It’s a communists utopian wet dream ... unicorns and rainbows
***
What Lennon is preaching—and yes, it is preaching—is Marxist heresy. That it is heresy, meaning it is a twisted version of Christianity that damns rather than saves, is an important point: it's not a question of ideology, Lennon's communism vs. Greenwood's capitalism, left wing vs. right wing, idealism vs. realism, Obama vs. Romney, etc., etc., which is how most people see the debates of today.
To understand this, we need to answer the question: what does it mean to be a Marxist? First, it means to remove everything relating to the God of the Bible, the YHWH of Israel, the I Am of Christianity. There's no heaven, so there is no reason to sacrifice in this life, because if you don't get-what-you-want and live for today in this life, you don't get anything. There's no hell—and remember, the hell of hell is not the fire or the weeping or the demons or the pain: it is the lack of the presence of God for as Augustine teaches us, evil is nothing more than privatio boni, the lack of goodness—but this song is a twisting of the truth: if there is no God, then everywhere is hell.
Anyone with half an eye can see that every place God has been removed from has become hell—the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Castro's Cuba, Kim's North Korea, Mugabe's Zimbabwe—and every place Christ has been removed is only a few steps short of hell—Abdullah's Saudi Arabia, Ahmadinejad's Iran, Bashir's Sudan. It is only where the true God and the true Son of God are worshipped and honored that peace and prosperity reign. Lennon lived as a rich man at the Dakota in New York City, because the place he imagined, where there's no heaven, no hell, no God, no possessions, and no countries, was not America but the Soviet Union, and there he wouldn't have lived in luxury, he would have lived, and died, in a gulag.
Lennon was, in the words of David in Psalm 14:1, a נבל, a nabal, a fool, living off of the grace and mercy and abundance of a God in whose eye he spat because, as Jesus put it weeping in Luke 19:44, οὐκ ἔγνως τὸν καιρὸν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς σου, meaning Lennon did not recognize the kairos, the moment that God was there for him.
Imagine is an heretical screed. It teaches that we don't need to go to heaven to have heaven, that we can build heaven on earth with our own strength and forming our own brotherhood. It is the heresy of Babel: let us build a tower to heaven, so that we can bring heaven here. If God hadn't made the earth and the sky for us, we would have no earth and no sky; if God hadn't made us, there would be no us. If God hadn't made possessions for us to possess, there would be no agape, no caritas, no way we could give ourselves to others the way God gave Himself for us. If we did not have Christ's spirit in our hearts, we would not be drawn to the spirit of Christ in our brotherhood, and to the grace of Christ available to those who are not yet of our brotherhood.
Lennon was not a dreamer; his vision is a nightmare, whose nightmare results we have seen everywhere it has been tried. Do you want to follow a dreamer? Follow Jacob, who dreamed, not of Led Zeppelin's drug-lined stairway, but of the original, true stairway to heaven, and thereby became the father of God's chosen people. Follow his son Joseph, who dreamed of a God who led him to become the ruler over his brothers, not like Saddam Hussein or Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler who ruled to destroy for his own benefit, but like Christ who gave his life to build for the benefit of those who wanted to see him dead, just as Joseph's brothers wanted to see him dead. Follow Solomon, who dreamed of God asking him what he wanted, and replying that he wanted, not to be a fool like Lennon, but wise, so that to this day we call Solomon wise. Follow Daniel, who dreamed of what the future actually would be, not what Lennon thought it might be. Follow Paul, who dreamed of a man calling to him, "Don't stay in Turkey all your life, we need Jesus in the rest of Europe too!," and let God's dream for you tell you where you need to spread, not Lennon's word, but God's word.
I don't imagine there is no heaven, because there is a heaven, because there is a God who loves me for absolutely no reason other than He chooses to. I don't imagine there is no hell, because there is a hell, not because God loves to punish, but because God doesn't put choke collars on us to make us follow Him like foolish dogs, and if we say we do not want Him, He does not make us stay with Him. I don't imagine there are no possessions, because God has given us richly all things to possess, and then he gives us His heart, which leads us to give what we possess to the poor—and then He says that giving to the poor is like lending money to Him, and He always repays his debts with exorbitant interest. I don't imagine people forming their own brotherhood, because God has already given us a brotherhood, and He calls us His Bride, and I would rather be married to Him than shacking up with anyone else.
Imagine? No thank you. You can have all this world; give me Jesus. Forget everything else I have taught you in the five workshops of this course if you must, but remember Jesus. He wants you, not to imagine Him, but to know Him, for He loved you before the beginning of the universe. And of all the living beings on all the planets revolving around all the suns, billions per galaxy, and billions of billions of galaxies, He wants to be yours: as Robert Grant put it over a century before Lennon, your Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend. Let Him; you will never ever ever ever ever regret it.
Anything by Bruce Springsteen is worse. Yell us a song, Bruce.
Imagine is the worst of all time. It is in a category of its own.
Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby!”
Cher:, “Half-Breed!”
Stevie Wonder, “Happy Birthday”
Paul McCartney,”Junior’s Farm”
Katy Perry, “Roar”
Got an opinion on this ? “Imagine” is far from the worst. Most of the stuff in the past 25 years could share “worst.” “Kumbaya” is execrable, “Give Peas Uhchanz” is another. Just because a song is overplayed doesn’t make it bad, either.
The worst song ever is every single rap song.
The best song ever might be Marty Robbins - "El Paso"
I forgot...
Don’t Stop-Fleetwood Mac
...the ‘92 election ruined that song forever.
Muskrat Love. Captain and Tenielle.
Imagine yoko and Hillary chowing down on each other like it’s Christmas
You’re having my baby. Paul Anka
Imagine there’s no Lennon, it’s easy if you try.
Bang! Bang!
Revolution by the Beatles is the song I hate the most, followed by “Yes”, We built this city, just an awful, stupid song.
“Hollaback Girl” has to be on that list. Not sure if it’s a No Doubt song or a Gwen Stefani solo song, but it exudes horribleness from every note.
Forgot to ping you to this one. I’m sure you must have an opinion on worst songs. ;-)
Are there any Genesis fans here? Even though the Phil Collins era was not completely bad (as I like “And Then There Were Three” in particular), the Gabriel/Hackett era was still just that much better, as I have “Foxtrot” and “Selling England by the Pound” on original Charisma/Buddha vinyl.
all hip hop is like torture to me
“The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” is horrible, and the video is worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU