The funny thing about being older (I’m 64.5 YO) is I can remember a lot of things from my childhood better than I can remember last week.
In Catholic grammar school back in the 1960s, the nuns really loved for us young students to sing songs. Ach! There were plenty of Catholic religious songs and also secular songs. The nuns always chose the smartest and most popular girl in our class, Ann C., to come up to the front of the classroom and lead the singing. Well, singing was never one of my fortes and, truth be told, I thought Ann was pretty cute and I was much more interested in watching her sing than singing any of the songs myself. But I digress.
One of those old songs turns up in my head occasionally. A musical troupe called “Up With People” was founded in 1965* as an organization for young adults “that enabled them to interact with the world through positivity and music.” It was clearly a “healthy,” establishment-sanctioned alternative to the burgeoning, counter-culture, hippie movement. The ensemble’s signature “sing-out” folk song, “Up With People!,” was featured on many television variety shows at the time. It was a cultural phenomenon. Many adults breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, not ALL youth are going down the toilet,” they consoled themselves. While our parents loved the song, it was waaaaaay too square for us nine-year-old hipsters who were already listening to the Beatles and the Byrds. Regrettably, the nuns at our parochial school also loved the song and forced it upon us along with all of the requisite corny body motions (see video below).
I was thinking about the “Up With People!” song recently and it strikes me now that some of the lyrics are antithetical to the Gospel. Let’s take a look, shall we?
(Verse 1)
It happened just this morning, I was walking down the street
The milkman and the postman and policeman I did meet
There in ev’ry window and ev’ry single door
I recognized people I’d never noticed before
(Chorus)
Up! Up with people!
You meet ‘em wherever you go
Up! Up with people!
They’re the best kind of folks we know
If more people were for people
All people ev’rywhere
There’d be a lot less people to worry about
And a lot more people who care
There’d be a lot less people to worry about
And a lot more people who care
(Verse 2)
People from the south-land and people from the north
Like a mighty army, I saw them coming forth
‘Twas a great reunion, befitting of a king!
Then I realized people are more important than things
(Chorus)
(Verse 3)
Inside everybody there’s some bad and there’s some good
But don’t let anybody start attacking people-hood
Love them as they are, but fight for them to be
Great men and great women as God meant them to be
(Chorus)
Yup, you spotted it. Verse 3 is a problem. It propagates a Christ-less universalism and civil religion. Everybody has some good in them, it says, and we all have to help each other reach the greatness potential that the nebulous, inter-faith deity allegedly desires for us. Every works-religionist can subscribe to this song. No wonder the nuns loved it. Hey, it just occurred to me that this song is very similar to a Joel Osteen “sermon.”
In contrast, the Bible declares there is none righteous, no, not one. We are all sinful beings and we all deserve eternal punishment. But Jesus Christ, God the Son, was punished for our sins on the cross of Calvary. He defeated sin and death by rising from the grave and offers eternal life and fellowship with God to all those who trust in Him as their Savior by faith alone.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
Positivity won’t cleanse your soul, cure the evils of the world, or get you to Heaven! Jesus Christ alone is the Way to Heaven.
*After a little digging, I discovered the Up With People organization had its roots in the ecumenical, inter-religious “Moral Re-Armament” (MRA) movement, which began in 1938. See the Wiki article here.
Addendum: We were subversive little nine-year-old rascals and I remember myself and a few buddies conspiratorily changing the last lines of the chorus from…
There’d be a lot less people to worry about
And a lot more people who care
to
There’d be a lot MORE people to worry about
And a lot LESS people who care
But we didn’t sing the rebellious alternate lyrics loud enough for the temperamentally volatile nun to hear us.
Up With People lingered on after its 1965 peak and actually appeared as the marquee halftime act at Super Bowls X (1976), XIV (1980), XVI (1982), and XX (1986). A scaled down Up With People is still in existence, continuing to crusade for the cause of worldwide brotherhood (see website here).