Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven,

It's easy if you try,

No hell below us,

Above us only sky

The opening lyrics of John Lennon's Imagine. This is a song which I, like many people, always ranked high on my list of most beautiful songs. When I started actively seeking God, however, I started having problems with it. I think it likely that John Lennon was an atheist. His message was not anchored in any religious belief.

Or was it?

I've always hated when people - usually English teachers - argue what a poem means by trying to get into the head of the writer. I think it much more productive to get into the head of the reader. Isn't that how poetry differs from prose? At least in degree if not in kind. If a writer of poetry wanted to simply tell you what he thought, wouldn't he just say "I love her" rather than telling us that his love is a red, red rose...? Poetry is using language to tell truths that can't be fully told in another way. It does this by getting the reader to supply much of the truth. That is, I think, the power of poetry.

So, back to my Imagine. As I moved toward God over the past half dozen years or so, I found myself less and less comfortable with this song I loved so much in my youth. I've lost many things on this journey toward God, but not much that I regret losing. Imagine was an exception. When it came on the radio, I'd find myself lamenting the beauty I once found there.

Imagine there's no heaven...

How can such a sublime song, one which always touched me in such a profound way, how could it be so against this new beautiful thing I had found?

The answer, I think, is it can't. I've finally come to understand Imagine to be one of the most deeply religious songs I know. John Lennon was probably, as far as I can tell, an atheist. But he was, like all of us, created in God's image, whether he liked it or not. And he, like all of us, was being called by God. He had somewhere deep within him, like we all do, a sense of Eden, a sense of our pre-fallen existence. And isn't that the picture he is painting in this song? Wasn't it the case that there was no heaven and hell in the beginning - everything was united? Isn't hell just separation from God? Or if not (my theology might be off?), if not, wasn't it at least the case that Adam and Eve were not aware of heaven and hell? ANd did they have religion? I don't think so. Not, at least, in the sense that we mean it. They didn't need faith. They simply existed--with God. Where's the religion in that?

John Lennon, I think, was listening to his inner longings and wrote this beautiful song in response, while all the time not fully understanding its ultimate source. I really don't care about his conscious thoughts about the song. What matters is what he said -- or rather what the song says -- to me!

So, that's what I woke up thinking about.

Thanks God for giving me back Imagine.

First published on MySpace, May 3, 2005