"Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made"
About this Quote
Schuller’s line performs a neat magic trick: it shrinks “the impossible problem” down to the size of a choice. That’s not accidental. As a televangelist-era clergyman who made optimism a brand, he’s trading in cognitive reframing - the kind that turns paralysis into motion by changing the story you tell yourself about what’s in front of you.
The intent is pastoral and practical. “Impossible” isn’t treated as an objective fact; it’s treated as a symptom of avoidance. By repeating “again and again,” Schuller borrows the cadence of a sermon and the authority of lived testimony: he’s not offering a theory, he’s offering a pattern he wants you to adopt. The phrase “only a tough decision” is the pressure point. “Only” is doing heavy rhetorical labor, minimizing the threat while admitting the cost. He’s not denying hardship; he’s relocating it from the world to the will.
The subtext is also a gentle rebuke. If the problem is “waiting to be made,” the delay isn’t caused by external complexity but by internal reluctance. That frames agency as the moral center of the situation: you’re not doomed, you’re hesitating. It’s empowering, but it also shifts responsibility onto the individual in a way that fits late-20th-century self-help spirituality, where faith often sounds like confidence and salvation resembles decisiveness.
Context matters: for congregants facing messy, structural realities - poverty, illness, discrimination - this can either be a lifeline (you can act) or a blind spot (not everything is soluble by choice). The line works because it makes action feel holy.
The intent is pastoral and practical. “Impossible” isn’t treated as an objective fact; it’s treated as a symptom of avoidance. By repeating “again and again,” Schuller borrows the cadence of a sermon and the authority of lived testimony: he’s not offering a theory, he’s offering a pattern he wants you to adopt. The phrase “only a tough decision” is the pressure point. “Only” is doing heavy rhetorical labor, minimizing the threat while admitting the cost. He’s not denying hardship; he’s relocating it from the world to the will.
The subtext is also a gentle rebuke. If the problem is “waiting to be made,” the delay isn’t caused by external complexity but by internal reluctance. That frames agency as the moral center of the situation: you’re not doomed, you’re hesitating. It’s empowering, but it also shifts responsibility onto the individual in a way that fits late-20th-century self-help spirituality, where faith often sounds like confidence and salvation resembles decisiveness.
Context matters: for congregants facing messy, structural realities - poverty, illness, discrimination - this can either be a lifeline (you can act) or a blind spot (not everything is soluble by choice). The line works because it makes action feel holy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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