“In Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be put to confusion.”

(Psalm 71:1)

 

Confusion is a chronic complaint. The youth in trouble explains or excuses his wrong conduct with a shrug: “I don’t know why I did it. I’m all confused. I guess I’m just a mixed up kid.” The aging mother with the pressures of life straining her emotions to the snapping point, sits on the edge of her bed and shaking her head repeats endlessly: “What will I do? What will I do? What will I do?”

The desolation of confusion confronts us at every turn: in minds and in marriages, in families and in factories, in state houses and in sanitariums. Oh, to be delivered from confusion!

But, of course as you know, man’s confusion is not a new problem. It’s an old complaint. The disorganized, self-destroying creature Jesus found in the Gerasene graveyard told the Lord his basic problem was confusion. “My name,” he said, “my nature, is Legion. My trouble is that I’m not one but many.” He had no inner unity of command, (you see). He was ruled by many masters. He was just a storm of conflicting emotions — a raging spiritual cyclone.

In ancient Greece, Aristophenes looked around on his fellow citizens and solemnly announced — “Whirl is a king, having driven out Zeus.” That was the poet’s way of saying: “Confusion rules.” St. Paul wrote to an unruly congregation that was turning their church into a temple of controversy: “God is not the God of confusion, but of peace.” And the Psalmist, observing the misery of men in his world, and out of the wisdom gleaned from the years he had lived and observed what most blessed and most cursed life, made as his fervent prayer: “Lord, let me never be put to confusion.”

How long and painfully has man suffered from confusion! Oh, to be delivered from it! Who of us will not agree with Rufus Jones that: “The master secret of life is the attainment of the power of serenity in the midst of stress and action and adventure.” But how is this serenity achieved and what will deliver us from confusion?

Well, a measure of serenity may be achieved, and confusion routed by living a life of moral integrity. How much of our confusion is the direct result of our moral perversity. Men and women persist in playing at sixes and sevens with the Ten Commandments. Each one doing what seems best in his own sight at the moment, instead of bringing all conduct into strict compliance with the moral law of God, sets people loose from the law all right, but it also sends them wandering in the wilderness of confusion, uncertainty and unhappiness.

A Brooklyn taxi-driver, in spite of all his pious observance of the forms of worship, attending services and saying his prayers — in spite of his strenuous efforts as a faithful father to provide his family with the comforts and securities of life, is careless of the rights and well-being of others. He transgresses the sacred moral code: “Thou shalt not steal … Thou shalt not kill.” And into confusion fall his life, his family, his victims.

Starry-eyed and soul-swept with reverence, the bride and groom move slowly to the marriage altar in candlelit solemnity, but all the trappings and sanctities of churchly service cannot save their hopes and dreams from confusion if they refuse to bring their lives to honor the unrelenting moral law: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Yes, and the ranks of organized labor can never be saved from confusion by the strongest of nationwide organizations, by the tightest of contracts, or even by the most favorable labor legislation, so long as leaders of labor turn racketeer and pray upon the very ones who have flocked to them for protection. Moral bankruptcy always turns man to confusion.

“There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked. They are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”

Every man finds out, soon or late, that he does possess some innate sense of moral order and that to violate this inner integrity is to invite confusion. When the Psalmist cries: “O Lord, let me never be put to confusion,” he is in effect praying: “Let me never be put to shame,” for shame is one of the meanings of the Hebrew word translated confusion in the Authorized Version. “Let me never be put to shame, be made an object of scorn and ridicule among my fellows. Let me not violate that inner integrity of my soul. For the men of the ancient East, public disgrace was harder to bear than death.” (Interpreter’s Bible)

Certainly some remnant of man’s ancient nobility lingers in the breast of every modern man and woman, no matter how immoral and decadent a people we become. And confusion will always be the curse of transgression. Yes, moral integrity will achieve a measure of serenity in life — certainly no one can be delivered from confusion who flaunts the moral law.

And then, too, many discover deliverance from confusion and achieve a measure of serenity through work. How often when we feel overwhelmed by the confusion in our social order and the political realm, when assailed by unsolved personal problems in our own souls, we have sought refuge and found some semblance of serenity by getting into the groove of our daily work. Oh, thank God for work!

And Dr. Lewis Sherrill, with the inspired insight of the gifted Christian psychologist that he is, has observed that: “Work is a psychological necessity because it lies very close to the roots of self-respect.” Man, who is made in the image of his creator, bears this striking resemblance to his maker, he best expresses his nature when he is busy creating, making, working. Work, even very hard work, does not hurt most of us, for man is made for it, and is thrown into confusion when it is denied him.

This, too, is one reason that enforced retirement while men are still productive, where there is wide disparity between chronological age and physical and mental age — cause such confusion in the lives and homes of our older people. Man, the master worker, needs work to achieve serenity.

This is the reason that temptations to avoid work for oneself, or to live off the work of others in some form of dependence or exploitation, are so damningly confusing in the social and psychological world. “This temptation is the more subtle because there are ways of avoiding work which are respected and approved in one’s own class, and this seems to be true no matter what the class to which one belongs. Thus the worker can find the greatest variety of ways to squeeze his pay as high as possible, and squeeze his output as low as possible. The employer can be equally ingenious in finding ways to do exactly the opposite, that is, to squeeze the highest possible output for the lowest possible pay.” (Struggle of the Soul — L. J. Sherrill)

But, of course, work is not the perfect panacea to deliver man’s soul from confusion.
“There are millions in the modern world who hate their work every day of their lives and who take various forms of escape whenever they can.” (Trueblood — Christian Century) And millions more find no meaning in their work, so highly specialized has modern industry become.

Yes, blessed, harmonizing force that work can be and usually is, it also can be and often does become one of the confusing forces in man’s life.

But the supreme serenity attainable by man in this world is to be found in organizing his life about one master motive, one dominant passion, one great obsession, one supreme allegiance. Here is our surest hope for deliverance from confusion.

The feature writer for Time magazine recorded not long ago: “The new girl in Miss Hewitt’s classes was small and scrawny, with lank orange hair that hung to her shoulders and a worried little button mouth that made her look like a newborn mouse. She stood stiffly in the corner like a broom somebody left there, while the other girls smiled and pulled their sweaters down and wondered what the awkward little newcomer was doing in the drama class. When the teacher came in she asked each girl in turn to say why she wanted to act. ‘Well, it’s better than ballet,’ one saucy sub-deb said, and another replied, ‘Mother thinks it will give me poise.’ When the question was put to the girl in the corner, she lifted her quiet gray eyes to the teacher’s face and said simply: ‘It’s my life.’

“The teacher gasped — and many others since that day have gasped at Julie Harris. In the last dozen years, the girl with the plain little face and the childlike limbs has laid her life upon the stage like a candle upon an altar, and the still strong flame of her talent shines through the nervous wattage of Broadway with a pure, steady light.”

Young John Keate, having turned away from the study of surgery which he had undertaken at the instigation of his guardian, wrote to his friend, John Hamilton Reynolds: “I find I cannot exist without poetry, without eternal poetry — half the day will not do — the whole of it.”

And Paul, in a Roman jail, but at peace in his own soul, fettered to a soldier but in unconfused serenity, wrote to his Philippine friends: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind … I press toward the mark for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus … For me to live is Christ.”

Surely here is the key, not just to success, but to something better — serenity and satisfaction of soul and deliverance from confusion; just this, the organization of your life about one over-mastering purpose. But we must be sure the organizing principle is big enough and demanding enough to serve as a noble rallying point for the totality of a man’s soul. Emerson said of Daniel Webster that he was “a great man with a small ambition.”

The discerning Mr. Walter Lippmann wrote some years ago that: “It is possible to drift along not too discontentedly, somewhat nervously, somewhat anxiously, somewhat confusedly, hoping for the best, and believing in nothing very much … But it is not possible to be wholly at peace. For serenity of the soul requires some better organization of life than a man can attain by pursuing his casual ambitions, satisfying his hungers, and for the rest accepting destiny as an idiot’s tale in which one dumb sensation succeeds another to no known end. And it is not possible for him to be wholly alive … These are the gifts of a vital religion.”

Yes, nothing will do us, short of what gathers up in one hand the whole of the moral law’s demands upon us, and the other hand holds for us a work that lays upon the totality of our personalities the demand for constant output of our richest talent. Nothing short of that will do for us. And do you know what that means?

It means sworn allegiance to Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of your life. Here is your supreme chance at the master secret of life — the attainment of serenity in the midst of stress and confusion and adventure. Will you take it?

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

Eternal God, who art ever at work in Thy vast universe creating and re-creating, suns and moons, worlds and stars, people and plants, time and eternity are all the works of Thy hands. We praise Thee for the majesty, the beauty and wonder of all Thy works, and beseech Thee to incline our hearts to the joyous production in our small imperfect way of such works as will be pleasing and acceptable in Thy sight.

Thou hast given us health and strength. Thou hast provided us the opportunity to work. Thou hast rewarded our labors with an abundance to sustain life and filled our souls with the satisfaction of accomplishment. Therefore, we praise Thee and give Thee thanks, O God.

Now we beseech Thee to guard our common life with justice and truth, that employers may respect the personalities of their employees, remembering that we are all children of the same Father; that employees may be honest, diligent and loyal in their duties that no man may be defrauded of the just returns of his labor.

We pray for our schools now opening, our Father: for teachers, that they may know the truth and did in proclaiming it know also the constancy of Thy presence sustaining them in their high calling; for pupils, we pray that they may receive instruction gratefully and be prepared for all life’s stern duties and joyous privileges; for mothers and fathers, that they may be given the health and strength, patience, courage and determination to perform their necessary functions in the education of their youth; for all of us, Righteous Father, we pray that we may stand by our schools in these times to protect them from violence, bigotry and intolerance through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.