Aging & Wisdom Quote by John Lennon

Lennon is trying to keep the heat of belief without the furniture of religion. He opens with a disarming confession - "I believe in God" - then immediately swerves away from the bearded sky-dad image that organized Christianity tends to sell. The move is classic Lennon: take a loaded, establishment-flavored word and strip it down until it fits a countercultural conscience. God becomes an internal, democratic force ("something in all of us"), which flatters the listener while also dodging clerical authority.

The subtext is both spiritual and strategic. By praising Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha in the same breath, Lennon signals a 60s-era universalism: the prophets were basically right, the institutions are what botched the message. "Translations have gone wrong" sounds gentle, almost academic, but it's a pointed accusation. He isn't blaming faith; he's blaming mediation - priests, scriptures, dogmas, and the way power smuggles itself into language. Translation here doubles as distortion: not only between languages, but between original experience and mass-produced doctrine.

Context matters because Lennon is speaking from the fault line between pop stardom and public moral authority. Post-Beatles, he was alternately sanctified and hunted for his opinions ("more popular than Jesus" still echoed). This quote functions like reputational judo: he refuses atheism, refuses orthodoxy, and claims the right to a private, portable sacredness. It's an attempt to reconcile a global audience with wildly different religions by offering a third option: spirituality as a shared human instinct, not a membership card.