Imagine-50-years-john-lennon

I remember the day I got into a deep debate with a hell-fire and brimstone over zealous preacher about that song. He went on and on about blasphemy for saying "There's no heaven". And I had to explain that the entire quotation is "IMAGINE there's no heaven." IMAGINE. As in "allow your brain to think about the possibility." That heated debate went on for almost an hour.

Nobody said there's no heaven. The lyric just said "consider the possibility" that there's no heaven. How would that change your thinking? WOULD IT change your thinking? Would you act any differently if you thought there was no heaven? And what about people like me who do not believe in a god or an afterlife? What does "heaven" mean to me? And if "hell" is supposed to be the anti-heaven option for that afterlife, and I don't believe in heaven, then logic follows that I also don't believe in hell. The idea of a heaven or a hell does not dictate my ability to know right from wrong. That is innate and instilled into people by their role model. I don't need some ancient book of stories passed down through centuries and reinterpreted and translated again and again and again. The things that the bible claims to have happened would have happened in a time where there was not yet any form of writing to commit things to paper. These are all stories "grandpa" passed down. SO how can you ask people to base their life on a book that may contain nothing but fiction?

And that kind of discussion went on for an hour.

It's not hard to 'imagine' you might argue with anyone for a whole hour, Eddie. (Incidentally, did the preacher survive?)

Well, we were just "debating". And he is alive and well and still holding services on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. Though I DO suspect he may have needed to take a refresher course in divinity school.

The thing is, no matter what box you live in, no matter which side of a fence you are on (choose your metaphor) it is healthy to allow yourself to think 180 degrees opposite sometimes. Hasn't everybody, at some point in their life, raised questions about how they have been told "that's just how it is" for their whole life?

We have an area here along a river that floods about 4 out of 5 years during the spring thaw. Every time it happens the news crews go out and interview people who say "We are not going to move. God will take care of us." Well, if you truly believe that everything that happens is under god's control, that, by any logic, also has to mean that he sent the flood.

That same logic makes me sometimes ponder whether I am "doing it wrong" by choosing to not believe. To focus on the negative things, how could your all loving god send me (and others) into a war zone? How could he let my dog die? How can he allow things like Covid, polio, cancer, bubonic plague, etc. Those are the questions nobody can answer without reverting to rote and saying "Those are tests sent to see how humanity can handle adversity." Well, early religion taught me that I was made in god's image and likeness. Well, think about that. If that is true, god is like ME???? And people put their faith in THAT?

Those are the discussions I like to have with clergy types.

So, yes, imagine there's no heaven. If there was no heaven, no final destination, no goal, no end game, how would the world act? The world as it is has people who shoot each other for no apparent reason. And that's WITH a heaven.

And that's where discussions usually start to get interesting. LOL!!