Conundrum

Let us commence with "If God is omnipotent, then can He make a rock so big that He cannot move it?"

David Hilbert and Bertran Russell, among others, were noted logicians who were right on the cusp of solving this problem, and all others, convinced that a logically-consistent model could be described. Their efforts paralleled Michelson and Morley who were on the verge of proving that light passes through a medium they called "Ether"

Much as Albert Einstein dashed the hopes and shattered a number of hitherto rock-solid theories about matter and energy, a short young paranoid boy named Kurt Godel (what a name, huh!) produced a 26-page proof which states, basically, that NO system of logic, designed and conceived by man, can EVER be created which does NOT embed some contradictions within it.

Quite a few people were upset by these new developments; they were more extreme than the scientific proposition that man, in fact, is NOT at the center of the universe, the earth is NOT flat, and the sun and planets do NOT revolve around it.

Anyway, none of this is exactly what I want to write about today.

God promises, in the Bible, and Jesus reiterates, that the way to gain everything is to give everything away. I'm not going to look up the passages right now but I know you've heard it and I know we all find that a little confusing and u8nbelievable.

I think I have told you all that I went through a period of several years where God took me by the hand and retaught me everything that I had learned or been taught up to that point, through examples and constant conversation. This was one of the issues that He took up with me.

My workplace took up a generalized collection during christmas, something like United Way, and one year they adopted the slogan of "It all comes back to you." By way of experimentation, I chose to make a quite large gift to the fund. Lo and behold, I got a call from top management that I had been chosen as an example for everybody and I would be receiving my entire contribution back as a check. On the one hand, this seemed like a pretty absurd thing for management to do. On the other hand, God was making a point to me.

In the years that followed, I found myself more and more often making large and extraordinarily generous gifts to people. One of the largest was to take in a woman who was suffering from advancing multiple sclerosis, and the returns I got for everything I did for her were simply beyond description. God kept His promises to me and every gift that I made was returned promptly to me. At the very beginning of His tutelage I had in fact been living homeless, sleeping in my car, bathing at the local public athletic facility, storing my possessions in a public storage facility. But I had a few funds in the stock market and within several years those investments increased, again I believe with His guidance, to the point where I AND people around me began to think of me as "rich".

The most egregious move I made was to purchase a cleaning franchise on behalf of a woman I deemed as worthy and capable but because of circumstances (she was 1. black 2. an immigrant 3. a moslem) she could not even BUY a job. The trick was that by that time, I was so accustomed to God returning me my money right away that I was counting on it.

Well, so He didn't. I won't go into details, but the whole experience was exasperating for many people for many years.

and that's the conundrum.... for so long as I, or you, give without the slightest hope or intention of receiving anything back, you will get it all back. But as soon as you go expecting to get something back, well then, you end up getting nothing but trouble.

I love God. but this world of His is just nuts ....