Just Imagine

I note that Cee lo Green has been getting in trouble with the musical purists for messing around with John Lennon's lyrics while singing "Imagine" on New Year's Eve. As you may know, Lennon's original, which has become something of an anthem for secularism, contains the line "imagine... nothing to kill or die for, and no religions too". Green decided to change this about a bit and, on live, national TV, sang: "imagine.. and all religions true."

I suppose the question is, which version is more unacceptable to orthodox Christianity? The first is clearly unacceptable. It is a straight denial of the existence of God.

Imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try.

No hell below us,

Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people

Livin' for today.

You, you may say I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one.

Very nice, I'm sure. A celebration of atheism. Not a bad tune, but the lyrics are beyond the pale for Evangelical Christianity. I remember someone asking if they could play the song at a wedding. They had never taken any notice of the words, they just liked the tune. The answer was, "No!" in case you're interested.

But it's worth wondering whether the bigger threat isn't posed by Cee lo Green's alternative. You can't tell from the clip whether he is singing "all religions true" or "all religion's true" (i.e. all religion is true). Either way, he seems to be advocating a radical inclusion that is equally offensive to Evangelical Christianity. If Green is really claiming that all religions are equally true, then he is ignoring their competing claims. This is the universalism that has infected the mainline churches and undermined evangelism. If all religions are true, then we have no business seeking to convince anyone of the claims of Christ. It is not possible for us to praise Jesus Christ as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" because Buddha is just as much a way to God. Every truth claim in the Bible becomes relative since we assert the metanarrative of universalism. Christ is not the way, he is, at best, a way. How dare we judge another person's religious experience?

Perhaps it is this non-judgmentalism that lies at the heart of Green's attempt to re-write Lennon's lyrics. I have a better idea. Just dump them. Neither atheism nor post-modern relativism can answer the longing in the heart. That longing can only be satisfied by Jesus Christ. No amount of re-writing is going to change that.