IT'S A MIRACLE!!
William A. Wisdom

During a sultry summer in the mid-1970's I had two main projects on my mind. I was teaching an undergraduate course in formal logic every weekday morning. And I was trying to master the long and enormously complicated proof of Kurt Gödel's famous "Incompleteness Theorem". What the Theorem says, and how he proved it, are irrelevant here. Suffice it to say that it was a groundbreaking achievement in the foundations of mathematics--comparable in its field, some say, to Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in physics.

Then I read in the newspaper that the Reverend S__ was bringing his evangelical tent meeting to Philadelphia for a week. Two good friends of mine--also faculty members at Temple University (in Anthropology and American Studies)--agreed that it would be interesting for us to go on Thursday night to what was being billed as "Special Miracles Night". I had been to revival meetings before, but neither of my colleagues had.

Our Anthropologist gave us a quick course in what it meant to be a "participant-observer" in an alien culture. The point is to avoid calling attention to oneself or seeming to be an "outsider"; we should behave as much as possible like the natives. Thus prepared, we set out for Special Miracles Night.

Sitting in the back of the huge tent, at my somewhat timid colleagues' insistence, we watched several hours of preaching, gospel singing, testimonials, and offering after "free-will" offering. (I quickly decided that participant-observation called for hymn-singing, hand-waving, and "Hallelujah"-shouting, but not money-giving.)

Finally, after about two hours--when, I suppose, the Reverend S__ figured that he'd squeezed the last possible penny from his enormous but for the most part poor audience--we got to the feature attraction. He invited everyone with a need for a Special Miracle in their lives to join him on stage. I leaped from my seat, expecting my fellow participant-observers to follow. They wouldn't come. But I was determined to be right there on the spot if someone abandoned a wheelchair or had a withered arm restored or a conspicuous tumor removed. So I went down without them, along with perhaps two or three hundred others.

Seeing that the needy far exceeded his expectations, the Reverend S__ said that he'd not be able to lay hands on each of us individually--which was fine with me--but that he would deal with whole classes of need while we massed at the foot of the stage. "Which of you needs a healing miracle in your body?" he asked. A number of hands went up around me, and I began to panic. I realized that I'd have to pick a miracle from his laundry list of needs. I felt no special need for a healing miracle in my body, so my hand stayed at my side as I hoped that I could identify with some other need. "Which of you has a legal problem that requires divine intervention?" That wasn't me. "Which of you needs God's help with a domestic problem...a problem in the home." Nope.

"Who among you needs a financial miracle." Figuring that that might be as close as he'd get to my situation--though it wasn't very close--I was about to raise my hand when the little old man beside me slowly raised his. I glanced at him. His clothing was nearly worn out. His weathered hands and lined face revealed a long and difficult life of toil. I couldn't bring myself to claim a financial need while I stood with him. Still, I feared that I was running out of choices.

But finally: "Who here needs a miracle in your mind?" I suppose that he was thinking of anxiety, depression, anger, and the like. But I reasoned that my most pressing need fit into this category. My hand shot up. If I could wake up tomorrow morning with a complete and accurate understanding of every detail of Gödel's Proof, that would be an undeniable miracle--far more spectacular and convincing from my point of view than mere water-walking or sight-restoration. I had my miracle picked out.

The rest of Special Miracles Night was a let-down. After identifying a few more classes of potential need, the Reverend S__ prayed mightily for each and every one of us before him. Nothing dramatic or even interesting happened...at least nothing observable. No crutches thrown away; no cries of "I can see!"; no missing limbs restored. So we all went home, my timid colleagues and I rather disappointed. But, needless to say, that is not the end of the story.

The next morning I went to teach my logic class and, as usual, stopped at the vending machine in the hall. I put in my quarter for some coffee (remember: this was in the 1970's), and down dropped a cup which slowly filled. At the same time a quarter fell into the coin return slot...and another quarter...and then a third! I was puzzled for only a moment, and quickly realized that this was my miracle, a financial miracle! But how could this be? I must have gotten the miracle intended for the poor fellow who pressed next to me in the crowd last night.

I was delighted, but only for a moment. A cloud of shame came over me as I realized that somewhere in the Philadelphia area was a poor old man, possibly illiterate, who had a perfect understanding of Gödel's Proof, but no more money today than yesterday.


Copyright © 2000, William A. Wisdom