Confessions: It's Better This Way

It’s Better This Way What happens when I die? This is a question that everyone has asked at some point in life, and yet the answer remains a mystery and a point of major debate. Because the thought of the “lights shutting off forever” is scary for a majority of people, various religions, philosophies and ways of thinking have been created to explain the meaning of life and give people something to look forward to after their time on Earth comes to an end. These belief systems typically espouse a set of rules or practices that must be followed in order to reap the divine rewards of heaven or paradise in the afterlife. In addition, religions and belief systems will often try to convince their audiences that their way is the right way. Two books

Much of Confessions has Augustine posing many unanswerable questions towards God and his faith. He inquires the very foundations of Catholicism: examining various Church doctrines and attempting to explain the inconsistencies he finds in them. At first glance, one might view Augustine’s deep questioning of his religion as an attack on it. However, this could not be further from the truth. Augustine begins the book with, “You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable (Augustine 3).” Giving this high praise before going into his line of questioning expresses how it is perfectly acceptable for people to have uncertainty about their faith. Searching for spiritual answers does not make one an enemy of God - constantly asking questions actually brings one closer to Him. The journey to find God and personal salvation allows one to become more in touch with himself, and the more questions he asks will lead him to more profound answers. For example, Augustine’s examination of the nature of evil in Book VII brings him to the idea that, “For [God] evil does not exist at all (Augustine 125).” His doubts and questions turn into an insightful truth about God’s incorruptibility. Therefore, Confessions shows how people’s curiosity and doubts about God result in the formation of a deeper and

In Inferno, a living Dante descends into Hell with Virgil, an ancient Roman poet whose soul now resides in limbo. The two are able to get through all nine circles of Hell, seeing the system of justice that God has set up in the underworld. In Dante’s depiction of Hell, people’s sins get varying degrees of cruelty in accordance with the gravity of their sins: the greater the ring, the greater the punishment. For instance, in the seventh circle of Hell there is a “river of blood that scalds/those who enter who by violence do injury to others (Dante 221).” In the third circle, “Heavy hailstones, filthy water (excrement), and snow/pour down…” onto to those who were gluttons (Dante 115). These descriptions display just how fitting the punishments God chooses are: the ones who thirsted for blood in life now boil in a river of it; the gluttons who only focused on the worldly pleasures of food and drink now get the product of their greed rained down upon them. God’s justice is fair and appropriate. The combination of Hell’s grotesque imagery and the presentation of a God who is proper in his judgements incentivizes readers to follow God’s law. Seeing the types of cruel punishments that Hell has to offer will make people who are alive do whatever is necessary to avoid being sent there. In this case, it means following the teachings of Christianity and putting God at the forefront. It means a virtuous