Thy Blind Instrument
Ask not to see, not to know--only to be used
It’s rare to meet a person who doesn’t want more clarity about what things mean or about what will happen. There’s something deeply human about the quest to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty.
And people look for such clarity or predictability in many ways. Some turn to science. Some turn to faith and philosophy. Others trust what they hear from friends or other people whom they respect.
Still others literally turn to the stars. The data suggests that astrology—yes, astrology—is making a big comeback. And it’s big business, with a projected industry size of $22.8 billion in 2031, up from $12.8 billion in 2021. (I feel compelled to note that astrology is not only a bunch of nonsense, but it’s also a set of practices condemned by the Catholic Church.)
Regardless, the desire to figure out what’s going on and what might happen is useful.
There’s utility and satisfaction to be had in gaining clarity about daily events and priorities, relationships with other people, financial matters, health, and well-being. There’s also tremendous value, as I’ve argued elsewhere, in wrestling with the big questions of our existence and life.
Clarity and Certainty are Useful
Reducing equivocality, or the presence of multiple interpretations about what we face, is at the heart of making sense—about everything. Without such sensemaking, every moment of every day would be a bewildering chain of surprises and mistakes leading to our demise.
It’s hard to even imagine going through a few hours, let alone a full day, without ongoing sensemaking about what we observe and what has occurred.
For example, when I woke up this morning, my wife wasn’t in our bed. I remembered that we have an 11-month-old baby, looked in another part of the room, and saw her attending to him. But without those simple, taken-for-granted steps to gain clarity, I would have been left with the deeply unsettling and sad apparent reality that my wife seemed to have simply vanished. If by chance I had noticed her, I would have been relieved—but still shaken and surprised.
Consider a more long-range type of matter: career planning. It’s helpful at one level to think about and explore what you might want to be doing with your time and efforts in the future. Having some clarity about one’s goals and aspirations can help one unpack the path one needs to take in order to move forward productively.
We cannot dispense with or ignore our ongoing search for clarity and certainty. Nor should we.
Even Saint Thomas the Apostle, often known as “doubting Thomas” and whose feast day is today (July 3), famously sought certainty, asking to touch the wounds of Christ as proof of his resurrection.
And yet when we’re perplexed, it’s easy to overvalue both clarity and certainty.
Sometimes, the best way to make sense of ambiguity and uncertainty is to stare it in the face and realize that you can be OK with it.
In this life, we will never have full understanding, full clarity, or full certainty.
Life is simply too complicated and complex for us with our limited human abilities to have it all figured out.
This is a hard lesson, perhaps especially for those of us who like to have things settled, find comfort in logical plans, and don’t really like leaving things to chance or other forces (or to God, for those of us who believe).
In Christian circles, it’s common for people to talk about “God’s plan.” And it’s common for those conversations to center upon some version of figuring out what that plan is, or finding out the path or purpose or mission that God has in store for us.
But to stay within such a Christian view, if we perfectly understood God’s plan for us, what need would there be for faith itself? If everything were clearly set out before us with perfect clarity and certainty, why would we need to trust in anyone or anything beyond ourselves?
It’s my view that sometimes we certainly do get clarity and certainty from faith, and yet true faith also comes about when we let go amid our perplexity.
The great English Catholic cardinal and theologian Saint John Henry Newman put it this way:
O, my God, I will put myself without reserve into Thy hands.
Wealth or woe, joy or sorrow, friends or bereavement, honor or humiliation, good report or ill report, comfort or discomfort, Thy presence or the hiding of Thy countenance, all is good if it comes from Thee.
Thou art wisdom and Thou art love — what can I desire more? … I am born to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument.
Let me be Thy blind instrument.
I ask not to see — I ask not to know — I ask simply to be used.
So maybe a lesson here is that while it’s good and useful to search for clarity and certainty, it’s also good and useful to let go sometimes and focus on the six inches in front of our faces.
Do the work set in front of you today and do it well, with ethics and integrity.
Breathe life into the relationships you have through your daily encounters.
Find beauty around you in the little moments and be grateful for it.
And trust in the fact that when we do those things, when we sit with often-vexing levels of uncertainty and ambiguity, we may actually find peace. We may even find a certain type of clarity and certainty in those moments, one that comes not through our own efforts but through our intentional renunciation of our supposed duty to always be searching for it.
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I love the phrase "if we perfectly understood God’s plan for us, what need would there be for faith itself?" thanks!