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This article originally appeared in the November 4, 1988 issue of Christianity Today.

You know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

—John Lennon, "The Ballad of John and Yoko"

Just call it "The Last Temptation of John Lennon." A new biography (The Lives of John Lennon), depicting the ex-Beatle as a drug-crazed, sex-obsessed introvert, has caused a media-grabbing stir among rock 'n' rollers and baby boomers alike. No one less than one-time partner Paul McCartney says the book is full of lies. And a recent poll revealed that 97 percent of those questioned "have their doubts about the book."

Talk of a "bio boycott" is in the air: A symbol-perhaps the symbol-of the sixties is being threatened. And with it, the legacy of a generation that promised the world peace, love, and community-qualities, according to Tom Morganthau of Newsweek, "that have sadly proven as ephemeral as flower power."

Lennon was, perhaps, the last, best hope for a now middle-aged generation wanting the assurance that it did not demonstrate in vain; that its youthful idealisms really do have a place in the real world-venereal disease and drug addiction notwithstanding. A fallen hero, a martyr (Lennon was murdered in December 1980), Lennon died-or so public perception goes with his idealism intact, his vision for peace in focus. Now we are told his life was programmed to self-destruct.

In our more common-sensical moments, age and AIDS tell us it could be no other way; Lennon simply lived out the consequences of a self-indulgent ideology. Says Morganthau: "The boomers are losing the hubris of youth in the big-little struggles of daily life: children must be fed and taught, bills and taxes must be paid. Drugs and promiscuity are every bit as dangerous as mom and dad said they were. Che Guevara is dead. Vietnam is drearily imperialistic and Jane Fonda has apologized for her pilgrimage to Hanoi."

You say you want a revolution?
Well you know we all want to change the world.

—John Lennon, "Revolution"

From the lofty perspective of middle age, neither the Lennon revelations (be they true or false) nor the sixties postmortems currently in vogue hold any surprises, really. Yet there is a darker reality underlying these media machinations that demands more than fond memories and quick fix therapies: A nagging sense of hopelessness (the antithesis of the sixties spirit) persists in the subconscious of a generation in the throes of its own midlife crisis.

"'We are the world,' we shouted just a couple of years ago. And just a couple of years ago we were," writes "investigative humorist" P. J. O'Rourke. "How did we wind up so old? So fat? So confused? So broke?"

Probably because the gods of the sixties proved too uncontrollable and destructive. In the aftermath of a distant dream called the "Woodstock Nation," a community that was to have been built on the gospel of "luv," has come a disturbing alienation-the sense of every man for himself, by himself. "The communal ideal depended on an equal sharing of the load," reflected sixties musician Peter Tork, "and who in the '60s wanted that kind of hassle? The perpetually stoned ideal presupposed no commitments in the real world." Frustrated idealism has given way to the rabid demand for consumer goods in the seventies and eighties, and the growing realization that the one who dies with the most toys doesn't really win.

What this alienation will mean over the next 30 to 40 years for the largest single generation ever to populate the United States is anyone's guess. No doubt a common cause or two will momentarily capture our imaginations, complete with heroes articulating a new way to a brighter day (and, we can hope, symbolizing something more permanent and positively life transforming than Lennon, or Hugh Hefner, or Ivan Boesky did). But one thing is certain: In this search for a meaningful tomorrow, the church has a mission field cut out for it that 20 years ago it was unwilling to acknowledge.

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