Useful Confusion

I do not like feeling confused. 

So much in the world confuses me. If I listed the things I find confusing, it  would take a lot of words and a lot of time. I find that exceedingly  uncomfortable. Experiencing confusion makes me fearful and sad, even  angry. Confusion can feel oppressive; it can chase me into a corner so that I  feel desperate. I most definitely do not think of confusion as a positive  thing, so you’ll understand my surprise when I came across the suggestion  that confusion could be useful. 

I was reading St. Gregory the Great’s The Book of Pastoral Rule when a  phrase he used jumped out and slapped me in the face. St. Gregory referred  to a “useful confusion,” and I got stuck. 

Useful confusion. What? 

I read that phrase and stopped reading. It didn’t sit right with my modern  mind, and at the same time, it touched me deeply and felt profoundly  important. I knew I needed to ponder…this was something I needed to sit  with and learn from. I didn’t like it, but there was truth in what St. Gregory  said. 

How could confusion possibly be useful? It seemed so wrong. The phrase echoed in my head, ringing and rankling. It felt like grit in my heart and created a holy dissonance within me. But I stuck with it because it spoke to the deeper places in me in a way that I knew would be  illuminating. 

On the one hand, I will tell you that I am comfortable with the word useful. It is  good and direct, non-specific yet potent with meaning. The word confusion, on the other hand, is just…irritating. 

The modern mind is not accustomed to being confused, even less to staying  with it, believing it might be “useful.” If we moderns feel confused, we  conclude that something must be wrong. We need never be confused. We  can find the solution to anything. We have the brainpower it takes…or we  have Google. Confusion is just another word for weakness.  

How often have I bumped into “useful confusion” only to turn away from it  rather than acknowledging and allowing its presence? When I feel  confused, my first move is to work to solve the riddle that confuses me. If I  can’t find the answers I crave, I often construct my own parameters and  definitions to ensure my own comfort. And quickly! The tension of  confusion is nearly intolerable. 

Probably the last thing I think when I feel confused is that it would be good  to remain in that place of confusion, that it might be useful. Noticing confusion and seeking relief is not always wrong. But the simple fact of  being human means accepting that some questions have no answers. There  is a choice to make about what to do with my confusion, and this is where I  decide if I will allow it to be useful in my life. 

Surely a “useful confusion” is one that leads me to bow before the One who  is greater than me, and who is mysterious beyond my ability to fathom.  Surely a useful confusion reminds me that He is God and I am not, and I  can rest my weary striving in the peace of knowing that although many  things confuse me, His ways are not my ways. God’s wisdom and man’s  wisdom do not compare, and although I am confused, nothing is confusing  to Him. 

Confusion will be useful when it causes me to wait in God’s presence for the  solution, or for no solution. When I let it teach me to depend more upon  God’s goodness than my own understanding, confusion will be useful. When  it causes me to lean into my own inadequacy and to open-handedly  prostrate myself before His greater wisdom and understanding, then  confusion will be useful. I can choose how to respond to confusion when it comes.

I can refuse to allow confusion to be useful. I can meet it with anger and indignation, or I can deny that I am confused at all. I can craft my own explanations for things that confuse me and create definitions for that which I do not understand in order to make it all more manageable. I can draw my own lines over the blurriness to make myself feel more comfortable and more in control. I can demand that conditions bend to my happiness.

Or, I can choose to be soft. I can choose to be humble. I can choose to be  open to the Holy Spirit, willing to bend, and willing to accept my  limitations. When I am willing to trust beyond my own understanding and not insist on my own comfort, then God will be able to use my confusion to  draw me closer to Himself and to lead me closer to my own true, flawed, finite, human self. Ultimately, this will make me more dependent upon my Creator and more Christlike. 

When I recognize that I am confused, I do my best to take my confused heart and enter into the Holy place. I do well to accept my human limitations and remember that God is good. It is right to ask for divine clarification and to seek God’s illumination. But I must also be willing to remain in the tension of my own lack of understanding if that is where God keeps me. If I handle my confusion with humility, God can make it useful for His purpose in me and His Glory in the world. Then can confusion be truly useful. 

Still, I may or may not like it.