Using the Office photocopier the other day, I watched perfect copies of a letter being churned out, one every two seconds. I thought: "If only I could put one of our workers in there". No more staffing problems. An attractive idea until I remembered a phrase of John Taylor's, about Xerox people the way the world tries to regiment us, tries to mould us to a blank conformity of its image and I didn't like the idea anymore.

Newspaper and television advertising give us the perfect image of the consumer. We must all use Flora margarine and a particular soap powder. Everyone who aspires to be someone uses Dior perfume, and holidays in the Caribbean. What, all at once? Maybe the perfume keeps us smelling fresh while our slim bodies (thank you, Flora) bask in the Caribbean sun on our whiter-than-white towels. A whole industry geared to make man in the image of man. No, it's not such a good idea, to be turned into conforming copies of each other.

There's a paradox though. We are all the same, in the way we're made, in our basic needs and hopes. Yet we are all different, in personality, in aptitudes and interests, and it's the differences which make you you and me me. The same yet different, and interdependent, like twigs on a tree. And while we value our togetherness as human beings we need to respect and accept the individuality which makes our personalities. These are the differences which enrich the human family.

Some folk take the conformity idea further, and try and make God in their own image, forcing Him (trying anyway) into the mould of their own particular beliefs and prejudices, limiting the work of the Holy Spirit to their own special tramlines, and setting boundaries to the way He can act. I sometimes think God must find it hard to believe in our God.

The great thing is that He doesn't expect or insist that we do things in the same way. He respects our personalities, even to the point of giving us the freedom to reject Him, if that's what we want to do. And even when we do try to live for Him, even then He respects our individuality. I wish more christians would grasp this. If God loves our individuality can't we? We generate so much tension inside ourselves by the strain of trying to conform to self-imposed ideas of behaviour - a religiousness really. And the best unasked for advice I can give is be yourself, although it goes without saying I mean in Christ . If you try to be like anyone else, as a friend said to me recently, the Lord will say: No thanks, I already have one like that.

From "Disguises of Love" by Eddie Askew