‘What does God do?’ asked Tertius, aged three and a half.
His question was passed on to the panel at the Conference.
‘He’s busy making Hell for people with difficult questions,’ retorted Bishop Spong.* It’s an answer I may one day resort to, but at this point it would spark a response of ‘What’s Hell?’ Shame on you, Bishop Spong, I thought you were in the business of breaking down myths, not planting them in the minds of the very young.
‘Children are notorious for asking difficult questions,’ replied Don Cupitt. Yes, that is why they deserve the best answers we can give them.
‘He does what we want him to do,’ said Pamela Donohue. Great for a slightly older child, but with Tertius it would have provoked twenty minutes of How? What? Where? Why? When? and Who?
‘He makes the best in us — intelligence, courage, humour and love,’ suggested David Hart. That is pretty close to the answer I got Tertius to bed with that night.
‘He does what God in stories does,’ was David Boulton’s reply. A good answer for a three and a half year old, even if it would have cost me at least two more stories.
Children need stories. They need the magic and wonder. My son lives in a world where boys can fly and never grow up; bears and piglets talk; little French Gauls outwit big Roman soldiers and drink magic potions. He has heroes who vanquish death — Asterix, Jesus and Super Ted to name but three. In the space of an hour, Tertius can rescue kittens from burning trees, lead an army, slay a dragon, captain a pirate ship and fly a rocket to the moon.
To be a child once was wondrous. To be able to share that world again is a rare privilege.
But there is one part of his world to which I can never return. Differences of colour, race, culture, god, sex or physical appearance — whilst maybe noted and sometimes questioned — are never judged. So when you talk to these people with intellects bigger than their stature and questions yet bigger still, tread carefully. Better still, tiptoe. For you are treading on minds as yet unmarred by prejudices: be wary of the footprint you leave.
* Bishop Spong was quoting the reply of Saint Augustine (died 430 AD) to the question, ‘What was God doing before he created time?’ — Ed.