Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Psalm 2:1-4
After the breakup of the Beatles, John Lennon launched a solo career. In 1971, he released his second solo album. The title track “Imagine” was a huge hit, and remains widely popular more than fifty years later. The lyrics perfectly capture the secular humanist mindset of the world apart from God.
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.
Ever since sin entered into the world, the direction of man has been away from God. Rather than valuing the divine and holy, people try to replace God with the things of this world. They simply do not see the value of obedience and love to the Lord. This is not surprising because that is the result of the damage sin has done to us. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
The tendency to rebel against God and try to get out from under His control is all that lost people know. And while that is tragic and destructive to them, it is even more tragic when God’s children chafe against the commandments He has put in place for our lives. God never forbids things that are good for us. Instead, He guards us by establishing guardrails for our behavior. No person, saved or lost, who chooses to live in opposition to God’s law will find it “easy if you try.”
