. . . and you're cat as well . . . the one and only.
not so sure about not being contradictory though. [I hope that doesnt sound like a put-down.] One of the things I notice about myself (and lots of people) is the temptation to see life as a series of problems that need to be solved. It's part of our survival kit as a race I suppose and in many ways it does work. eg. 'The car wont start. There's got to be a reason for that so all we need to do is find it and sort it.'
We are trained to see life this way from a very early age and it is the mainstay of all our technological and medicinal advances since Renaissance times.
When it comes to matters of faith, and trying to live a life of faith, I have discovered (very very slowly) that not only does all my problem-solving training not help, but it actually becomes a serious stumbling-block. The Christian faith is nothing if not paradoxical. The gospel is full of curious traps that send us sprawling. Most of my prayer seems to be a painstaking unpicking of all of my carefully acquired 'life-skills'. The psalmist says somewhere: 'He defeats the plans of the peoples'. How literally that is true still astonishes me.
It is no coincidence that many scientists stand aghast at the gigantic gulf between their own way of thinking and the life of faith.
What I find so hideous about Exodus International is the way in which they look at gay people rather like I look at my car (or rather wish that I could look at my car). 'All you have to do is locate the problem and sort it'. . . .maybe a new fanbelt or a cracked cylinder . . . . It is an inevitable extension of the science of psychology I suppose but, to my mind, it misses the point by about 50 million light years: the person is reduced to a broken machine and the God of Heaven to a sophisticated spanner.
My point is this. The contradictions and paradoxes within us are not 'problems that need sorting'. They are actually the way in which we step closer to God because God Himself is nothing if not both contradictory and paradoxical.