I finished reading ‘Mister God, this is Anna’, on the weekend and REALLY enjoyed it a lot. Has a tendency to get a bit new age all-roads-leads-to-God in some of its murmurings but part from those there is some very solid God truth hidden amongst the pages and a jolly good read…

Mister God, this is Anna – Fynn (pg 180)

‘Then she went on: “Why do we go to church, Fynn?”

“To understand Mister God more.”

“Less.”

“Less what?”

“To understand Mister God less.”

“Wait a blessed minute. You’re flipped!”

“No, I’m not.”

“You most certainly are.”

“No. You go to church to make Mister God really really big. When you make Mister God really really really big, then you really really don’t understand Mister God – then you do.”

She was just a little surprised and disappointed to learn that this was over my head, way over my head, but she explained.

“When you’re little you ‘understand’ Mister God. He sits  up there on his throne, a golden one of course; he has got whiskers and a crown and everyone is singing hymns like mad to him. God is useful and usable. You can ask him for things, he can strike your enemies deader than a doornail and he is pretty good at putting hexes on the bully next door, like warts and things. Mister God is so ‘understandable’, so useful and so usable, he is like some object, perhaps the most important object of all, but nevertheless an object and absolutely understandable. Later on you ‘understand’ him to be a bit different but you are still able to grasp what he is. Even though you understand him, he doesn’t seem to understand you! He doesn’t seem to understand that you simply must have a new bike, so your ‘understanding’ of him changes a bit more. In whatever way or state you understand Mister God, so you diminish his size. He becomes an understandable entity among other understandable entities. So Mister God keeps on shedding bits all the way through your life until the time comes when you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all. At this point you have let Mister God be his proper size and wham, there he is laughing at you.”