Christianity is just a psychological crutch - part 1

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

Most of you will recognise those words as the opening lines to John Lennon's song, imagine. I wonder if you've ever taken time to imagine a world like that. What would it mean?

Some imagine the world John Lennon describes and fall in love with it. It's the idea of a world that is all about the here and now, a world that is explained purely by things that can be investigated scientifically, a world where what you see is what you get. To imagine there's no heaven and no hell, that above us there is only sky, is for some very appealing.

But others find it very discomforting. For them, to imagine that this life is all that there is is very disturbing. For these people, to imagine that we die and that's the end of it is quite a frightening prospect. Surely we have more value than that? Surely we can't just get to the end of our 70 or whatever years and that's it? Or it's the thought that there will be no justice that's too troubling. Think of some of the atrocities in history or some of the pain and hurt that individuals suffer - the holocaust, 9 11, and so many moer. The idea that people will get away with that and never face justice just seems wrong. They just can't bear imagining there's no heaven.

And that's why people become Christians, isn't it? Looking at the world as just a series of random events with no higher power in control, seeing this life as all that there is, seeing that people will get away with great evil is too much, and so we need to create a reality that is higher and beyond the material to comfort us and help us to escape from reality. Christianity is just a psychological crutch. It's a way of coping with the reality of the world.

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

To imagine that is too hard to bear, and so I must believe in Christianity to help me cope with reality.

That's a relatively common thought today isn't it? Christianity is there to help weak people to cope. It's just a psychological crutch that helps people to deal with the world.

Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true, so in my next couple of posts I'll look at some responses to this idea.