Sin and Delight

“What we delight in will shape our eternity.” – Ray Ortlund

“Yet, O my God, in whose sight I now safely recall this,
in my wretchedness I willingly learned these things and took delight in them.
For this I was called a boy of great promise.”

“Will you keep silent forever?
Even now you will draw out of this most terrible pit the soul
that seeks you and thirsts for your delights, and whose heart says to you,
‘I have sought your face; your face, Lord, will I seek.’
I was far from your face in the darkness of my passions…
(Like the prodigal son from Luke 15)
Therefore, he departed from you by lustful affections, that is,
by darksome affections, and this is to be far from your face.”

“How carefully the sons of men observe the proprieties as to letters and syllables…

and how they neglect everlasting covenants of eternal salvation which they have received from you.

…Certainly, no knowledge of letters is more interior to us than that written in conscience:

that one does to another what he himself does not want to suffer.

How hidden you are, you who dwell on high in silence, you the sole great God!

By unwearying law you impose the penalty of blindness upon unlawful desires.”

In 1.19, Augustine confesses that he sins because his passions were misplaced, wrapped up in the wrong things:

“I did not see the whirlpool of filth into which I was ‘cast away from before your eyes.’

By my deeds I even displeased such men, by countless lies, deceiving tutor

and masters and parents out of love for play, desire to see frivolous shows,

and restless hope of imitating the stage.”

“Therefore, he who made me is good, and he is my good.

Before him I rejoice for all these goods out of which I had my being even as a child.

But in this was my sin, that not in him but in his creatures, in myself and others,

did I seek pleasures, honors, and truths.

So it was that I was rushed into sorrow, conflict, and error.

Let there be thanks to you, my sweetness, my honor, my trust, my God,

let there be thanks to you for your gifts. Keep them for me.”

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” Romans 1:24-25

“Who will give me help, so that I may rest in you?

Who will help me, so that you will come into my heart and inebriate it,

to the end that I may forget my evils and embrace you, my one good?

Unhappy man that I am, in your mercy, O Lord, my God. Tell me what you are to me.

‘Say to my soul: I am your salvation.’ Say this, so that I may hear you.

Behold, my heart’s ears are turned to you, O Lord:

open them and ‘say to my soul: I am your salvation.’

I will run after that voice, and I will catch hold of you.“