Choosing Confusion

Sin is always willful confusion. Ultimately, sin pretends that God is not God, that God cannot see, that God does not know, and we substitute our own desires, our own wills, or the claims or promises of something or someone else – in place of God. This is confusion. This happens in knee jerk reactions: anger, lust, fear, covetousness, envy, lies – in that moment people choose confusion, pretending that God is not God, pretending that their circumstances justify their sin. I had to lie. I couldn’t help being fearful. Of course I got angry. But confusion breeds confusion. You cannot allow a little confusion to fester because it always metastasizes. It always grows. Confusion by definition is not reasonable. You cannot tell confusion to be good. You cannot tell confusion to stay there in that one little corner of your life. Confusion is a cancer, a mold, a rot in your soul, and it always brings trouble. A home full of strife and striving is a home full of confusion. A heart full of guilt and shame is constantly confused.

This is where the great abominations come from. Why do people kill their children? Why do people turn to homosexuality? Why do people embrace these great confusions, these perversions? The answer is that God gives people over to these confusions. “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me” (Dt. 28:20). Paul says, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened… Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…” (Rom. 1:21-25).

So what shall we do? Whether you are trying to hide little sins in secret or whether you know that you are neck deep in trouble, the answer to all of the confusion is to tell the truth. Stop lying, stop blaming other people, stop blaming your circumstances, stop accusing God, and tell the truth. Admit that you have sinned. You have chosen confusion. And call on the Lord to deliver you from all confusion. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Photo by Ehimetalor Unuabona on Unsplash