WHY I’VE TURNED TO GOD AT NEARLY 70, BY REFORMED RINGO STARR
Published 02/06/2010 - 5:48 a.m. CST
44 years after John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Lennon, however, also announced in 1977 that he had become a ‘born-again’ Christian
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
LOS ANGELES, CA (ANS) -- Britain’s Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk) is reporting that former Beatles drummer, Ringo Starr has found God at nearly 70 years of age.
This was revealed in a story written by Ben Todd who said, “John Lennon caused a worldwide storm by claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
“Now, more than four decades on, it seems his former bandmate Ringo Starr has acknowledged a humbler place in the grand scheme of things.
“The drummer says he has found God - after taking a long and winding road to enlightenment.”
Todd said that Liverpool-born Starr admitted he lost his way when he was younger, both as a Beatle experimenting with marijuana and LSD and afterwards when he suffered alcohol and cocaine problems in the late 1970s.
“But the musician, who has since become teetotal and quit his 60-a-day cigarette habit, says that religion now plays an important role in his life,” said Todd.
He reported that Starr, who turns 70 later this year, said: “I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.
“For me, God is in my life. I don't hide from that. I think the search has been on since the 1960s.
“I stepped off the path there for many years and found my way back onto it, thank God.”
Starr was speaking at an event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
Todd went on to say that it was in 1966 that his late bandmate John Lennon announced that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.
In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Lennon - who was murdered in 1980 - said: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that. I'm right and I will be proved right.
“We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity-Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
Todd said that when a U.S. magazine reprinted some of the interview, protests broke out in the States and Beatles records were publicly burned. The protests then spread to other countries, including Mexico, South Africa and Spain.
In his latest interview Starr - a vegetarian who is married to former Bond girl Barbara Bach and now splits his time between homes in Los Angeles, London and Monaco - also told how he finds it far easier to deal with life now he is approaching his 70th birthday in July.
But what about John Lennon? Did he ever find Christ in his life? The answer is yes, according to British writer Steve Turner who revealed in an excerpt from The Gospel According to the Beatles published in Christianity Today that John Lennon actually became a Christian for a period while living in New York. Turner revealed that it was in the spring of 1977 that Lennon suddenly announced to close friends that he’d become a born-again Christian.
“He had been particularly moved by the U.S. television premiere of Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, starring Robert Powell as Jesus, which NBC showed in two three-hour segments on Palm Sunday, April 3, 1977,” said Turner. “A week later, on Easter day, he took Yoko and Sean to a local church service.
“Over the following months he baffled those close to him by constantly praising ‘the Lord,’ writing Christian songs with titles like ‘Talking with Jesus’ and ‘Amen’ (the Lord's Prayer set to music), and trying to convert nonbelievers. He also called the prayer line of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson's program. The change in his life perturbed Yoko, who tried to talk him out of it. She reminded him of what he'd said about his vulnerability to strong religious leaders because of his emotionally deprived background. She knew that if the press found out about it they would have a field day with another John and Jesus story. John became antagonistic toward her, blaming her for practicing the dark arts and telling her that she couldn't see the truth because her eyes had been blinded by Satan.
“Those close to the couple sensed that the real reason she was concerned was that it threatened her control over John's life. If he became a follower of Jesus he would no longer depend on her and the occultists. During long, passionate arguments she attacked the key points of his fledgling faith. They met with a couple of Norwegian missionaries whom Yoko questioned fiercely about the divinity of Christ, knowing that this was the teaching that John had always found the most difficult to accept. Their answers didn't satisfy her, and John began to waver in his commitment.
“In an unpublished song, ‘You Saved My Soul,’ he spoke about ‘nearly falling’ for a TV preacher' while feeling ‘lonely and scared’ in a Tokyo hotel. This must have referred to a trip to Japan at the end of May when he stayed at the Okura Hotel for over two months while Yoko visited relatives. Feeling isolated because of the language barrier, he locked himself away in his room for long stretches of time. At night he suffered terrifying nightmares. According to John Green, who makes no mention of the born-again period in his book, John told him, ‘I'd lie in bed all day [in Tokyo], not talk, not eat, and just withdraw. And a funny thing happened. I began to see all these different parts of me. I felt like a hollow temple filled with many spirits, each one passing through me, each inhabiting me for a little time and then leaving to be replaced by another.’
“The image was remarkably like one suggested by Jesus and recorded in Luke 11. It's hard to imagine that John was unfamiliar with the passage. Jesus was warning of the danger of merely ridding oneself of evil spirits without taking in the good. He says that an unclean or evil spirit, finding nowhere to rest, will return. ‘And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.’
“Whatever happened in Tokyo, it marked the end of his personal interest in Jesus.”
Starr and Lennon were not the only Sixties music icons to embrace religion.
In 1978, Bob Dylan became a born again Christian, but by 1983 this period appeared to end and the singer reportedly reverted to his roots in Judaism. Those close to Dylan, however, say that he has never publically renounced his faith in Christ and they point to his recent Christmas album as proof that he is still fascinated with Christianity.