(right at the outset of Advent, this U2 song gives us a reality check. Originally written around 2001, it only uses the U2 catalogue until that year...)
Those of us who are believers in the Christian faith and as a result are deeply engaged with the writings of the Old and New Testament are many many times caught in the horns of dilemma. Believing these ancient manuscripts of Scripture to be the inspired word of God we are often caught out by the reality of the news on our televisions clashing with such revelation. No better an example comes every Christmas time when those angels glide above the astonished shepherds and tell them:
Glory to God in the highest
And on earth peace to men
On whom his favour rests
This peace on earth usually clashes literally violently with the end of year reviews of the previous twelve months which is usually jam packed with tragedy, disaster, violent crime, terrorist atrocities and war. Where is the peace? What were those angels talking about?
Of course as with this and other such contradictions we who have followed an evangelical seamless view of Scripture have a habit of hermeneutical gymnastics to wish it away. Either that or we ignore it or palm it off to another time, when a star hung over some stable or to the culmination of time itself. And often I feel like a fraud. My apologetics are left in tatters as I ignore the anomalies. How can I convince a waiting world of the authenticity of a belief when I won’t stare the difficulties of my faith square in the eye? Few preachers have helped me. Few theologians either.
So what a breath of fresh air there is when Bono constantly eyeballs the dilemmas with an honesty and vulnerability that seems to me to be a courage and bravery of faith rather than the cowardly cop out. So you are watching the 1998 review of the year in the midst of your children’s nativity plays. How do you reconcile the twenty-nine lives so violently and needlessly ended by the terrorist bomb in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, with the aforementioned song of the angels. Honesty and vulnerability probably says that you don’t. Don’t lose your faith over it either. Wrestle with it:
"Jesus could you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on earth"
Bono takes it all on. Longs for heaven on earth and yearns for the time when that might be some kind of reality and tells his God that indeed he is tired of the waiting. He asks His God to answer the cries of those who have lost their children now silent in the ground. He concludes by telling Jesus that the words of that Christmas nativity sticks in his throat and he asks Him what it is worth - this peace on earth.
This is why the Church needs Bono. This is why I need Bono. He is willing to take that which he believes and the world that he sees around him and wrestle with them and not let any of them go. Peace On Earth is up front and without apologies. It’s a rant at God. Indeed as a song it could have got very slushy and sentimental when he names some of the victims of the bomb and links them with Christmas peace words. It works because the sentimentality is given the roughest of edges by the confrontation with God. And of course it is by no means a new theme on a U2 record. Indeed it could be seen as a direct follow up to the last track on Pop, Wake Up, Dead Man, when Jesus again is asked to help him because he feels alone in the world "and a fucked up world it is too".
Bono has written many times of his sense of connection with the Old Testament Psalmist King David most notably in his forewords for John Waters book Race With Angels and the Pocket Cannon Series book of Psalms. For Bono David, who he sees as an early blues singer indeed an early Elvis, was constantly raging at God for the injustices going on down here on earth. There is an honesty to the Psalms that seems alien to much of modern Christian worship where we are always looking at some kind of victory or overcoming. Bono and David’s experiences seem to be less than victorious or rosy as they look around at what goes on in this world.
For me this is what makes U2’s music, often condemned by the evangelical Christian fraternity, more real, prophetic and indeed Biblical than the vast majority of what masquerades as Christian music or art. Britain’s most successful Christian rock band,Delirious?, who openly speak of U2 as their major influence and inspiration never get close to writing a Psalm. For them the sentimentality is never smudged or stained by the blood or pain of the 21st century fallen world. That is not necessarily their fault as much as the Christian conditioning in which they have been developed and which is their market place.
Of course this has been a theme that can be traced back over 17 years of U2’s music. Perhaps their first foray into trying to equate faith and TV news was the War album and in particular Sunday Bloody Sunday, another look at the Northern Ireland troubles, when in the middle of the "trenches dug within our hearts" they were claiming "the victory Jesus won" and chanting "How Long, How long must we sing this song" from Isaiah and the Psalmist again.
On Unforgettable Fire there was the injustice of Martin Luther King’s murder, a look at Hiroshima on the title track and the Dublin junkies on Bad. Joshua Tree is much more steeped in Biblical and spiritual imagery than Unforgettable Fire and deals with this running and crawling and climbing and reaching for another Kingdom in the midst of the British miner’s strikes (Red Hill Mining Town), personal tragedy in the loss of one of their young employees (One Tree Hill) and that Dublin drug epidemic (Running To Stand Still).
The two songs from that album that maybe most sum up the theme of the entire U2 catalogue are Bullet The Blue Sky and of course I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. After a trip to central America where he witnesses the horrific things that America was doing to the native population Bono returned o Dublin and asked Edge to do his best to put El Salvador through his amps. There has never been a more turbulent and war like rock track in the history of music as Edge did just that and in the midst of Bono’s lyrics there is an almost throw away line that might just be the crucial clue to Peace On Earth and so much more. Bono sings, "Jacob wrestled with the angel and the angel was overcome".
Now there is another interesting Old Testament story. Here is this absolute scoundrel. A man who has deceived everyone that ever came in contact with him from his father to his brother to his father-in-law. Somehow the grace of God "sees beauty in ugly things", "sees goodness in everything". We are told that one evening Jacob gets involved with a man and they tumble and wrestle the entire night. In the dawn, Jacob realises that there is something supernatural going on and will not let his assailant go until he blesses him. The man who has clearly become and angel eventually is understood to be God and Jacob gets a new name Israel which means "wrestled with God". A whole nation is born.
It is that wrestling that Bono has been involved in. He has never let go. Since those early days, in the fervent and zealous and a whole lot more naive Christian fellowship back in Dublin, Bono has tried to make sense of his unflinching faith in God and the Christian belief in redemption and hope. On his pilgrimage he has never hidden away from the very difficult issues that that faith has to wrestle with in the unbelievable world that he has seen as a rock star, a humanitarian and as a courter of Popes and Presidents and Prime Ministers.
In the end I Still Haven’t Found What I’m looking For has always been his confession:
"You broke the bonds
You loosed the chains
Carried the cross
And my shame
You know I believe it
But I still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For"