Corgan Sow

from: <a href="http://www.culham.info/cw/assemblies/021s_imagining.php" target="_blank">http://www.culham.info/cw/assemblies/021s_imagining.php</a>

Begin by playing John Lennon's famous song 'Imagine'.

John Lennon didn't have much time for Christianity. In a famous TV interview he claimed that 'Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity...'

Not that being 'popular' makes you good or right, of course! Lennon's rejection of religion in general is explicit in the lyrics of 'Imagine'... 'all the people living for today... no religion too...'

It's not exactly clear from this how religion is responsible for making things bad, but that is clearly the implication. Religious institutions like churches can, of course, be guilty of terrible hypocrisy - practicing hate rather than the love they claim - but any religious institution can be guilty of that. It's equally true of the Communist Party. Come to that, John Lennon, despite calling for 'no possessions' in this song, died owning garages full of Cadillacs and wardrobes crammed with fur coats.

But John Lennon's song draws on a more serious anti-religious argument: that religion is innately bad. The biologist Richard Dawkins argues this, claiming religion teaches what is false and that it inevitably makes people do bad things. He recently claimed that the terrorists who flew into the Twin Towers in New York did so precisely because they believed in life-after-death. Religion, in his view, is 'a dangerous nonsense' - in fact he characterizes it as a virus that infects people's minds.

That's a rather scary way of looking at things - a 'virus' is the kind of term that Hitler used to describe the Jews. It implies something which needs to be eradicated, no matter what the implications are. But perhaps he has a point? He is certainly right that Christianity, because it preaches a hope beyond the limits of this world, can give strength to people to do and face things which would otherwise seem too powerful. It was this hope that gave strength to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to face the Nazis and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to confront the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

But isn't Dawkins right that religion encourages people to do bad things? The church has certainly done may bad things. But in the end, the standard of Christian behaviour has to be Jesus himself. And, whatever his followers or the church might do, Jesus taught and practiced generosity, forgiveness, non-violence... love.

John Lennon asks us to imagine a world where there is 'no religion'. It's an interesting thought experiment. Try it! Imagine all the churches closed, bulldozed or turned into supermarkets or art galleries. Would that be any loss? One man thought it wouldn't be. He was W H Auden, one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century. But then he went to Spain to fight for the Republican cause in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. He was surprised to find himself, he says, 'profoundly shocked and disturbed' by the fact that they were closing churches and killing priests:
'The feeling was far too intense to be the result of a mere liberal dislike of intolerance, the notion that it is wrong to stop people from doing what they like, even when it is something silly like going to church. I could not escape acknowledging that, however I had consciously ignored and rejected the Church for 16 years, the evidence of churches and what went on in them had all the time been important to me. If that was the case, what then?'
For Auden, this was the beginning of his return to the Christian faith. He did the opposite of what John Lennon asks us to do - he began to imagine the possibility of heaven and, 'if that was the case, what then?' It's not far off what another Beatle, George Harrison, discovered in his involvement with Hinduism. It was a possibility which brought the value of life into sharper, richer focus.

So what is the best way to bring about John Lennon's dream of 'all the people / Living life in peace... all the people / Sharing all the world...'

Use your imagination!

PRAYER:
Lord, open my mind
to the possibilities
of peace, forgiveness
and active love
revealed in the life,
death and resurrection
of Jesus.
Amen

FOLLOW-UP:
Older students might like to look at Philip Larkin's famous poem 'Church Going', in which he imaginatively explores the possibility of what it will be like when 'churches completely fall out of use', vaguely admitting, in the end, that 'It pleases me to stand in silence here... a serious house of serious earth it is...'
The full poem is published by Faber and Faber.

Toto

You've reprinted a little sermon on line. It makes some claims that I would argue with, as would most people here.

But it is true that John Lennon was an atheist and is not a favorite of Christians. WH Auden was a Marxist who later in life became a Christian.

Captain Pedantic

Curiously, I read the opinion of one Christian girl online which stated that "the lyrics of imagine are just like heaven's gonna be".

Someone else pointed out to her the bit about "Imagine there's no heaven"

But selective lyric appreciation is as socialist as stupidity - equally divided amongst all classes, races and social groups.

kalamasutta

The best way to bring about Lennon's dream? Perhaps John Lennon is like most of us, finding it easier to point the finger at the cause of all that is wrong............and leaving the actual living of "right" to the imagination!

I think that the search for perfection - "living life in peace" - can become perverse at both a personal and social level, and I would prefer to think more in terms of "acceptance" than "transformation" or revolution. Yet pure acceptance seems to have its own transformation, not by each becoming an angel or a saint, but by providing the ground for communion with others at the simple level of our common humanity........"Mutual forgiveness of each vice opens the gates to paradise" (Blake) (Though perhaps there are limits to acceptance - if not of our own vices, almost certainly of those of others!)

As far as building the kingdom of heaven upon earth, I have no particular trust or expectation that the next five year plan, purge, cultural revolution or change of government is going to be anything other than another turn of the wheel. For me the path to peace, if it exists at all, will always be for each individual to choose for themselves, with each step particular and unique........perhaps sometimes in step with others, yet each making their "own" world in one sense.

Auden was mentioned.......it was Auden who wrote in the "Shield of Achilles".......

"That girls are raped.
That two boys knife a third,
Were but axioms to him
Who had never heard
Of a world where promises are kept,
Or one could weep because another wept."

The world we "hear of" can be one of our own making; it seems difficult to envisage "making" a world by some plan or scheme - either a common religious creed of social blueprint - that would inevitable lead to all eventually "living life in peace".

Then again, apart from "Church Going", Philip larkin also gave some more advice in "This Be The Verse"......

"They f**k you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f**ked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."

(That solution does appear to be a bit drastic........ )

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: kalamasutta ]</p>

zamboniavenger

And while we're quoting Larkin, how about this from "Aubade":
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die

Of course, there's bit for athiests soon after that.