http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192833723/thinkblogorg-20
Book I
xviii.28
To tie in the above, here’s a theme I can identify with and uphold: “To be far from your face is to be in the darkness of passion.” Indeed, to be far from the Lord’s countenance is to go into a pitch-dark room and to try to light the darkness with a match and some styrofoam: the choking fumes all but crowd out the dirty light, but if we in our sins pursue those sins to try for greater light, the fumes become greater until we are diseased, dying, and suffocating. All the Lord’s blessing (oxygen) will have turned to soot and death. That’s what it is to chase passions; that’s the way I was humbled. I’m not sure how others come to a point of wisdom, but I never grew so quickly as when every carnal pleasure of which I partook turned to filth in my arms, in my mouth, in my body. Months of self-abuse leave me with a reminder: often a certain kind of Flowers for Algernon feeling in regard to my memory and general sharpness. To my unquiet horror I see my former self as more acute than I now, if even by such a small degree that others can’t perceive it (but I will rise to a place of greater fullness even so: a blind man’s hearing is razor-sharp). By the grace of God. What a powerful lesson, to learn that passion is darkness apart from God.
xviii.29
Plato’s idea that it is better to suffer than to do wrong…. Even though it’s a great pleasure to analyze the words and actions of others to derive their thoughts therefrom and predict behavior because of that, may I never be so caught up in analyzing another’s pain that I don’t extend the hand of fellowship to help him. There is the danger that could come about if I were to be a counselor: the temptation would be strong to treat Case No. 005707 as just that–a numeral symbolizing a particular cocktail of neuroses–as opposed to a delicate human being. I’d like to think I’m strong enough, sensitive enough never to do so. Ah, but pride comes before a fall.
I wonder if most of the contemporary hatred of lawyers isn’t an expression–on a gradient of consciousness in the hater’s mind–of that last sentence, that lawyers are more concerned with image and winning a case than the person who, under their care, might be executed. (C.f. the immediately above discussion vis-a-vis using people [Ends v. Means] in a Kantian sense.)
References.
Augustine, St. Confessions. Henry Chadwick, trans. ISBN 0-19-283372-3 (Paperback).
