Problem-solving

“In running a church I solve problems. Wherever two or three are gathered together, problems develop… It is satisfying to my ego to help make rough places smooth.

“The difficulty is that problems arrive in such constant flow that problem solving becomes full-time work. Because it is useful and the pastor ordinarily does it well, we fail to see that the pastoral vocation has been subverted. Gabriel Marcel wrote that, “life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be explored.” That is certainly the biblical stance: life is not something we manage to hammer together and keep in repair by our wits; it is an unfathomable gift. We are immersed in mysteries: incredible love, confounding evil, the creation, the cross, grace, God.”

From The Contemplative Pastor - Eugene Peterson, pg 65. Quoted by Len Hjalmarson in this post on spirituality.