As many know, I have been in the process of weeding out my library. The books on the table in the vestibule are for those who might like to read. As I was   going through my books this week, I came across this   delightful little book that I forgot I had. I decided that I would begin sharing from this book, adding some of my own comments. I hope that you will enjoy it. The authors actually identify 10 stupid and 10 smart ways to think about God.

Somewhere in the heart of each of us sits an old man with snow-white hair and a long, flowing beard. He lives in a beautiful palace of light, way up in the sky. Clouds, like taxicabs, carry visitors to and fro. Winged angels flutter about, harp music playing in the background like celestial Muzak (i.e. elevator music).

This divinely enthroned man, looking suspiciously like a transfigured Charlton Heston, is God – God the first time most of us become acquainted with Him.

This is God the King. Benevolent Monarch of the World. He was kind and loving, like Mommy. Trustworthy, but firm, like Daddy. Wise and patient like Grandpa. He was the perfect picture of God for a child who was too innocent to envision anything else.

He was a good God. That is, until we grew up. Until we traded our childhood fantasies for real life. Until we needed to wrest control of our lives and didn’t want interference from our parents or an overly parental God.

As Anne-Marie Rizzotto wrote, “Each child brings his pet God to church under his arm. All people begin with childhood images of God which, of course, influence how they think about Him.”

He was a real God. That is, until mankind grew up, began to trade mythology for scientific theory, learned to prize logic over feeling and discovered so much about the world that this childhood image of God seemed stupid.

The old man in the sky became less than believable after mankind peered through a telescope. Also, the kingly god truly became undesirable after the revolutionary concept of democracy and the beard was hardly politically correct after women’s liberation. Of course beards, thankfully, have come back into vogue.

In many ways, we’ve grown smarter. But when it comes to God, many of us haven’t grown at all. We know what’s wrong with God, but not what’s right. We haven’t really thought through, openly and completely, this idea of one singular supreme Being. We have not come to terms with our view of God in light of everything we now know and feel about the world. We only know that we blame Him when we think life is unfair.

It seems, unfortunately, that religious education stops among many people after they are out of school and so their thoughts about God never change.