From news editor Daniel Silliman: I’m giving a talk at a Christian university on Friday that I’ve titled, “How to Find the Good News in Bad News.” But I’ve been toying with the alternative, “Reading the News with Augustine.”

When the North African theologian wrote his Confessions in the late 300s, he wrote with the conviction that he could see God at work in his life. That wasn’t because a bunch of good things had happened to him. In fact, most of what he recalled was his own sin. 

“It is a foul affair,” Augustine says of his life. “I became to myself a region of destitution.” 

But that’s exactly where the grace of God is needed, according to Augustine. And that’s where the Good News is good news. My argument, in my talk, is that the thing he does with his personal history, we can do with current events too.

As Augustine prayed, “The recalling of my wicked ways is bitter in my memory, but I do it so that you may be sweet to me, a sweetness touched by no deception.”