ALL ABOUT THE BEAMISHBOY

Hi folksies,

I think there has been some confusion. People who read my blog tend to get confused by the profusion of ideas which are often conflicting. The reason is simple. My views have been evolving. I make it a point not to amend or delete my past posts in this blog and so I get to see the progression of my thoughts. Also, some of my posts were made after I had a fight with people on the internet and I naturally said the nastiest things of them. They could be atheists or even religious people such as Roman Catholics with whom I crossed swords at one time.

I will talk about myself here so it becomes clear what my beliefs really are.

My preparatory school is a choir school for boys in a very famous and ancient cathedral. There were only about 30 boys in the entire school and the selection process was rigorous. All boys had to be musical and we had to pass voice auditions.

Apart from being a choir boy in the Abbey, I also served as an altar boy. I've been an altar boy since I was 6 and I still serve at the altar which means I've been an altar boy for more than half my life - almost my entire conscious life.

I was a very successful choirboy and had a somewhat illustrious career, having sung solo in many performances. But alas, the day came when my voice became unstable about two years ago and I had to leave the choir. I continued to play the clarinet which I've played since I was pretty young and the beauty of the clarinet is that it's the closest to the human voice.

I now have a tenor voice and I've been roped in for some performances but I still miss the grand soprano parts. What my voice cannot achieve, my clarinet can. I still play some of the oratorios which I used to sing as a boy. There are many pieces for the soprano voice by Bach and Handel which I used to sing but can now only play on my clarinet but they mean a lot to me, particularly the religious ones.

Not too long ago, I was made a thurifer (which means I'm the cool guy who swings the incense into church). Before I accepted my appointment (most thurifers are priests), I told my vicar my beliefs. Oh, before I go on, I should explain what my beliefs are.

When I was a boy, I naturally believed in God as a real being. Any kid would believe in that.

I also thought to myself that the Bible had to be true and had to be the word of God. After all, in the Liturgy, the reader will say "This is the word of the Lord" after each reading of the biblical texts except for the Gospels which call for a different response. As a lifelong altar boy, I know the liturgy like the back of my hand.

It suddenly dawned on me one day that I should read up more about how we got the Canon in the first place. My readings took me to FF Bruce, Bruce Metzger, Lee McDonald and finally, Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman. I learnt from the very start that Josh McDowell got his facts all wrong and anyway, he's not a scholar at all and he knows nothing.

It would be tedious to go into detail as to what I believed from year to year and in some periods of my life, from month to month or even from day to day. What's important is where do I stand now?

I believe God does not exist as a being at all. I discount everything that is supernatural. God is a metaphor for goodness, justice and truth. The ultimate goodness, justice and truth. The metaphor takes the shape of the Christian religion to me because of my culture and identity.

That's precisely what I told my vicar and in a discussion with my bishop as well. The conclusion of the prelates of my church is that I'm still a faithful adherent to Holy Church and I'm a faithful and devout Christian and member of the Church of England. Or if I may use a more international language, I'm a faithful Anglican which means I'm a faithful and devout Christian.

There is a lot of good in the Church and it would be foolish to abandon the Church just because we have a different view of God.

It's not always that Christians have believed in God the way Christians now do. I discovered that even Origen, that bastion of Christian scholarship, had a different idea of what God really is. He thought Jesus was created by the Father (the firstborn of all creation). Subsequent amendment to the concept of God made Origen posthumously a heretic. A Christian of an earlier generation may baulk at my metaphorical God concept but there may come a time when his view would be considered superstitious and heretical.

These are my views at present. I'm confident they would remain my views even when I'm 50.