The word problem only appears twice in the Bible, both occurrences being in Daniel 5. That doesn’t mean there weren’t complications in those days, or that hearts didn’t break, that sorrow didn’t hurt, that love sometimes was not returned.
The things we see as problems to be quickly resolved the Bible saw as experiences to be lived through, either positively or negatively, either imaginatively or not creatively.
When we regard a thing as a problem, we often isolate it from the rest of our experience. We carry over into personal relationships an impersonal or mechanical view of life, as though human personality were a machine that had broken down.
It’s like this: people don’t go to marriage counselors to examine and reform their whole way of living, but simply to remove the small piece of gum that is gumming up the works.
Another example: growing up is not a problem you can solve, it’s an experience that must be undergone. Growing up always has some element of complication, is never quite without pain, without loss, without inward struggle.
It always, to put it in the words of the New Testament, involves a rebirth, with all the dismay and discomfort birth entails.
No, human beings aren’t problems to be solved. We have lives to live whose edges run out into mystery, whose borders touch the infinite, whose center is an arena of clashing wills and values.
Problem solvers get fixated on themselves. Jesus said to look beyond self. Faith does not try to explain everything. Faith attempts to show that in common, ordinary, daily life there are elements of mystery that are completely baffling, baffling yet very real, unanswerable, yet livable.
Problem solvers get fixated...