“Are you a 0 or 1?” The iconic question for Elliot in “Mr. Robot,” finds its most profound answer not in computer code but in Augustine’s Confessions, written in 397-400 CE. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), whose theological insights shaped Western Christianity for over fifteen centuries, understood that the choice between spiritual inertia (zero) and engaged existence (one) lies at the heart of human nature itself. His famous opening declaration—”You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You”—reveals that what appears to be a modern digital dilemma is actually an ancient theological truth about the fundamental orientation of the human soul. In this declaration, he’s not just sharing a personal insight—he’s diagnosing the human condition. That famous restlessness isn’t a bug in the system; it’s a feature. It’s the theological GPS that keeps pointing us toward our true destination, even when we’d rather settle for lesser stops along the way.

The Sacred Ache

Augustine understood something profound about human nature: we’re built for the infinite. Every time we chase beauty, seek truth, or long for love, we’re actually reaching beyond the finite toward something ultimate. That restless ache in your chest when you watch a sunset, read a poem, or hold someone you love? That’s not dissatisfaction—that’s your soul recognizing its true home lies elsewhere.

This restlessness (inquietum in Augustine’s Latin) isn’t psychological dysfunction. It’s ontological reality. We are capax Dei—capable of God—and that capacity shows up as an insatiable longing that no earthly thing can finally fill. Augustine saw our various desires not as separate hungers but as expressions of one fundamental orientation toward God as the summum bonum, the highest good in which everything else finds its proper place.

The theological implications are staggering. If Augustine is right, then human desire itself is a form of natural revelation. Our restlessness testifies to our supernatural destiny. Every time we feel that “there must be more than this,” we’re hearing an echo of eternity.

The Temptation of Zero

But here’s where things get dangerous. Augustine recognized that the greatest spiritual threat isn’t misdirected passion—it’s the absence of passion altogether. The person who settles for “zero” has stopped seeking, stopped hoping, stopped longing for anything beyond the immediate and tangible.

Zero isn’t neutrality. It’s spiritual death.

Zero shows up as the cynicism that declares all ideals fake, the materialism that reduces human existence to biological processes, the despair that finds no meaning in struggle or suffering. The zero-person might not actively commit evil, but their indifference enables it. They’ve chosen what Augustine calls the false peace of the earthly city over the restless pilgrimage toward the city of God.

This is the deepest form of practical atheism—not intellectual denial of God’s existence, but living as though God doesn’t matter. It’s a rejection of the imago Dei, the image of God within us that shows up precisely as holy restlessness.

Grace: The Healing of Desire

Augustine’s theology offers good news: grace doesn’t suppress human desire but heals it. Our problem isn’t that we want things; it’s that we want the wrong things, or we want the right things in the wrong way.

Fallen humanity suffers from concupiscentia—disordered desire that seeks ultimate satisfaction in created things rather than the Creator. This manifests as pride (superbia), the fundamental sin of trying to be God rather than serve God. We keep trying to make ourselves the center of the universe, demanding that finite things bear infinite weight.

But grace works by illuminating the mind to recognize true good and healing the will to choose it freely. This process—what Augustine calls the “liberation of the will”—doesn’t destroy our desires but reorders them. It enables what he terms amor Dei (love of God) over amor sui (disordered self-love).

The person touched by grace learns to find their truest self not in selfish assertion but in self-surrender to the God who is both the source and goal of authentic selfhood. The restless heart finds its rest not by ceasing to long but by longing for the right object in the right way.

Freedom and Responsibility

Augustine’s doctrine of free will navigates between two truths that seem to contradict each other: we’re genuinely free moral agents, and we’re utterly dependent on divine grace. He distinguishes between liberum arbitrium (free choice) and libertas (true freedom).

We retain free choice even after the fall—we deliberate, choose, and act according to our decisions. But true freedom, the capacity to choose good with love and joy, has been compromised by sin. Apart from grace, we’re formally free to choose but practically enslaved to disordered desires we didn’t consciously select.

This framework maintains both human responsibility and divine mercy. We’re responsible for our sins because we choose them freely, even when those choices flow from deeper orientations we can’t simply decide to change. Yet we depend on grace for salvation because our deepest problem isn’t our conscious choices but the orientation of our hearts.

Grace heals by gradually restoring libertas—the freedom to choose God and neighbor with genuine love rather than mere duty or self-interest. This happens throughout the Christian life, representing the progressive healing rather than the destruction of human nature.

The Courage to Choose

Within this theological framework, the iconic question from the Netflix show, Mr Robot: “Are you a 0 or a 1?” takes on profound weight. Augustine’s theology emphatically rejects fatalistic resignation while acknowledging the genuine constraints under which human agency operates.

To choose zero represents practical despair that denies both the gift of agency and the availability of grace. But Augustine’s understanding of courage (fortitudo) illuminates what it means to choose differently. Courage isn’t mere bravery in physical danger but sustained commitment to good in the face of opposition, discouragement, and the temptation to surrender.

The courage to choose always involves cooperation between human agency and divine grace. We don’t generate the power to choose good from purely human resources, but grace doesn’t operate without our active participation either. The choice to be “one” rather than “zero” represents both human decision and divine gift, both achievement and reception.

This offers a compelling alternative to both naive optimism about human capacity and cynical pessimism about human possibility. Moral transformation is neither automatic nor impossible but the ongoing fruit of grace working through genuine human choice.

The Ultimate Stakes

Augustine’s theology maintains that our restlessness has not only diagnostic significance (revealing our true condition) but eschatological significance (orienting us toward our ultimate destiny). The restless heart testifies not only to our present incompleteness but to the reality of completion toward which we’re called.

This prevents Augustine’s theology from collapsing into either worldly activism or otherworldly quietism. Because our ultimate rest lies in God, no earthly achievement can fully satisfy the human heart. Yet because God is encountered through love of neighbor, genuine spirituality necessarily involves engagement with temporal concerns of justice, mercy, and truth.

The refusal of zero thus takes on ultimate significance. To choose spiritual inertia is not merely to fail in this life but to turn away from eternal life itself. Conversely, to choose engagement, hope, and love—however imperfectly—is to participate now in the divine life that represents our final calling.

Why This Matters Now

Augustine’s vision speaks powerfully to our contemporary moment. In an age marked by both unprecedented power and widespread cynicism, his understanding of restlessness as grace and choice as cooperation with the divine offers a compelling alternative to both utopian fantasies and nihilistic despair.

Our contemporary restlessness—manifest in endless consumption, constant entertainment-seeking, and political polarization—may itself be a sign of grace, divine dissatisfaction with any settlement short of God. Rather than seeking to eliminate such restlessness through therapeutic or technological fixes, Augustine would encourage us to trace it to its source and allow it to propel us toward authentic transcendence.

The Augustinian framework demands both humility (recognizing our dependence on grace) and courage (accepting our responsibility to choose). It offers both realism about human limitations and hope in divine possibilities.