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LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Week One Reflection Journal
Confession Book 1
They were submitted to Thomas Sutton in partial fulfillment,
of the requirements for the completion of the course,
APOL 550
Faith and Reason
By
John F. Struve Jr
May 21, 2022
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Faith and Reason: Confessions Book 1
Book one is a confession that sums up much of my life before being saved. Displaying
Augustine’s life before he wrote this to how much he poured his heart and soul into God. This is
how I was also the same when I came to Christ. I believed in God, but my faith wasn’t where it is
today since I didn’t even know what faith was. I was lost. When I put God in my heart and grew
what faith was, my confidence grew every awakening moment. Augustine’s sin that held him
back was what he dealt with growing up and in his career as a Marine. Things I did as a Marine
still haunt me today, but at the same time, God loved me and now sees my heart. Chapter 7, the
second paragraph, hit my soul as a reminder that God is there for me. We are sinful from the
Mother who to death, but He makes everything fair, even the worst things we did before we
found Him.
Augustine grew up where there was so much going on, from the many gods of pagan
worship to the growth of philosophical knowledge. The time we live in now is the same, where
many turn to science and feelings to understand life since it is a “tangible” source of knowledge.
Many are turning away from God since he is based on faith, and they can’t see past the fact that
it is more than a feeling. Augustine tried the most incredible way to see faith through reason.
You can’t have one without the other. You must know the reason first before you can truly
understand the religion.
This first book is honestly everything I did as a boy, from not wanting to be forced into
my studies to now as a man seeing how God is truly my Lord and has done so much without me
even being faithful to him. I never knew the reason until I was saved, but there is always a reason
to seek God since there is a desire that calls to us, and only, He can fulfill it. The closing of book
one summed up everything in a few sentences. “Thanks be to Thee, my joy and my glory and my
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confidence, my God, thanks be to Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou preserve them to me. For so
wilt Thou preserve me, and those things shall be enlarged and perfected which Thou hast given
me, and myself shall be with Thee since even to be Thou has given me.” -Augustine. When we
see the reason for needing God, He shows us everything He has made us to be. Reasoning starts
us learning about God, and faith molds us into knowing our gifts and finding joy in Him. As he
said at the end and quoted above, He will see us through reason and use us to build our faith no
matter where we are.
I was lost and going through so much, but reasons I don’t know led me to Him again,
and faith brought me to who I am today, just as Augustine confessed in his first book.
