Gal Gadot, who played Wonder Woman in three DC films, organized some of her famous multi-millionaire friends, including Norah Jones, Will Ferrell, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Fallon, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, and Amy Adams, to sing John Lennon’s ode to atheism “Imagine” about no national borders and no possessions.
Imagine having a more embarrassing response to the COVID-19 pandemic than even new-age guru Marianne Williamson.
It’s easy if you try.
Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot uploaded a video to social media this week featuring herself and a handful of A-list celebrities singing John Lennon’s Imagine, also known as one of the worst songs of the 20th century.
The three-minute Instagram video, which is meant to raise spirits as the world reels from the coronavirus outbreak, begins with the actress, who is herself in quarantine, saying she is feeling “a bit philosophical.”
Let’s imagine no religion, specifically, no God. This means the virus is doing its evolutionary job. Survival of the fittest. Why bother trying to save people from the natural consequences of something that’s thinning out the weakest members of the herd. Say yes to atheism and “nature, red in tooth and claw.” It might be OK to kill your neighbor for a few rolls of toilet paper. Who’s to say otherwise?
Sarah Silverman, Mark Ruffalo, and Amy Adams are bitter anti-Trumpers. Adams is worth $75 million. She and her other “Imagine” singers should listen to the lyrics: “Imagine no possessions; it’s easy if you try,” unless you’re a movie actor who gets paid millions of dollars for acting. These Imagineers are all multi-possession people who probably live in secured locations to protect their possessions.
We’ve come to learn that John Lennon was embarrassed by his early political and social radicalism. Fred Seaman, who worked with Lennon from 1979 until his death on December 8, 1980, claims that the music legend “was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.” Seaman continued:
I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who’s an old-time communist… He enjoyed really provoking my uncle… Maybe he was being provocative… but it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.
He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naiveté.
In a series of interviews published after his death, “[t]he man who famously called for imagining a world with ‘No religion’ also jettisoned his anti-theism,” Jordan Michael Smith of The American Conservative writes. “‘People got the image I was anti-Christ or antireligion,’ he said. ‘I’m not at all. I’m a most religious fellow. I’m religious in the sense of admitting there is more to it than meets the eye. I’m certainly not an atheist.’”
Not only did Lennon reject atheism, he also rejected forms of evolution. He instinctively knew that there was something special about humans and different about the animal world even if he did not know how the theory of evolution is argued:
“Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way,” he insisted. “That’s another piece of garbage. What the hell’s it based on? We couldn’t havecome from anything—fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don’t believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren’t monkeys changing into men now? It’s absolute garbage. It’s absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists. That and the monkey thing are both as insane as the apes standing up suddenly.”
What happened to Lennon? Why did his views change? He grew up. He matured. He was willing to look reality in the face without blinking and say, I was wrong. The man who imagined a world with “no religion” and “no possessions” left an estate of more than $275 million, “not bad for one who referred to himself as an ‘instinctive socialist,’ for one who believed in the abolition of ‘all money, police, and government.’” ((David A. Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon: Charming or Harming a Generation? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 11.))
Lennon’s early flirtation with socialism was temporary. Maybe he was persuaded by the lyrics from fellow-Beatle George Harrison’s song “Taxman_._” “The Beatles’ large earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government (hence the lyrics ‘There’s one for you, nineteen for me’).”
Lennon knew that sending money to poor nations was counterproductive.
“When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. ‘You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.’”
It’s time that atheists and liberals follow Lennon’s lead and grow up. Atheism and socialism are literal dead ends. They are destroyers of people and societies. If there is no God, then Lennon’s death at the hands of Mark David Chapman was the result of the survival of the fittest, the fittest being Chapman. Atheism is like setting one’s sails “for the island of nihilism. This is the darkest continent of the darkened mind—the ultimate paradise of the fool.” ((R. C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 171.))
These Hollywood hypocrites should stop singing and begin spreading their own wealth around if they are truly concerned about the effects of the virus. “Truly, the cruelest trick the devil ever played was convincing rich and famous people that Imagine is a good and meaningful song and not an abject embarrassment,” Becket Adams writes in the Washington Examiner.
I just received word that the wife of my long-time friend James Jordan died after fighting ovarian cancer for 17 years. If you want to Imagine comfort, listen to Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of “Going Home,” something Brenda is now enjoying:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1238572657278431234
Going home, going home
I’m just going home
Quiet light, some still day
I’m just going home
It’s not far, just close by
Through an open door
Work all done, care laid by
Going to fear no more
Mother’s there expecting me
Father’s waiting, too
Lots of folk gathered there
All the friends I knew
All the friends I knew
I’m going home
Nothing’s lost, all’s gain
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on the way
No more longing for the day
Going to roam no more
Morning star lights the way
Restless dream all done
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life begun
There’s no break, there’s no end
Just a living on
Wide awake with a smile
Going on and on
Going home, going home
I’m just going home
It’s not far, just close by
Through an open door
I am going home
I’m just going home
Going home, going home