GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 5:9
Identify the Problem
An oft-repeated adage says that identifying a problem is 9/10s of the solution.
A software program on which I recently worked would not perform correctly. I went back through the code line by line, and tried the function again, but it still didn’t work. So I tried an old trick learned way back when—I read the code from the end to the beginning. There it was: I had left out a semicolon. I inserted the innocent little symbol, and the program performed correctly. Identifying the problem is 9/10s of the solution, or, in this case, all of the solution.
An American inventor and head of research at General Motors, Charles Kettering, reportedly told his crew, “A problem well stated is a problem half solved,” emphasizing the point that clearly understanding and framing a problem is the key to solving it.
St. Mark’s Gospel describes the confrontation between Jesus and a man with an evil spirit in the region of the Gerasenes. According to one interpretation, Jesus commanded the evil spirit to leave the man, but it, or they, did not. Then Jesus chose another strategy—he sought to identify the problem. “And he asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said to him, ‘Legion is my name, because we are many.’” (Mark 5:9)
In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, William Barclay says that people in that region believed that if a demon’s name could be discovered, it gave a certain power over it. He says that an ancient magic formula was “I adjure thee, every demonic spirit, Say whatsoever thou art.” The belief was that if the name was known, the demon’s power was broken.
Identifying a problem is 9/10s of the solution—even spiritual problems.
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