This is the Baymaw podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are with Redent to dive into the first of our vices lust. What a place to say we're not pulling any punches. Why play it safe? Why not jump right in here to the deep end? Not actually the first one we've recorded, though.

So I already know that it doesn't really get much better from here, Marty.

Oh, danger is my middle name.

It's not true.

Read is actually my middle name.

A lot of people don't realize that, but I do go by my middle name.

Reed, Danger, Dent. So the good news is that the listeners, this is their first vice, they're experiencing, but the team has already gotten warmed up. We'll put it that way. That's right. And one of the things that the listeners are going to find is that I'm opening each of these vices with a sort of cold open of sorts,

which we've already ruined because you jumped in

and made that joke. But that's a good joke. We're going to share a little bit of just something from somewhere, and then we're going to have our daily beckner because he writes about each of the vices. And it would be a real shame if I didn't actually use all of those. So we're going to start with Augustine. You ever read his confessions at all? Any of them, Marty, or any of any sections of his confessions? They are coming up, but I haven't gotten to him yet. Like, I've perused them and interacted with them on different levels, but I have not read them from cover to cover. I've been interacting with them more specifically because of this series.

I mean, I got the book and dabbled in it back in college, but he writes really compellingly

about his own inner experience. It's super helpful. There's a section in the Confessions. It's in book

three where he's he's like 16 to 18 years old at this point. And he's talking about his kind of struggle with lust.

He says, I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love.

My longing was to love and be loved, but most when I obtained the enjoyment of the body of the person who loved me.

And he says, thus I polluted the stream of friendship body of the person who loved me. And he says,

thus I polluted the stream of friendship with the hell of lust.

He then goes on later.

His struggle with lust lasted for a long time.

And in book eight when he's at the age of 31,

and this is a famous Augustine quote,

he says that he was postponing,

he said, I kept postponing giving up this world's happiness to devote myself to the search for

...