In the Bible, Jesus talks about the difference between the world's sense of peace and the Father's sense of peace. He does not bring the peace the world seeks, but brings the true peace. The same can be said of love. There is the love that world embraces and there is the love to which Christ calls us. The difference, as in peace, is stark.
The world's vision, we all know, one finds in the song Imagine, which by the way, is pure marxism. Notice that what the song defines as peace and love is nothing to kill or die for. Now obviously, I am not interested in killing anyone and I, though a Navy veteran trained in the use of firearms, refuse to carry a weapon of any type. The issue is Imagine celebrates nothing to die for. (I am assuming we understand this has nothing to do with what we find at the Cheesecake Factory.) What Imagine celebrates as love is to have nothing to believe in. We see a peace and love that are actually utilitarianism: Leave me alone and I will do the same and we will live in peace and call it love. This is not the peace that Christ talks about and it is not the love which He exemplifies. Jesus killed no one, but He died for all. He is also the Son of God and is the way, the truth and the light. He reminds His followers that they too may die for embracing His teachings. He therefore calls them to believe to the point of it being something to die for. The more they love God and neighbor, they more they risk suffering and dying for them.
The narrator of Imagine believes in a love that brings peace through a lack of war. As great as that sounds, it is one that will result in a tremendous war for people cannot love without anything to believe in and that love has its limits that destroy peace. That is because, that love is tolerance and tolerance is not true love. One, by definition, cannot give one's life for tolerance. Such "love" cannot go the extra mile to which Jesus calls us. I cannot imagine a devotee of the song purposely giving his/her life for a cause when they embrace living in a way that there was nothing in which to deeply believe. There cannot be any pursuit of truth in this vision because to pursue truth requires something to believe in and even to die for.
Jesus reminds us that our greatest treasure is in Heaven and Imagine teaches that we have to live here as if there was nothing beyond here. We live in peace so as not to rob someone of their only treasure which is what they have here. If they lose this, they have nothing and no longer exist. Therefore, to love them is to let them live and they will let us live. Would we give our life to protect their right to live if a less tolerant foreign agent came to destroy them?
So here is the question? Jesus died fully accepting his impending death that all may live. Would a disciple of the Imagine philosophy have done the same if given the option. Would one believe in something so strong that he would willingly go to his death singing Imagine? Is that an oxymoron? Would he have given his life for a neighbor or a friend if given the choice?
This is not to criticize John Lennon the song's author who died at the hand of a crazed gunman, but to compare the two versions of love preached. The world's version of love is a tolerant form of utilitarianism and Christ's form of love sacrifices all for whom and to whom we love and believe in even unto death.
Jesus does not give peace as the world gives it. The love He teaches is beyond what the world embraces. That is something we can believe in
