Reading The Beatles
I know it’s on my reading list there in the right sidebar from back in the first half of the year, but I’m actually still reading Bob Spitz’s exhaustive biography of The Beatles. It’s huge. It has more details than anyone would ever care to know about the Fab Four. It starts with their childhoods and moves to the end of The Beatles. It goes into everything.

But it has been more than I can take at one time. I can only spend so many days with The Beatles. After a few days I just have to take some time off and go reading other stuff. Hence, I am now up to the era of Magical Mystery Tour.

It is incredible to read so much in depth about something that was so much a part of my late teen years into my early 20s. The Beatles defined and redefined so much of how I understand that era. It’s only a few years long, but it is so full of change and revolution and turning things upside down.

One particular event struck me anew in the reading. It was after John Lennon made his infamous remark that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. That released a firestorm a few months later that had preachers and deejays breaking, burning, and trashing their records. They were Satan’s messengers. They were the source of all the worst fears and nightmares about the way the younger generation was being led straight to the fires of hell.

Later that same year the Beatles were on tour in the US and they were genuinely terrified. They were sure that someone would try to kill them to do God a favor. They were afraid of Christians. Not because of what the Christians believed or because of some God thing. They were afraid of Christians who would use the ways of the world to punish in God's Name. No wonder they headed off to the Maharishi and India for Transcendental Meditation. There was no opporuntity for peace with Christians like that.

Of course the fact that the Beatles' records sales didn't drop through the floor showed that there was a lot less strength behind the trheats than there appeared. What the Christians of that time didn't know- and perhaps still don't- is that their ways of reacting as if God were so weak as to need our defense turn more people away than they attract.

The Beatles were living in the beginning of an era in Great Britain where the church was losing BIG TIME year in and year out. The Beatles opened new doors of spiritual understanding- right or wrong or in between. The church was unable to deal with that- either in Britain or the US. Anger didn't do much.

And anyway- following God isn't a popularity contest. In many places it doesn't matter how popular Jesus or God is. It matters far more if you follow him.