Do you think Garth Brooks did a double take? Did the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, presiding bishop, or the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral, have reservations?

Or was John Lennon’s “Imagine” chosen for former President Jimmy Carter‘s state funeral without the bat of an eye?

Different people of different faiths and different spiritualities will have different ways of praying for and honoring the dead. I’m not in the business of judging how a stranger holds his or her funeral. However, for a pious Christian (and for a president of the United States), “Imagine” is an odd choice.

This was a Christian funeral. Carter was a Christian man. “Imagine” is an anti-Christian song.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

These are the whispers of the Devil.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Why would you hold your two funerals in Christian churches, presided over by Christian ministers, if you believed there was no heaven or if you thought the end of religion was utopian?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

As a lesser matter, of all the people and places to celebrate a nation-less world, the state funeral of a former U.S. president is one of the least sensible places to do so.

I admit I was in my 20s before I ever actually listened to the lyrics. Before then, growing up in Greenwich Village, it just sounded like a generic hippie fireside hymn. It’s possible Carter and his family always just liked the feelings this old song gave them. However, I’m the type of guy who thinks that words and ideas matter, and my funeral is the last place I want people dreaming about a world with no afterlife.