What Makes a Revolution?
Are you finding the “revolutionaries” of our day … a bit lacking? Watch as a Village Church member provides some exegesis on a modern dissident in this video from 1995.
Update: by popular demand, we’ve added the lyrics to Imagine What. Check them out in the full post. For reference, you might want to check out John Lennon’s original Imagine lyrics.
Imagine what?
Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try
Imagine there’s nothing real but what you see
Isn’t that a cheery thought?
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no heaven or hell
And while we’re at it, no moral justice
No more consequences for what you do
You can cheat on your wife, no problem
(Everything turns out right anyway)
Wouldn’t this really be
A wonderful world to live in
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
And we all know truth is determined by majority
So come along and we’ll be as one
Imagine no possessions
It isn’t hard to do
Imagine not being responsible for anything
Or caring how it’s treated
Life would be sort of like the public library
All the books with the pages ripped out
Imagine not wanting to own anything
Imagine not having the things you enjoy
So imagine not caring what you have for dinner
And no passions too
Imagine what it feels like to be a brick
Living as a brick for evermore
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
So if we get enough people together
I’m sure we can talk some sense into God
Imagine no religion
No Jesus Christ to tell us what to do
Just all of us sort of figuring it out
And everyone stopping being selfish
A brotherhood of man
Because…...it’s a nice thing to do
Imagine all the people
Achieving an uncorrupt, socialist world state all by ourselves
Well maybe that’s a little hard to imagine
But go ahead anyway,
After all we’ll show God we can be brave
No-ho-ho matter what He thinks
There’s no one quite like Sam . . . or should I say, Emmanuel Cosmo?
Ken,
Video looks great on the website! Any chance Sam has a copy of the lyrics he is singing? I would love to read the words that are hard to make out…its sounds like a very interesting exegesis.
Don’t we have a great church and a great pastor
Darin
[...] This 1995 video is great. Early signs of the Revolution in the form of Sam in a wig. We want lyrics! [...]
Yes, need the lyrics! And Vimeo… way cool.
We’ve got lyrics now.
Hey Folks,
My wife costumed that comedy show in 1995.
I was there for the live performance. What a trip
Here’s something you probably didn’t know..
You see…that was Sam’s real head of hair there. No fooling. A bunch of Redeemer groupies mobbed him after the performance and it got real ugly. In the end, they were tearing at his clothes and hair, trying to get even one memento from Sam. Some crazy woman pulled at his hair and tore his scalp above his forhead. After about 4 hours of intensive surgery and skin grafts at Lenox Hill Hospital, they were able to stabilize Sam. Unfortunately his hair would never grow back. So what looks like male pattern baldness is really a battle-scar from the old days of the revival at Redeemer when home group leaders were heart-throbs. Can I tell you how many times someone in home group would say, “Sam…you ask such insightful questions, are all the other Home Group Leaders as cute as you are?”
Yup, yup, yup, the good old days.
—Alan
I think he’s gonna have to reprise that for the Offertory.
If the only reason you don’t cheat on your wife is because you want to go to heaven, you may need some marriage counseling or something.
None of the atheists I know (many) including myself, think that moral justice is non-existent because gods are apparently non-existent.
Given the above, I still thought it was pretty funny. I’ve always been intrigued by how Lennon was able to have atheist and anarchist ideas accepted by society simply by putting them to a nice tune.
Great point by ‘Alpha Omicron.’ Good art can sell you anything.
@Alpha: sorry, but in the end, what other answer does the atheist have but, “it’s a nice thing to do” to the question, “why stop being selfish?”
So collectivism is inherently theistic? Marx et al. would beg to differ.
I think Greider’s point is that pragmatism is all that is left for justification of morality when there is no God to define “wrong.” When morality is reduced to a social contract, “we do collectivism because it works,” it ceases to be morality. If one finds an equally workable alternative, like extermination of those who are a drag on the system, who’s to say that isn’t just as good? This is probably why Marx was beset by chronic mental depression during the last two decades of his life.
...It is also probably why Marx had no trouble being unfaithful to HIS wife, siring an illegitimate child with his servant, Helene Demuth. It seems, he figured, with no God, “everything turns out all right anyway.”
I think Greider’s point is that pragmatism is all that is left for justification of morality when there is no God to define “wrong.” When morality is reduced to a social contract, “we do collectivism because it works,” it ceases to be morality.
But why think that we need a “justification” for morality? Morality seems intrinsic and innate – built into our spiritual genetic make-up. This is the imago dei. We have a sense of morality and duty and a sense of resposibility. Why do we need to justify something that is intrinsic? I don’t see the connection between justification of morality and the doing of morality. I don’t do the right things because I can justify them according to my Theistic commitments. Most of the time I do the right things because they feel right to me….just being honest!
So, if we don’t need to be obsessed with justification then that means that Pragmatism is not the only alternative. You seem to suggest an either-or that I don’t see as necessary: Either justify morality according to some higher principle or else justify morality based on Pragmatism. But if justification isn’t as high a priority, then the either-or losses its scope.
A few thoughts from a Christian….I realize it may be strange of me to argue from the other side, but I’m just trying to keep it real. Great video – love the satire!
Erdman asks a good question: Why do we need justification for morality?
We need a justification for our morals as soon as we try to live with other people…especially teenagers. When Mom says, don’t spend the night with him and teen says, why not? and Mom says, because I said so, that’s not giving the teen much of a reason to go against something “that feels so right.” Eventually it wears off. Part of the reason I became a Christian is because, as a teen, I was immensely unsatisfied with that kind of reasoning. I wanted certain things and, if all that was in my way was social convention, or a “because I said so,” that was going to go out the window. So morals often don’t get passed down through generations.
This is why, as atheist, Scott Atran, recently wrote in NTTimes (03/04/2007), “I wondered why no society ever survived more than three generations without a religious foundation as its raison d’être,’’
When push comes to shove, a society will surrender morals if there is no justification.
Even if we don’t confront the generational problem, as soon as we try to live with others or make laws we find that “innate morality” is not all that universal, or universally agreed upon. Without a justification for your morals, you have no business saying that anything anybody does is really wrong, if society blesses it. So, in many societies, treating women as inferior is the “intrinsic and innate.” It sure feels right to them. Are you going to agree with them?
That’s why we need justification for morality.
But remember I asked about “justification.” (I was kind of thinking in the epistemological sense.) I didn’t seek to justify morality on the basis of feelings. I meant to say that most of us have a sense of morality, a feeling of right and wrong, and we primarily operate on this basis. Most of us don’t sit around wondering whether or not we can justify the wrongness of spraying a campus with bullets – we just understand it to be wrong because we bear the image of God. Romans 1 seems to indicate this: We have an innate sense of accountability to God that leaves us without excuse. This can break down, no doubt….But my point is that I would not seek to transplant justification from “Morality is justified because of God” to “Morality is justifed because I feel good about it” – that wasn’t my point.
I have no problem with seeking a justification for morality. I think it is a worthy project, and obviously it was meaningful to bring you to faith, and probably will be for many others now and in future generations. I’m simply wondering whether it is the only approach to ethics.
As you say, morality is certainly different across cultures, this opens up a new can of worms. I can certainly understand going straight to the justification issue, but it is not without problems. We Christians would say, “Well, it’s wrong to treat women as inferior b/c God says so” – we justify it on God. How do we know God said so? We read it in the Bible. But in another society who treats women as inferior they justify their beliefs on a similar ground: God says so. But they happen to serve a different G/god. Yet we are both using divinity as a justification.
And then on top of that we have the Bible, which was written in a society/culture where women were inferior, and the Bible doesn’t always advocate a wholesale turn towards absolute equality between the genders. For example, in Deuteronomy 22 if a man rapes a virgin, unengaged woman he simply has to pay something to the woman’s father and then he gets to take her as his wife. This is a case of morality that we find a bit odd and perhaps troubling these days. But I would argue that God was working within the culture, and that even though it doesn’t seem to us to be the best ethical move I would argue it was the best thing for that time/context.
Wow. This is amazing. This has made my day. We need to make this into an ecard so we can send to people. I didn’t realize this was Sam until I started reading the comments! Can he dress up like Bon Jovi and do a version of “Living on Prayer?”
Outstanding! I’m so glad you’ve uploaded this, as I can now share it with others! I have it on the video of the original production from Redeemer (I think it was called “Where’s Tim?” if I remember correctly), but 1) don’t have a video player and 2) live in England where it wouldn’t work anyway.
When are you going to upload the clip of Sam as Spock, from the same show? I’d love to revisit the Diet of Wurms Hole…..
Yes, your pastor has many talents! He can exegete scripture and exegete culture—and be very very funny!
Dear Sam and Mary Kay: I am so delighted that daughter Susan forwarded this to me from England. What talent! What a family! What love you spread from Jesus through you…........DHB
[...] August 6th, 2007 at 7:14 am (faith and reality, religion, internet) Imagine What? [...]