I was driving along earlier today listening to the radio. There was a 2-minute silence at 11am to remember the Armistice at the end of World War 1, and to honour those that lost their lives.
Immediately after the silence, I recognised the first notes of the melancholic song, Imagine, by John Lennon. Probably one of the most well-known songs of all time, certainly in the Western world.
The first words, which people tend to mouth zombie-like as they let the music wash over them, “Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try. No Hell below us, above us only sky.”
As a Christian, I’m likely going to take issue with this lyric whatever the context. But the fact that many of the soldiers who lost their lives in the early twentieth century were also Christians who are now enjoying the Heaven that Lennon wanted us to imagine away makes this an odd song choice for the occasion.
In the next verses, Lennon describes a world without pain, suffering and death. A world of equality where everybody lives at peace with their fellow man. Dare I say it, a world without sin. This sounds remarkably like the Heaven God has prepared for those who love Him. I guess it’s not so easy to erase Heaven from our collective minds after all.
The fact that Lennon tells us to use our imaginations in the first place demonstrates knowledge that creative thinking is required because reality paints a different picture.
Similarly with Santa Claus, we create this fantasy world loved by children globally. Yet, we all remember the day we finally understood that it wasn’t real. The loss and disappointment as the final glimpse of the miraculous escaped our grasp and we came down to Earth with a bump (I’m not taking a position on whether or not parents should teach their children about Santa.)
Surely, we wouldn’t dream of attempting to do the same thing with adults, to try and convince them to determine reality through their imaginations. Yet is that not what this song tries to do?
If I imagine that I am the Queen of a country or imagine that I can fly, would you endorse or encourage? No, you would be afraid in case I acted on the craziness my imaginings had created and seek to stop me getting arrested, sectioned or killed.
Why, then is a song like Imagine that magics away the realities of Heaven and Hell, and the consequences of sin, so popular? Well precisely for this reason. If there is no God, there is no accountability, no judgement, no after-life, so we can live as we please. Lennon even says this, “Imagine all the people, living for today.”
Is closing our eyes to the evidence that there is a God and an afterlife, a Heaven and a Hell, a sensible way to live? Will creating a world of our own imaginations that doesn’t actually exist achieve anything at all?
The obvious answer is no as like the person who imagines they are Queen or can fly, a rude awakening beckons.
The reality is that there will never be peace on Earth, and suffering, sickness and death will continue, until the day God wraps things up, as a consequence of sin.
The good news, that we can discover not through our imaginations, but in the Bible which is 100% reliable, is that Jesus died for our sin on the cross paving the way for us to be forgiven and to spend eternity in Heaven.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather base my eternal security on reality than the imaginings of a famous dead musician, who now knows that God exists.
Revelation 21:1-5 ESV
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
1 Corinthians 2:9 ESV
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
John 3:16 ESV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Revelation 22:1-5 ESV
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
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