Bigger than Jesus

4 March 1966.  John Lennon, the legendary singer, achieved a fame that he did not savour.  The London Evening Standard reported that day a remark of Lennon’s: “Christianity will go.  It will vanish and shrink…. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”  An American magazine for the young people picked up that remark and condensed it into a headline: “We’re more popular than Jesus.”

John Lennon claimed to be bigger than Jesus.  The news spread like wildfire and the Americans went into a frenzy.  Some fanatics declared Lennon a blasphemer and vowed “eternal’ ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future. People were appointed at 14 pickup points to collect Beatle records and anything associated with the music troupe.  The records were burnt.

“I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion,” Lennon explained in what was projected as an apology.  “I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I’m sorry I said it, really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. From what I’ve read, or observed, Christianity just seems to be shrinking, to be losing contact.”

Religious people seldom try to understand what others say.  Religion is all about fire.  There is the fire of faith in the heart.  Then there is the fire of hatred for people of other religions.  And then there is the hellfire.  Fire doesn’t seek to understand.  Fire burns.

People like Lennon are rebels.  Eternal rebels who can’t accept the silly world of given truths, fossilised gods and ossified ideologies.  “Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loud-mouthed lunatic poet/musician,” Lennon declared. “But I cannot be what I am not.”

That is the problem with every rebel. 

The world wants you to be what you are not if you are as genuine a person as John Lennon was.  Be counterfeit, the world insists.  Be what we want you to be.  Be what you are not.  Fit into the systems created by us.  Vote for us or be ready to be labelled as antinational, anti-religious, anti-god, and be ready to hit your grave.

John Lennon was just 40 when a religious fanatic pulled the trigger on him.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need…

John Lennon sang that.  And Mark Chapman said in his Christian prayer group, “Imagine there’s no Lennon.” And the bullets were fired.

I imagine Lennon singing with Jesus sitting beside him somewhere beyond there, with closed eyes and listening intently, nodding agreeably, and then, when the song is over, hugging Lennon saying, “Hey, John, you’re indeed greater than me, man!”