Where is God?
I was brought up in a conventional Christian household, my father was a semi-professional singer as well as being a schoolteacher, he had great success in Gilbert and Sullivan operas (his voice was so sought-after that he sang the part of the young lover, Giuseppe in the Gondoliers, when he was well into his prime.) He sang for many years in a top church choir in London -St Bartholemew the Great. In my late teens, I was very taken by evangelical Christian meetings in the style of Billy Graham (walking up to the front to declare one’s faith). I also attended Crusader Bible study groups on Sunday afternoons. After a summer camp, I remember walking back from the tube station in Woodford. I announced that I had been converted and was now a Christian. His reply was very funny. “I always assumed you were”, meaning that was how I had been brought up. So, for many years, I had this image of God “up there” in a completely different medium, as it were, outside the normal world. I used to have problems with many parts of the Christian teaching, but I was told that I should have faith.
After my father died, I followed in his footsteps in a small way by singing in church choirs and one or two secular choirs. I wanted to be a tenor but, most certainly I was not. I then discovered Choral Evensong, and this brought me a step away from my evangelical start. I discovered a more spiritual kind of Christianity. When I came to live in Spain almost 20 years ago, all this stopped of course, there is no great choral tradition here compared to the UK. So, it was back to a more conventional church service.
When I look back over this part of my life, I am shocked (almost) by my lack of interest in philosophy or other religions. In the second part of the 20th Century, I lived in a cocoon. I was interested in science; my whole work was technical, in electronics. But the vast wealth of teaching about the human condition passed me by. Christianity taught me very little about that. So, in the last 20 years since my retirement and my move to Spain, my outlook has changed enormously – especially in the last 5 years. I read a lot; I question many of the conventional beliefs of Christianity. And probably the most important of these is the nature of God. I now see God as part of our world, God around us, not separate in a heaven apart from natural laws. But, of course, we don’t have any way of proving this with the knowledge we have in 2024.
