Modern Culture
In the Year 2525

I graduated from college in 1969 at the end of the decade many call the cataclysmic decade of change in the culture of the USA. Columnist George called the year before, 1968, “perhaps the worst year in American history” and sixties as “the most dangerous decade in America’s life as a nation.” Interestingly, in 1969 a haunting tune was released that seemed to be both warning and prophecy. I recently heard the song on a trip to a Presbytery meeting. It was “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans.

Denny Zager and Rick Evans were students who met at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. They were two guitar pickers who were trying to make a buck in the Lincoln area. Evans wrote the song in 1964 and they released it themselves in 1967. Two years later RCA picked up the record and released it nationwide. It rocketed to #1 here and in England and one million singles were sold in a two month period. It remains the biggest one hit wonder of all time in the recording industry reputedly selling over 20,000,000 copies worldwide!

It appears that all the success is keyed to the desire folks had living in a crumbling culture to understand what is happening. The lyrics are as follows:

In the year 2525If man is still alive.If woman can survive, they may find.

In the year 3535Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.

In the year 4545Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.You won't find a thing to chew.Nobody's gonna look at you.

In the year 5555Your arms hanging limp at your sides.Your legs got nothing to do.Some machine doing that for you.

In the year 6565Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh

In the year 7510If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.Maybe he'll look around himself and say.Guess it's time for the judgment day.

In the year 8510God is gonna shake his mighty head.He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh

In the year 9595I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.He's taken everything this old Earth can give.And he ain't put back nothing. Whoa-oh

Now it's been ten thousand yearsMan has cried a billion tears.For what he never knew,now man's reign is through.

But through eternal night.The twinkling of starlight.So very far away.Maybe it's only yesterday.

In the year 2525If man is still alive.If woman can survive, they may find.

In the year 3535 {fade}

Here is the intriguing part. Two young men of the sixties generation are pointing out the potential harm to the human race from technology because it leads to dehumanization. The song also does not shrink from mentioning that Divine Wrath and that Judgment Day may be appropriate because of the self-destruction of man. Now, I am not endorsing the theology of Zager & Evans but the fact that such a tune indicating those themes and floating them for thought came out of 1969. There was great angst about where man was headed then, even at the end of decade where there was so much degradation of conventional cultural norms…including music.

Could this happen today? Would a record like 2525 be released by a major producer, a record that questions progress and technology and asserts that the wasting of life itself invites Divine wrath? Seems unlikely except possibly in country and western music or contemporary Christian music, which are niche markets. This is indicative of how improperly Christians have responded to deteriorating culture. Instead of trying to be an influence on all culture, we have established our own “little cultures”. The result is no more songs selling 20,000,000 copies that strikes back at the world’s norms being available to question those norms. And, isn’t that the first step to confronting the world with the Gospel? How are worldly men, slaves to the system of the world to know that they are heading to destruction unless the world’s systems are questioned? That was needed in 1969 and is needed today.