Imagine there's no heaven

It's that time of year again - Shrove Tuesday - and part of my Lent discipline will be to blog daily.  Or at least, to try.  

A few weeks ago I managed to pick a fight at an otherwise friendly ministers' breakfast by vigorously defending this much-loved song, written by the wonderful John Lennon:

Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Some disliked the melody (clearly, they're wrong) but others took issue with the lyrics, and I reluctantly concede that they have a point.  Gentlemen, please accept this post as an act of repentance.

Lennon appears to be arguing that if we a) lived for today, without practising religion; b) abandoned our national boundaries and c) let go of the notion of personal property, we could create peace on earth.  Let's look at each of these assertions.

If we lived without religion, would we live better?  Lennon seems to think that we would do better to 'live for today'.  Certainly Christians live their lives in the context of eternity, believing that there is more to this life that we can experience with our senses and understand with our minds.  Christian hope  looks forward to life beyond death.  Does this mean that the Christian religion makes people so focused on tomorrow that they miss today?  Where this is the case, it's probably due to a distorted understanding of the teaching of Christ.  He had a lot to say about how we should live our lives now, how we should treat people generously and help those who need it.  His message went far beyond a simple explanation of how to get to heaven after you die.

I once saw a poster produced by the British Humanist Association which quoted Imagine as expressing the essence of Humanism very well.  I have a lot of respect for Humanists, who do not believe in God but endeavour to live moral lives.  They believe that human beings have the power and the responsibility to make the world a better place.  One of the reasons why I am a Christian rather than a Humanist is that I think Humanism has too optimistic a view of humanity.  Yes, we are creative, capable of astounding technological achievements and great acts of kindness.  We are also flawed, selfish and, despite the advances of the 20th century, limited in our capacity to transform our world.  I personally don't believe it is possible for humans to 'live life in peace' without the transforming power of God at work.  We are weak, but he is strong.  We are selfish, whereas he willingly suffered weakness, pain and death for our sake.  We think we know it all, while knowing very little; he really does know all, and yet lets us figure things out for ourselves.  I want to see the world a better place, and I'm glad it's not up to me and those like me to make it so on our own.

It's often trotted out that religions cause terrible wars and that therefore the world would be a better place without them.  The crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Troubles in Ireland, the Israel-Palestine conflict - clearly, some very bad things have been done in the name of God.  But does it follow that all religions are bad?  Wars are also started for all sorts of other reasons: to claim new territory; to bring about a change of government; to secure access to natural resources; through the simple and destructive desire to dominate and control.  Losing religion loses one pretext for humans to destroy each other; without it, surely they would find more. 

The abandonment of national boundaries is a more interesting idea, however.  If there were no countries, they couldn't go to war with each other.  But then there would also have to be no people groups, no gangs, no cliques.  Ultimately there would have to be no individuals, because two people can get into a fight as easily as two countries.  We would all have to become one, with no distinction or division between one individual and the next.  Christians believe that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  One way of understanding this deep mystery is to visualise a society of three distinct persons joined by unbreakable bonds of love.  Father, Son and Spirit live in perfect unity - actually, Trinity.  God therefore models in his very being the possibility of distinct persons living in loving harmony with one another.  I find the notion of distinct people living in mutual submission and harmony more wonderful than the destruction of all difference in order that we might have nothing to fight about. 

The third and final verse of the song asks us to conceive of having no possessions, and I think this is probably the one idea in the song with legs.  We like to have stuff which is ours, to stop other people from nicking our stuff and to acquire more stuff.  Letting go of the idea of 'my stuff, your stuff' in order that stuff might be shared out more equally in our world is an extremely powerful idea, albeit an extremely ambitious one.  Jesus said a lot about money: how to give it away; how much of it to give away (all of it, in one case); how it can become a master to be served; where our wealth should be stored up (in heaven, by doing good).  The notion of letting go of the idea of possessions is not a million miles away from the teaching of Jesus.  So while the rest of the song may not quite be the anthem I once thought it was, there's still a little good stuff in it.

And it's a great tune.