“A very common response, Matthew, my boy,” he said, still chuckling. “Why don’t you like the sound of it?”

“I don’t know, I never thought of it before. I suppose because I’d be afraid, if it was true, that he’d be always watching to see if I did something wrong.”

“To punish you if you did?”

“Yeah—I suppose.”

“But if God stayed up in heaven and wasn’t around up close, and you did something wrong—then what? Would he be any more pleased?”

“No, I guess he wouldn’t.”

“But you wouldn’t be quite as afraid of stepping out of line because he’d be far away and probably wouldn’t bother you?”

“I’ve never reasoned to myself like that, but to hear you say it, I suppose that’s something like what I’ve thought.”

“Well, Matthew,” said the baron tenderly, “without knowing it, you’ve stumbled into the misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world has about God.”

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“The misunderstanding of who God is.”

“Who God… is?”

“Very, very few people have the slightest inkling of what God’s character is really like. That’s where your reaction came from, by thinking of God as different from who he really is.”

“What is God’s character like?” asked Matthew. “How can anybody know him so well?”

“What you’ve asked, Matthew, is the most important question in all of life. It is the universal question. Finding the answer to those five simple words you just spoke is the only thing life is really about. But I’m not even going to answer you.”

“What? Why not?”

“I’m going to do something even better,” said the baron. “I’m going to show you the pathway on which to find the answer.”

Matthew continued to look earnestly into his face, and the baron continued.

“There is no single, specific answer to the question, What is God like, Matthew, like a box full of ideas, or a list of characteristics, or a set of principles that I can recite off to you. There’s no list of God’s attributes. The answer to your question, as I said, is a pathway, not a list. Do you understand what I mean?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The answer, Matthew, is a journey, a path you travel along, a process of ongoing and continual discovery. That’s why I said I would rather show you the pathway than try to give you an answer. Because the full answer is something you can only discover for yourself. If you are in earnest about wanting to know what God’s character is like, this pathway is a lifetime journey you must embark on. No one can do it for you.”

“You say it’s a process of discovery. What exactly do you mean? Discovery of what?”