The Worst Song For This Moment

Jesus, reading the words of “Imagine.”

Should I be numbering the days? They’re all starting to run together one upon another. The only true goodness that I can report is that I managed to deep clean the kitchen. Feels about as effective as rearranging the chairs on the Titanic, but at least now they are “clean” chairs. I also baked a lot of bread. No one feels well enough to eat it, but at least I did something that I could see. I’m trying to conflate “Self-Isolation” with “Self-Care” and so far the results are mixed.

Anyway, Matt sent me this funny video in the early dawn. It’s a lot of celebrities singing “Imagine” to bolster the spirits of the world, I guess. I mean, I like the tune a lot, and was pretty amazed that they managed to each sing their individual line without sounding completely foolish (although much of twitter disagrees), but the words are absolutely ridiculous. So, in the spirit of cheering us all up, which is what I think we’re supposed to be doing, I thought it would be fun to go through the song. How bout it? For The Children and The World.

Starts out with that clever word: Imagine

And then goes right off the rails:

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

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

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or…

Ok, so no heaven. How, exactly, is that going to help the person considering COVID-19? (I’m tired of trying to type out c-o-r-o-n-a-v-i-r-u-s.) I don’t think it’s actually easy to imagine “no heaven.” Humanity is hardwired to imagine something beyond this life. It takes more effort to imagine the void that Mr. Lennon here posits. Just like it takes a lot of energy to get rid of the question of justice and goodness. Mr. Lennon wants a world in which there is no ultimate accounting of the actions and inclinations of each person. He wants us to “live for today” as if that calculus would be satisfying or even make any sense. He is filching the underlying Christian idea of goodness and trying to have it without the necessary rewards promised for being good–not going to hell.

Of course, he’s right, no one thinks they’re going to hell, so it’s fine to get rid of any idea of heaven. There is a very clever book that’s come out–so clever, I am basically teasing it here, follow me on Instagram for All The Pics. Everyone thinks they are good, even hardened criminals in prison think they are good. Very helpfully, the whole book is a very gentle explanation of why everyone thinking they are good when they are not good is the worst thing ever.

So here’s a funny thing. People who think they are good are not “peaceful” people. If you have to keep up with your own goodness, you actually cause lots more strife. Look at how China handled COVID-19. They have had to go on “establishing their own righteousness” in the face of a world that knows they’re lying and it’s been devastating for everyone. If you want to “imagine” no heaven or hell or religion, you needn’t bother. There it is. Seems rather more hellish than heavenly to me.

I suppose, in this time of no heaven, hell, or religion, we are experiencing a peculiar kind of world-wide “oneness.” We are totally isolated. We are having to “self-isolate.” We are, each and every one of us, having to stay away from each other. All together. It’s like some sort of inverted perverse trinity, at once, we are all separated. Would that Mr. Lennon had only been “dreaming.”

As for the question of there being “no possessions,” that strikes me as ironically funny right now. Reading that the government plans to send everyone a check in the mail, in the hopes of forestalling the second Great Depression, I asked Matt if that wasn’t a sure-fire way to guarantee inflation. “Oh no,” he said, “it’s not like they’re price-fixing,” he laughed, “or printing more money.” He’s so funny. And so are all these celebrities who, when called upon, would probably not want to live as though they had “no possessions.”

Also, there is a far crying distance between having something to “kill for” and to “die for.” Those are not the same at all, just like heaven and hell are not the same, and goodness and evil are not the same. Getting rid of the distinctions doesn’t make humanity more peaceful, it actually makes it dark and sick and desperate. Of all the songs that people could sing right now, this is the worst song.

Here’s a much better one:

Here my cry, O God;

give ear unto my prayer.

From the ends of the earth I will call upon you

when my heart is in heaviness.

O set me upon the rock that is higher than I,

for you have been my refuge and a strong tower for me against the enemy.

Let me dwell in your tabernacle for ever,

and my refuge shall be under the covering of your wings.

For you, O God, have heard my vows,

and have given a heritage to those who fear your Name.

You shall grant the king a long life,

that all his years may endure throughout all generations.

His throne shall abide before God for ever;

O prepare your loving mercy and faithfulness, that they may preserve him.

So will I always sing praise unto your Name,

that I may daily perform my vows.

-Psalm 61

It’s perhaps not the picture of heaven that Mr. Lennon and others are so quick to throw over. The greatest possession waiting for the one who loves God is God himself. And that must surely be a disappointment to those who do not love him, and why they would rather not go to heaven to be with him. But for those who do, what a joyous promise. And remember, you don’t have to be good–not in the Mr. Lennon sense–to have this reward. You have only to put your whole self into the hands of the One who is always and forever good, the “rock that is higher than I,” whose goodness has a strength that transcends all the darkness of the human person. Best of all, you don’t have to “imagine” him because he revealed himself to the world, by coming, and get this–dying for a humanity he thought was worth the trouble. You don’t need to waste your imagination, look at him and live.