In the Confessions of Saint Augustine, this great philosopher experiences many problems and emotions related to sin and evil. As a boy, he often felt darkness, blindness, and confusion as he tried to find rest in God. Augustine began his childhood with a troubled heart as he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds included his mother's Christian faith and the world of everything else. These two worlds confused and troubled Augustine as a child. Augustine's father was a pagan and his mother was a Christian, and they both wanted him to succeed in the world. Becoming confused, he began asking questions that could not be answered, such as: "Humans often feel restless, but what do they need to feel at rest (Chadwick, 1992)?" Do they need God? Augustine wanted to know the truth about sin, evil, and God, so he did so by going in search of the truth. Throughout his research, the Manichaeans, Neoplatonists and Christians influenced him. This journey was difficult for him as he had to overcome his misunderstanding of evil and his own sin. Augustine was born into the world with original sin. As a baby, if another baby was breastfeeding, they wanted to breastfeed too. As a boy at school, he struggled with self-discipline and often criticized his teachers for making him read fictional stories. In addition to his mother's teachings, Augustine felt malformed from an early age. This behavior continued into adolescence, as he was addicted to sex. He also had an episode in which he and some friends stole pears from someone else's pear tree through mischief. This was an act of rebellion and he later compared this act to that of Adam and Eve. He questioned the act of destruction: “What are... middle of paper... and finally the vision. In this vision he was in a garden and saw a child singing to him to “take it and read it” and there he began to read the epistles of Saint Paul, which revealed the truth he was seeking. He realized that “only a God who made himself “tangible,” one of us, was ultimately a God to whom he could pray, to whom and with whom he could live (Chadwick, 1992 ). He now knew that God, who seemed so distant at the time, became close to him and even just like him. His first step toward conversion was to be baptized. He now had a different view of evil; he knows that evil has no substance. During his journey and discovery of truth, Augustine learned that evil is the result of the misuse of free choice through rational thought. Works Cited Chadwick, Henry. (1992). Confessions of Saint Augustine. New York: Oxford University Press Inc...