's attempts to set his life straight. Although Augustine later rails against lust and literature and all the other pleasures of his youth, he does so having felt their sway, and having realized how close he came to remaining under their influence. Instead of threatening sinners with hellfire and brimstone, Augustine cries out his own weakness, his own conflicts, and the fact that despite his human frailty the Lord came and saved him. His honesty is piercing; it reminds us that we are all weak, all conflicted, and almost makes me wish that there was a god who would come and save me as well.

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From The Confessions of Saint Augustine Translated by E.B. Pusey,
modified by Jack Murnighan

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love . . . I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love . . . For within me was a hunger for that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet I hungered not for the right sustenance and had no longing for the incorruptible, not because I was filled therewith, but because the more empty I was, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself about, hoping to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense . . . To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but even more so, when I was able to enjoy my beloved's body. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its clear waters with the hell of lustfulness . . .
Thus with the baggage of this present world was I held down happily, as in sleep. And the thoughts with which I meditated on Thee were like the efforts of those who would wake, yet are overcome with drowsiness, and remain drenched therein . . . When you called to me, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light, I had nothing to answer. And when Thou didst on all sides show me that what Thou said was true, I, though convinced of its truth, only repeated my dull and drowsy words, "Right away, one minute, leave me but a little." But "right away" wasn't ever right now, and my "little while" went on for a long while . . . But I, wretched young man, even more wretched than in my youth, begged you for chastity yet said, "Make me chaste and continent, but not yet!"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Jack Murnighan's stories appeared in the Best American Erotica editions of 1999, 2000 and 2001. His weekly column for Nerve, Jack's Naughty Bits, was collected and released as two books. He was the editor-in-chief of Nerve from 1999 to 2001, before retiring to write full time and take seriously the quest for love.