Homily 509 | 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time | Year B
“Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.” John Lennon, the famous singer songwriter of Beatles fame, wrote those words in 1971. If seems more like a nightmare to you, you’re not wrong. But Lennon imagined that no heaven… “and no religion too…” would result in “all the people livin’ life in peace.” The song has it completely and dangerously backward.
Perhaps you’ve heard the idea tossed around that “most wars are fought over religion.” Maybe that’s what Lennon was thinking. The truth quite a different story. Several years ago, someone actually researched this and found that of the 1763 wars he could document, only 123 had been fought with religion as the primary cause, less than 7%.
So where do wars come from? St. James tells us in today’s second reading. “Jealousy and selfish ambition… Is it not from your passions?” Human nature if fallen ever since Eden. We naturally tend toward selfishness, egoism, fighting, and stepping on others to get ahead. The only thing in history that has checked this downward fight to the top has been religion.
The real effect of religion on the world is the opposite of the Lennon dream. If this world is all there is, then you have to get all you can get right now. If someone has something you want, you have to take it. If you’ve been wronged, you have to fight back and even the score. If this world is all there is, then war is not only the exception, it’s inevitable.
But if there is heaven, then you don’t have to get it all here. In fact, everything in this world passes away and isn’t worth fighting over. The humble are the powerful because they’re not attached to this world. If there is injustice here, you don’t have to kill all your enemies because there’s a place where true justice lasts for ever. In short, if you want to imagine a world without war, then you have to imagine heaven.