All the People Living for Today

I’ve told you before how much I love the music of the 1970s.  Recently I was listening to my favorite satellite radio station, The Bridge, which plays that sort of music.  The song “Imagine”, by John Lennon, came on.

It’s a simple, beautiful, well-crafted tune, but it’s the words I want to talk about.  Maybe you know them.  In case you don’t, or in case you’ve forgotten them, here’s the first verse.

            Imagine 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

As I was listening to the song, a thought struck me.  We really don’t need to imagine this any more.  Don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe there’s a heaven and a hell.  But we don’t need to imagine a society in which people don’t believe that.  We don’t need to imagine people who are living only for today.  We don’t need to imagine it, because we’re living in it.

Polls show that a large number of people in this country do not believe in heaven.  An even larger number don’t believe in hell.  We do have a large number of people who, as the song says, are living for today.

Has it made society better?  Do we have this utopian society that John Lennon thought we’d get?  Well, that’s a matter of opinion, I suppose.  But I don’t think so.  I don’t think a lot of people do.  Certainly there are some ways in which society is better than it was in 1971, when this song was written.  But there are a lot of ways in which it’s worse, too.  And to the extent that society is better, I think you’d have a hard time making the case that the improvement was caused by a decline in religious belief.  

“All the people living for today” does not automatically lead to everyone loving each other and caring for each other.  In fact, in many people, it leads to a sense of drift, a sense that life has no purpose and no meaning.  That, in turn, can lead to all sorts of bad behaviors, because if life has no purpose and no meaning, then it really does not matter what we do.

Is religion perfect?  Is the church perfect?  No and no.  The only one who’s perfect is God.  As soon as you get humans involved, no matter how good their intentions, things get messed up.  There has been harm done in the name of religion, and in the name of the church, and I neither deny nor defend that.  But I think most of us would say religion, and the church, do a lot more good than harm.  In fact, even some atheists have been forced to admit that religion is, on the whole, a good thing for society.

But there are always ways in which we need to do better.  So let’s focus on opening our hearts and souls to God’s Holy Spirit.  Let’s so our best to follow God’s will.  “All the people living for today” is not the way to utopia.  But all the people living for God just might be.