A Conversation Between Jesus and Augustine

On a windy day, sometime not long ago, A.C. Ham sat between two well-known figures, feeling relieved for the first interview in a while. The two figures had entered the room separately, but upon meeting, greeted each other warmly. The first to enter had been the returning guest, Jesus of Nazareth, the one called “the Messiah.” The latter was one of the people who applied this term to Him, a philosopher known as Augustine. 

[Beginning of transcript] 

Jesus: Aurelius. It is good to finally meet you. 

Augustine: Much better for me, Teacher, to meet You. I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you. 

J: By all means, go ahead. 

A: Why is man sinful, Lord, and how shall I address the problem of evil?  

Jesus of Nazareth smiles, looking deeply pleased at the question. 

J: Well, you ask a big thing, my friend.  

A: You seem like the One to ask. You after all, hold all the answers. 

J: Let’s focus on the first part. You asked why man is sinful. It depends how you describe sin. 

A: Sin is a lack of relationship with You, Lord. It is a state of our hearts. 

J: In that case, man is sinful because he does not know Me. He sins because he does not understand my ways. 

A: But are we truly made clean when we know you?  

J: I give you all you require to be made completely clean at salvation; I give you Me. 

A: If that was true, then why wasn’t I able to let go of the desires of my flesh the moment of my salvation? 

J: If you gave an infant a broom, would he know how to use it? Would he know how to sweep his floor and make it clean? 

A: No, he’d have to outgrow his infancy, and someone would have to teach him how to use it. 

J: So it is with man. Each man has access to Me at salvation, but because he doesn’t fully know Me yet, he doesn’t understand how to use the power he now has. Your heart isn’t fully clean at salvation, there’s still the work of picking up the broom, learning how to use it, and cleaning up its rooms. Eventually, one may use the broom to push away the sinful desires before they cause the debris...  

Jesus laughs. 

J: But I’m losing my metaphor now. 

Augustine nods, considering His words. 

J: Now, for the second part. How to address the problem of evil. What would you define evil as? 

A: The actions taken by a man who doesn’t know You. He can do it in order to gain or because of beauty... but sometimes he does evil, commits the act of sin, just to do it. 

J: Like a young man who shakes loose fruit from his neighbor’s tree when he is neither hungry nor lacking fruit. 

Augustine gives a bashful look. 

J: If one wills to do sin is that the same as the one who unintentionally sins? If you’d shaken fruit off of a tree in the forest, not knowing it belonged to a woodsman, would the sin be the same? 

A: I think not. 

J: But all sin is sin, correct? 

A: Yes, but the heart of the person who didn’t know the tree belonged to a woodsman is less filthy than the one who knowingly stole from his neighbor. 

J: And why do you say so? 

A: Your word says one recognizes each tree by its fruit, each person’s heart by their own actions. 

J: Exactly, Aurelius. My Father is the definition of good we compare the world to. Anything that opposes it is evil.  

A: So, to address the problem of evil, we need to establish who God is and what good means. We need people to understand what makes sin so evil and God so good. 

J: That’d be a start, yes. 

It is here that A.C. Ham’s tape recorder ran out of storage. 

[End of transcript]