When John Lennon released “Imagine” in 1971, he captured the world’s attention with a hauntingly beautiful melody and a vision of global peace that seemed both noble and necessary.
When John Lennon released “Imagine” in 1971, he captured the world’s attention with a hauntingly beautiful melody and a vision of global peace that seemed both noble and necessary. The song has since become an international anthem for secular humanism, often invoked during times of tragedy, war, or collective yearning for unity. However, for all its poetic charm and cultural influence, Imagine presents a worldview that subtly, yet profoundly, stands in opposition to the Christian faith. Its call for a utopia “without heaven,” “without hell,” and “without religion” is not merely a philosophical alternative, it is a theological rejection. For the Christian, this is not just a dream, but a dilemma. Lennon’s idealism, though wrapped in the language of peace, calls for the dismantling of the very truths upon which Christian hope rests.
1. The Imagination of Absence: A utopia without God. Lennon begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky.” In one poetic sweep, he dismisses the afterlife, both the reward of heaven and the justice of hell, as mere illusions obstructing peace. What he offers is not just a secular vision of the future, but an ontological negation of the Christian cosmos. Heaven and hell are not peripheral doctrines in Christianity; they are theologically inseparable from the gospel message. Heaven is the believer’s ultimate hope (Philippians 3:20–21), and hell is the sober warning against rebellion and sin (Matthew 10:28).
In imagining their nonexistence, Lennon doesn’t merely encourage peace; he dismantles the moral framework upon which Christian eschatology is built. Without heaven, there is no resurrection hope. Without hell, there is no final justice. The Apostle Paul writes that if only for this life we have hope in Christ, “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Lennon’s utopia replaces the transcendent with the temporal, the eternal with the immediate, a world where justice is only what man defines, and peace is only what he can engineer.
2. The Denial of Moral Absolutes: “Living for Today”. Lennon’s next line, “Imagine all the people living for today”, is a seductive invitation to self-contained ethics. It resonates in a culture obsessed with immediacy, experience, and autonomy. But from a Christian perspective, “living for today” is exactly the problem, not the solution. Scripture repeatedly warns against the folly of temporal thinking. Jesus teaches his disciples not to store treasures on earth, but in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21). James compares life to “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14), emphasizing the need for eternal awareness.
The moral implications of this call are enormous. If all people “live for today,” then ethical restraint becomes a matter of convenience, not conviction. What anchors justice, love, or sacrifice in a world unmoored from eternal accountability? Lennon’s vision, though seemingly gentle, ultimately encourages a relativism that Christianity cannot endorse. True peace is not the absence of boundaries, but the presence of righteousness (Isaiah 32:17). To “live for today” without fear of God is to sow seeds of chaos masked in freedom.
3. The Erasure of Religion: “And No Religion Too”. Perhaps the most overt theological challenge in Imagine is Lennon’s proposal of a world without religion. “Imagine no religion,” he sings, and millions hum along, often unaware of the implications. At one level, this is a critique of religious conflict, an understandable impulse in a world torn by war waged in the name of God. But Lennon’s solution is reductionistic. To solve religious violence by abolishing religion is as misguided as solving injustice by abolishing law. Christianity itself is a faith built on the rejection of coercive violence, calling its followers to love enemies, turn the other cheek, and embrace the cross (Matthew 5:38–48; Luke 9:23).
More importantly, religion in Christianity is not a human institution to be discarded, but a divine initiative rooted in revelation. Christianity is not man reaching up to God, but God reaching down to man in Christ. The “Word became flesh” (John 1:14), and to believe in Christ is to enter into a living relationship with the Creator, not a set of man-made rituals. Lennon’s vision offers peace through subtraction, remove faith, remove conflict. But Christianity offers peace through reconciliation, reconcile man to God, and then to neighbor (2 Corinthians 5:18–20).
4. The Illusion of Unity Without Truth. Lennon’s chorus, “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,” presents a compelling invitation to global harmony. Yet, this unity is built upon uniformity through negation, negation of heaven, hell, religion, and even borders. Christianity does long for unity, but it is a unity that celebrates diversity within the truth of Christ. The Church is described as one body with many members (1 Corinthians 12:12–27), unified not by eliminating difference but by submitting all differences to the lordship of Christ.
The unity Lennon imagines is a flattening of all distinctions. In this sense, it echoes the ancient Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), where humanity sought unity apart from God, only to be scattered. True unity, according to Christianity, is not found in the elimination of truth, but in shared submission to it. Jesus prayed that his followers “may be one” (John 17:21), but not apart from truth, he simultaneously prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Unity without truth is not peace, but pretense.
5. The Gospel According to Lennon vs. the Gospel of Christ. At its core, Imagine is a gospel, an alternative “good news” of how to save the world. It is the gospel of humanism: that man, if unshackled from religion, nationalism, and eschatological fear, can usher in peace by the power of imagination. But this gospel is powerless to address the real issue, sin. Christianity diagnoses the human problem not as religion, but as rebellion. The problem is not belief in heaven, but the pride that seeks to ascend to it without God. The gospel of Christ does not call people to imagine away evil, but to confront it through the cross.
In Colossians 1:19–20, Paul writes that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile all things…by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” This is not a peace of denial, but a peace of divine intervention. While Lennon invites us to imagine away suffering, Christ enters into it. While Lennon erases the divine to achieve peace, Christ embodies the divine to secure it. These are not merely competing visions, they are mutually exclusive.
6. A Cultural Icon and a Theological Warning. To critique Imagine is not to dismiss Lennon’s sincerity or to ignore the deep longing for peace that the song represents. Christians, too, pray for peace. But the Christian must ask: at what cost, and by what means? Peace without truth is no peace at all. As the prophet Jeremiah warned, “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). Lennon’s dream risks being just that, a dream that soothes but does not save.
Moreover, the song reflects a broader cultural tendency to idealize a world without God while retaining the moral fruits of the very faith it rejects. The compassion, unity, and justice Lennon envisions are rooted in a Judeo-Christian moral framework. But if the tree is cut off from its roots, how long can the fruit survive? The Christian must contend that true peace, shalom, is not achieved through imagination, but through incarnation.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the True Imagination. Lennon’s Imagine invites listeners to picture a world of harmony through subtraction, subtracting heaven, hell, religion, and absolutes. But the Christian gospel invites a different kind of imagination: one that sees the world not only as it is, but as it will be in Christ. The Christian is not called to imagine no heaven, but to long for it. Not to deny religion, but to embody true worship. Not to flatten difference, but to find reconciliation in Christ.
In the end, Lennon was right about one thing: imagination is powerful. But imagination untethered from truth is dangerous. Christians must respond not by banning the song, but by offering a better vision, one where peace is not the absence of God, but the presence of Christ; not the denial of judgment, but the triumph of mercy; not the erasure of faith, but the fullness of grace.
Vikiho Kiba