Though many ‘grownups’ at the time, I’m sure, saw through the shallow pop philosophy of Lennon’s ode to utopian humanism, it took me a long while. Even today, the song is still very poetic and lyrical to me---and just by changing a few words (as apparently some musicians like Cee Lo Green have done, to the dismay of their fans), the song could be re-written as a psalm, exhorting the faithful to be Christ-like and love their neighbors.
Except the word “love” would have to be inserted—imagine a
Beatle writing a song and omitting that word!
But that’s what happens, when even (or especially) intelligent and
thoughtful writers like Lennon get swept up by the group-think of their tribe
and culture (wait, that sounds like a religion!) and fail to continue seeking
the truth. They abandon the fresh
thinking that propelled them to fame and fortune. They come to confuse their popularity with wisdom. Although, I do believe, had Lennon lived long
enough, he might have “changed his tune”—even when he was alive, he was quoted
as saying that if he could, he’d vote for Reagan (maybe only for the tax
savings Reagan promised--but Lennon wasn’t echoing his peers, that’s for sure).
But the enduring theme of this song, providing consolation
to its supporters and ammunition for its detractors, is the title and
oft-repeated word, “imagine.” With that
word, the song disparages the stereotyped limited intellectual capacity of the
faithful who “imagine” an afterlife but can’t imagine it occurring here on
earth in real time (“I wonder if you can”)---yet praises the dreamers who
envision an earthly paradise created and maintained not by God but by ordinary
humans.
Which is more fanciful—the existence of heaven and hell, or
a utopia where humans live like saints, “sharing all the world”? We have no visible, universal, physical
evidence of either –all we really have is the history of how these competing
beliefs have affected human behavior and happiness. We can’t imagine a world without religion because it has never existed, except in
the confines of Communist or other totalitarian systems (and how have those worked out?). Religion exists because people need it,
because they crave meaning, structure and moral guidance—because they are not
super-humans. Super-humans, of the kind
imagined by secular humanists, have evolved beyond sin, self-interest, and
arrogance. Super-humans never stumble
and fail, and are all-knowing when it comes to how best to organize the lives
of others. In short, they are
supernatural gods and don’t exist, except in the imaginations of humanists who
believe in the potential evolution of the
human soul, absent any historical evidence of this possibility.
This Christmas, I’m trying hard, in the wake of the
election, to imagine that we may someday
live in a nation in which children are universally understood to be gifts from
God---welcomed into loving families and raised by committed two-parent (gay or straight!) families—families which do not think
themselves entitled to happiness, but which know they must work for it, every
day. If you don’t share my vision (and
sorry, if you voted for Obama, you don’t), well, I’m not the only one—I hope
someday you’ll join us. 
