Side Effects of Solving Problems

When you solve a problem, you're often trying something new. You're adopting a new mindset, or developing a new institution or habit, developing a new relationship. In order to live you seem to have to use new tactics, "whatever works". But solutions have side effects. (This sounds like something We Are Not Saved would talk about on a societal level.)

So what you can end up doing is solving a loud, obvious problem by trading away something of quieter but greater importance. You might laugh off your problem, and get relief from "taking it too seriously", but as a consequence lose some of your ability to take anything seriously, and thus close yourself off to the voice of God to some degree. Or you might push for justice, and get what you deserve -- and not learn to receive greater gifts from God.

I am a bit hesitant to be a historian, but I think I see in the cultural history of the 19th or 20th centuries a kind of build-up of tension, up to a time of breakdown from perhaps 1920 through 1970 or 1980. I know of existentialism in postwar Europe and the big cultural crises of the 1960s. There was a time when people would be deeply disturbed by intellectual teachings, especially existentialism. Well, existentialism can be read just as easily now as then, and it hardly has any effect. We are not concerned with the burning question of "Is there a meaning to life? How can we go on given the 'death of God'?" Now the questions just don't have much resonance with us. We're just fine... but maybe the sense of "there is a right and wrong" and the (what I would call) cultural passion that led people to take things really seriously in an idealistic way (what I would associate with "having a sense of real meaning in life") is exactly the thing we need now, and our alleviation of our anxieties and mental anguish over existentialism traded away something that we would regret, if we hadn't blinded ourselves spiritually, and which we have good reason to regret.

The Enemy, of both societies and individual people, profits by throwing stresses at us and leading us to choose solutions which trade away something of real value. The scam of evil is multi-part sometimes, taking attention away from what is really at play. Satan wants to make you miserable, and that's obvious, but also wants to shut you down, make you hopeless, cynical, turn you away from loving and trusting God.

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However, as dark as all that sounds, the good news is that sometimes you can solve a problem and then correct for the solution's side effects. You can deal with the obvious problem and not get taken in by the quiet lie that tends to go with that solution.