St Augustine

In the first few chapters I'm reading in "City of God" Augustine tries to explain why the good and the innocent must suffer disease and misfortune if God is a loving being. The fact that he is less than successful is not a reason to criticize than it is to appreciate his humanity. Clearly, he does not want the innocent to suffer. Clearly, he knows there is something unjust in thus he sees a need to understand why. It helps to put his thinking in the context of his day, which is a transitional phase between high paganism, largely washed out, rational philosophy, which offered nothing to nourish the soul, and the new and evolving Christian belief system. The Roman control of the Mediterrannean world was drawing to a close. The Northwest borders of the Empire were mostly guarded only by local warlords. Soon after Augustine's lifetime the only men who stood in the way of utter barbarism in the west were the Christian Bishops who were largely of the formerly powerful senatorial class. They could read and write. They knew how to administer estates. And above all, they had a moral view that they had only recently adopted from Christianity.
The impulse to see mercy and justice as a legitimate right of every human being irrespective of status and class was not really known to classical civilization. Slavery was as normal in the Roman world as running water is to ours, and although the Romans had laws regulating slaves there was never any question about the morality of the practice. And slaves were generally regarded as a lower form of humanity. Strangely, slaves often became very wealthy...but that's another story.
Only the new Christian beliefs questioned why God should make some of us slaves and others of us princes. Only Christianity questioned why good men should suffer while bad men prospered, and Christians came to these questions through the study of Hebrew scriptures. These questions of suffering were posed most graphically in the Book of Job and largely left unanswered.
To this day one of the commonest reasons given for rejecting Christian beliefs is the one of why an innocent child should suffer. But these questioners should remember that before Christianity came along such questions weren't even asked. Like slavery and disease it was merely accepted, or appeals were made to various godlings and spirits through offerings and sacrifices. But the appeals were not to abolish suffering for all but merely to exempt one's own self in this particular moment of need.
This is the context of these early chapters, as it has been in Christian thought ever since. Now, in the context of my own time I can't help but compare the thought of St. Augustine with the thoughts of a certain jihadist whose name and claim to infamy escapes me. Asked about the morality of using children as suicide bombers or targeting them for terror purposes he merely shrugged his shoulders, saying that in war people always die. Why there should be a war, or why he should be waging it was a subject that never came up. Not only were such questions irrelevant, but they were proof to him of the weakness of the west.
St. Augustine was from North Africa, what is now Algeria. The French ruled Algeria for 150 years and established industry, trade, universities. Since 1962 Algeria has been left on its own and there is not much left of the peace and prosperity left behind by the French. It's now back in the Islamic dark age that France briefly disspelled. Now Algeria's main exports are murder and destruction.
Friends, do not believe the retarded characters who say that Islam is a peaceful religion or that Christianity is equally violent. Christianity and Islam are radically different despite the fact that they share many of the same rootstock. Don't believe the other retarded characters who tell you that the problem is religion itself. If you think that a society of peace, justice and prosperity is a good thing then thank Christianity for justifying your belief.
I would like to close by a quotatiion from Chapter 16 of book I regarding "The violation of chastity without the will's consent cannot pollute the character."
"But there can be committed on another's body not only acts involving pain, but also acts involving lust," which may "engender sense of shame, because it may be believed that an act, which perhaps could not have taken place without some physical pleasure, was also accompanied by a consent of the mind."
In chapter 18 he answers thus: "There will be no pollution if the lust is another's...purity is a virtue of the mind." Contrast this statement from 16 centuries ago with the present understanding expressed in Sharia.