St. Augustine wrote the book Confessions to tell the story of his conversion to Christianity. In this book Augustine addresses three main questions. It defines what is real, what it means to be a self, and how others should respond to its journey. Augustine believes that both the material world and the spiritual world are real from his understanding of the Platonists. Platonists believed that to be a self means to be detached from the pleasures of the world that can lead one to turn away from God. Answering Augustine's call to be oneself is simple. All a person needs to do is find the self-control to resist the beauties of the world. To better understand these three things, Augustine uses his own experiences and the parable of the prodigal son to illustrate that if he can find God, anyone can. Augustine struggles with lust throughout his journey. Through his struggle he discovers that the material world is a very real thing. Augustine believes that people too easily fall into the beauty of the material world when in reality the material world is only a reflection of the spiritual world. To reach this conclusion that the spiritual world spills over into the material world, Augustine uses Platonic hierarchies to unravel Christianity in a way that can be understood. He writes: «Thus, step by step, my thoughts moved from the consideration of material things to the soul, which perceives things through the senses of the body, and then to the inner power of the soul, to which the bodily senses communicated external facts . (Augustine 151). Augustine begins with himself and proceeds upwards almost in a hierarchical manner. From the self it goes to the soul as a whole which would resemble the Holy Spirit in the Christian sense... middle of paper... individual furthest from God in his journey to be with Him. Stumbling into attachment to the material world will happen continuously as long as the two conflicting wills will not be united and will become a strong will to serve a loving God. Self-control is the main key to detaching yourself from material things and not basking in their beauty. The most important thing is for individuals to understand that since God created everything in the material world, everything is good. Individuals possess God, no matter whether they have realized it or not, because every single person was created by God. People are called to be responsible by practicing moderation like Augustine. He writes, “It is truly your command that I should be continent and contain myself” (Augustine 233). Restraint, self-reflection, and recognition of the real, material world as existing makes a person responsible and God-loving.