Last weekend we went and saw Yesterday, a movie that asks the question, 'What if the Beatles (and ciagarettes and Coca-Cola and Harry Potter) had never existed, except in the minds of a few people'? It wasn't a great movie, and my IMDB rating of 8 is probably inflated by the fact that I simply love the Beatles and will pump up anything that has their music in it. And Lily James is quite nice to look at for two hours.
One would think that the world would impoverished today had not John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison not had that first gig in the basement of the church building long ago. But the world of this movie acted as if nothing of real importance had still been lost. Ed Sheerin could still write songs; music really wasn't too much different (but Oasis never existed, whatever); people lived their lives just as we would today. We wouldn't be teaching our kids about Sgt Peppers, or the sadness of John Lennon being shot (would Forrest Gump exist, then?), or Paul McCartney asking us whether or not it's OK to like Silly Love Songs. This, likely, was the great weakness of the movie.
Watching this movie, though, posed two great questions for me as a Christian who really struggles with our post-Christian world...first, if Christ had not been born, what difference would it make? All of history hinges upon him. Many evil things have been done in his name, of course, but the genius of all civilization really rests on his bringing Life to people. There have been books written about this topic, of course...but I daresay that books as they now exist would not have been available without him.
But there's a second question that keeps coming to mind: if everybody woke up tomorrow and only a half-dozen people remembered Jesus and what he means, would that make a difference in the lives of many people? Or let me ask it this way: does Jesus really make a difference in the lives of many people? Would him not being real make a difference in the lives of 10% of Americans? Or would people keep going on as they always do?
We live in a country that claims to follow after Jesus...but how do we sync this up with the fact that most Americans claim to think that a wicked and vulgar man like Donald Trump is a great president, God's own man in the White House? I struggle with this question everyday. Am I one of the few people on this earth who remember who Jesus really was? And what this means for how we live? Or am I just deluding myself, and everybody is else is right on him and I'm just prejudiced? Am I just going crazy worrying about things that don't really matter?
I'd like to think that I'd be singing his praises even if nobody else on earth knows who he really was. And maybe there are others who would do the same, even as they have that look on their faces of confusion at just what on earth is going on with everybody else. But I don't know...and I'm glad that Jesus really does exist! May he be praised.
