There is a book that is written with particularly simplistic language that speaks to the child in every one of us; the first chapter is especially fitting for what John spoke to tonight at True North, releasing our own images of God and letting God be God.

Good Old Uncle George

God was a family relative, much admired by mum and dad, who described him as very loving, a great friend of the family, very powerful and interested in all of us. Eventually we were taken to visit "Good old Uncle George". (...) We cannot share our parents' professed admiration for this jewel in the family. At the end of the visit, Uncle George addressed us. "Now listen dear," he begins, looking very severe, "I want to see you here once a week, and if you fail to come let me just show you what will happen to you." He then leads us down to the mansion's basement. It is dark, becomes hotter and hotter as we descend, and we begin to hear unearthly screams. In the basement there are steel doors. Uncle George opens one. "Now look in there dear," he says. We see a nightmare vision, an array of blazing furnaces with little demons in attendance, who hurl into the blaze those men, women and children who failed to visit Uncle George or to act in a way he approved. "And if you don't visit me dear, that is where you will most certainly go," says Uncle George. (...) Mom leans over us and says, "And now don't you love Uncle George with all your heart and soul, mind and strength?" And we, loathing the monster, say, "Yes I do," because to say anything else would be to join the queue at the furnace. At a tender age religious schizophrenia has set in and we keep telling Uncle George how much we love him and how good he is and that we want to do only what pleases him. We observe what we are told are his wishes and dare not admit, even to ourselves, that we loathe him. - Good Goats: Healing our Image of God, Dennis and Sheila Linn

How true this passage rings to my heart; maybe this quote rings true to your heart as well. So any way, as John finished his sermon message this evening I was left with one really big question. How? How, John, are we to shed our images of God, the God from childhood, from youth, the only God we've ever known. How?