John Lennon and Bags Full of Dead Babies

It is no secret that many people in our culture today would like to create a new society without religion. Specifically, many would like to relegate Christianity to the trash-heap of historical memory, to be no more significant than the religions which came before it.

One of the most popular expressions of this worldview came in the famous John Lennon song, Imagine. The song begins by discouraging religious thinking:

People in China demonstrating a world without religion...

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

It proceeds with a rather utopian wish:

Imagine all the people
Living for today

Of course Lennon never thought about what a world without objective standards (and the possibility of spiritual justice) looked like.  It never  occurred to him that -- rather than creating a hippy utopia -- a world without ultimate consequences would eventually lead to moral anarchy.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
No greed or hunger
And no religion too

John never tells us how a world without coherent structures of government could feed billions of people. Nor could a state of political anarchy support healthcare, welfare for the poor, or education.  As to "greed," it is a real human tendency, and will persist with us until the end of time.  Finally, once he's done pulling out every structure we need to survive, John takes away our religion as well.

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

Yes -- clearly, a society with no governments to preserve the peace and provide for the economic structures necessary for human development -- along with a total lack of objective moral standards -- would lead to a peaceful utopian paradise.  It seems that our only problem would be finding enough flowers to plait into billions of shaggy heads of hair.

Clearly I have a great disdain for this song -- yet when you consider the colossal social damage it has caused, so should you! John Lennon wrote the anthem for the new irreligious culture, and it has echoed mindlessly through the unrefined intellects of millions.   This song should come free with every Hitchens or Davis atheism book sold; It could be a fitting background piece to the now famous atheist bus sign (picture, left.)

Yet it is no secret what such a pagan culture would look like, as there remain many parts of the world where Christianity has not become a dominant part of the cultural fabric. In recent world news, we hear of bags of dead babies being dumped into a river in China, or video games glorifying rape in Japan. It is not surprising that the majority of major human rights violations in our world take place in countries where the Christian ethos is not present.

With all of the major imperfections, hypocrisies, and potential troubles of organized religion, there remains the singular advantage of having an objective source of morality. These ideas -- observed in the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes of Christ -- provide an immutable standard for morality while establishing the universal love of human dignity. This objective standard allowed for the creation of the United States of America. "In God we Trust" is not a political option, but rather the source of American freedom and success.

Before the Judeo-Christian worldview, there was no objective for human dignity.

So before you rush to embrace a secular view of the world, think of the grave injustices which have always followed on the heel of pagan regimes such as Nazism, or atheist regimes such as the Soviet Union. Think of the terrible world of ancient Rome, or the modern human rights travesties in China.

The pagan world was -- and remains -- a dark and terrible place. It is a place where goodness and common decency only exist until somebody stronger takes them away from you. Even those who choose not to follow a Judeo-Christian religion should be grateful that this worldview founded a new society where intellectual and religious freedom is tolerated. Your freedom not to believe is a property of the dominant belief -- if you lose the Christian culture, you will also eventually lose your freedom.

After all, do you think football is brutal?  You should read about what passed for typical weekend entertainment in the pagan superdome, otherwise known as the Roman Colosseum.

Yet another reason to show a healthy disdain for all the fruitful "thinking" that went on in the 1960's...