I wanna go
To the foot of Mount Zion
To the foot of he who made me see
To the side of a hill, blood was spilled
We were filled, with a love
From With A Shout (Jersualem)
More explicitly Christian imagery from October. This is one of the “cross” lyrics in U2’s catalogue, probably finding its most economic and jam packed theology in I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Here, in an album full of streams of consciousness ad-libbing ecstatic praise lyrics, we find the most grounded theological content. It is to Christ that we are seeking to give us the love we need in our lives. The faith that is so exuberantly expressed elsewhere on the album is centred on this person and this event.
Jerusalem is given a place of a little too much significance, for now and the future, probably as a result of the Hal Lindsay’s apocalyptic prophecies that was an obsession of the time; Dylan’s explicitly Christian albums are theologically weakened as result too! Still, here is a band with dreams of world domination, that few others could even imagine becoming a reality at the time, and in their efforts to get to the top they were still more than happy to shout out their Christian creed! It was naive but somehow, against the run of play, it worked!
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