#News RSS Feed News » A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury answers Comments Feed Tuesday 31 January 2012 | Blog Feed | All feeds Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. ___________________ Submit * Home * News * Sport * Finance * Comment * Blogs * Culture * Travel * Lifestyle * Fashion * Tech * Dating * Offers * Jobs * UK * World * Politics * Obituaries * Education * Earth * Science * Defence * Health News * Royal Family * Celebrities * Weird News Blogs Home » News » Religion » Damian Thompson Damian Thompson Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. IFRAME: http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.html?show_screen_name =false&show_count=true&screen_name=holysmoke [damian_thompson_140_big_v2-21-34-16.jpg] A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury answers By Damian Thompson Religion Last updated: April 22nd, 2011 Comment on this Comment on this article Archbishop Williams plays God (Photo: Getty) Archbishop Williams plays God (Photo: Getty) There's a charming article in today's Times by Alex Renton, a non-believer who sends his six-year-old daughter Lulu to a Scottish church primary school. Her teachers asked her to write the following letter: "To God, How did you get invented?" The Rentons were taken aback: "We had no idea that a state primary affiliated with a church would do quite so much God," says her father. He could have told Lulu that, in his opinion, there was no God; or he could have pretended that he was a believer. He chose to do neither, instead emailing her letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church (no reply), the Presbyterians (ditto) and the Scottish Catholics (a nice but theologically complex answer). For good measure, he also sent it to "the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace" â and this was the response: Dear Lulu, Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It's a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this â 'Dear Lulu â Nobody invented me â but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn't expected. Then they invented ideas about me â some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints â specially in the life of Jesus â to help them get closer to what I'm really like. But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!' And then he'd send you lots of love and sign off. I know he doesn't usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lors of love from me too. +Archbishop Rowan I think this letter reveals a lot about the Archbishop of Canterbury's sort of theology â more, indeed, than many of his lectures or agonised Synod addresses. I'd be interested to know whether readers of this blog think he did a good job of answering Lulu's question. But what the letter also tells us is that the Archbishop took the trouble to write a really thoughtful message – unmistakably his work and not that of a secretary â to a little girl. "Well done, Rowan!" was the reaction of Alex Renton's mother, and I agree. Tags: Alex Renton, Archbishop Rowan Williams X Share & bookmark Delicious Facebook Google Messenger Reddit Twitter Digg Fark LinkedIn Google Buzz StumbleUpon Y! Buzz What are these? * Share: Share Tweet Recent Posts * Alternative medicine is looking a bit sickly January 13th, 2012 21:29 Comment on this * Tragedy! Sexism row 'splitting UK Uncut' January 9th, 2012 10:32 Comment on this * Opus Dei and the patron saint of electronic eavesdroppers January 6th, 2012 21:28 Comment on this * How the BBC sucked up to the eurozone December 30th, 2011 18:30 Comment on this * When Islam met the diversity industry… December 23rd, 2011 21:21 Comment on this X Share & bookmark Delicious Facebook Google Messenger Reddit Twitter Digg Fark LinkedIn Google Buzz StumbleUpon Y! Buzz What are these? 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