I could probably leave the rest of that title blank and most of us would be perfectly able to fill in the answer without any help from me. You see, pointing out the problem is pretty easy for most of us. Actually offering solutions seems to often be more elusive.
In a dialog last year, I explored the passage of Scripture where Paul assures us, "There is no one who does good, no, not one." I held that this meant, "There is no one who does good, no, not one." (Innovative, I know.) I was assured that this was not the case, that lots of people do lots of good lots of the time. This is the kind of thing I'm pointing to. Let me put it in terms of problems/solution. Problem: "What does Paul mean in Romans 3 when he says, 'There is no one who does good, no, not one'?" Solution: "He does not mean what it says." Can you see that this isn't a solution? Or we can try it another way. I said, "It means what it says." It was argued "Problem: It cannot mean what it says." Again, that's not a solution.
Oh, I'm not even talking about that specific situation, nor am I talking about a particular side of a discussion. How many times have we heard something like this? "There are too many gun deaths in America." "Well, guns don't kill people; people kill people." Umm, okay ... but that's not a solution. Problem: Gun deaths. Solution: Guns don't kill people. Nope ... nothing there. So, while it certainly may be true that Paul didn't mean what he said or that guns don't kill people, neither of these are solutions to the problems.
Identifying problems is a good thing. If you don't know what the problem is, you can't fix it. That's easy. But simply identifying problems is not helpful if it ends there. Solutions are helpful. That would be a good thing. Maybe -- if all you have is the problem identified -- maybe it would be best to look for possible solutions before bringing up the problem
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