How Can You Stand Next To The Truth And Not See It? - U2 at Giants Stadium

Talk about jealousy - our friend Nathan was among those fortunate enough to score tickets to U2's much-anticipated gig in NYC last night, and he sent us the following report. [To read Aaron Zimmerman's excellent 4-part series on the spiritual history of the band, click here, here, here and here.]

"We've got a spaceship," Bono said in reference to the massive staging above his head in the center of the stadium, "but we're not going anywhere without you."

He didn't just invite the audience on his otherworldly journey, he also invited Someone Else: at the end of the first song, "Breathe", he closed his eyes and knelt slightly. With one hand holding the microphone and the other palm-toward-heaven, he pleaded, "Spirit breathe."

And like the cool September breeze that gently graced the stadium throughout the show, the Spirit did indeed descend, to transport us to another place.

Several songs into the set, the band performed "Magnificent":

I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn't have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent‚ Magnificent

My friend Phil was standing next to me. While Bono worshiped using the above lyrics, Phil turned to me and said, "How can people not know what he's singing about?!" I agreed completely.

The next song was Elevation. It's a song that fits the "spaceship" theme: "You make me feel like I could fly, so high, El - eh - vay - shun!" And to make the point even more obvious, Bono looked at the crowd and said, "It's my prayer for you." And at this point in the church service--I mean, concert--I started to think about a question that the band sings in a lyric on the new album:

Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot
How can you stand next to the truth and not see it?

Perhaps I'm wrong, and there was no single person in the crowd of 84,000 who didn't "see it" like I was seeing it. Perhaps everyone in the place understood that the spaceship was a cathedral, that the lead singer was a priest, and that the setlist was a liturgy, designed specifically to facilitate an encounter with the God of the Universe.

It couldn't have been more clear than at the end of "One", when Bono sang:

Can You hear us coming Lord?
Can You hear us call?
Feel us knocking
We're knocking at Your door!

When this portion ended, he led us in an a cappella--84,000 strong--version of the hymn "Amazing Grace", which blended into "Where the Streets Have No Name". "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see... I want to run, I want to hide. I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out and touch the flame, where the streets have no name."

At this point in the evening, Bono was no longer explaining his intention to have us meet God, or to take us away in his spaceship. No, at this point, we were already gone.

We held our arms aloft, reaching out to the touch that flame. And for a second I still wondered if someone could be in that place, standing next to the Truth but not seeing it. But when the next song started I decided to let Bono's question be asked of me, instead of those around me. Was I the idiot going out with Beauty? Was I the one standing next to the Truth but not seeing it?

My answer came in the next song, "Ultraviolet", one of my all-time favorites. I interpret the song to be in reference to Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." God as an ultraviolet light: we can't see it but it illuminates nonetheless. For this song, Bono dressed in a suit of lights. A rope hung from heaven (where the spaceship was now flying) above him, and it too was lit up like John chapter 1. As he hung from the microphone/rope like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline, he sang,

Sometimes I feel like I don't know
Sometimes I feel like checking out.
I wanna get it wrong
Can't always be strong
But Love, it won't be long.

I used to think the chorus "baby, baby, baby‚ light my way" was a plea to some carnal lover. But now I realize that the "baby" is the Christ child, and his enduring love is my only lifeline. "I'm in the black, can't see or be seen. Baby baby baby, light my way." How many times in my life have I gone on thinking I am strong enough? I am capable enough? How many times have I not reached out for that rope of illumination and clung to it, as if my life depended on it? So many times, the Truth is right there, and I don't see it.

The concert ended in surrender. (Where else could it end?) The liturgy was sung:

I've been in every black hole
At the altar of the dark star
My body's now a begging bowl
That's begging to get back, begging to get back
To my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my unconsciousness
To the rhythm that yearns
To be released from control

And this is when I stopped noticing the people around me (judging their ability to "see it" or not) and simply focused on my own encounter with Jesus, my own surrendering to him.

At the moment of surrender
Of vision over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

U2: From Seekers, to Saints, to Sinners, to Saved by Grace (Part 4)

Part 4: Saved by Grace
Back in May, Mockingbird began a series examining the intersection of the lives, the faith, and the music of the members of U2 (whose new worldwide tour opens tonight in Barcelona!). (You can read the earlier posts here, here, and here.)

The series was born out of the observation that the personal journey of the band—in particular that of Bono, and to a lesser extent, The Edge—traces a narrative arc that is mirrored in the lives of so many Christians. That is, some crisis in our lives turns us into seekers, people looking for love or mercy (ultimately, a quest for a gracious God). Then, once we find God, we turn into “serious Christians,” committed churchgoers, and faithful Bible study attenders. This stage is often accompanied by an overt piety (Jesus fish bumper stickers) and exacting moralism (throwing away all your Grateful Dead/Jay-Z/Pantera CDs). This stage lasts until we fail. Then our own inability to live up to what we perceive to be God’s standards (or those of “Christianity”) causes us to re-think our religious lives. This is where the faith of many people shipwrecks. Or is reborn.

In our fourth and final installment of Mockingbird’s look at U2, we’ve now reached the place where the band re-discovers God’s grace in the face of Jesus.

U2’s albums in the late 1980s and 1990s reflected their Christian roots, but more often conveyed deep doubt than ardent confidence in Christianity. The obvious track in this vein is “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” from 1987’s Joshua Tree. But check out this snippet from the track “Wake Up Dead Man” from 1997’s Pop:

Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a messed-up world it is too.
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be.
Wake up, wake up dead man (x2)
Jesus, I'm waiting here, boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free.

But four years later, in 2001, U2 released All That You Can’t Leave Behind. The album contained a song entitled “Grace,” which began with this:

Grace, she takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain

It’s last line is this: “Grace makes beauty/Out of ugly things.”

Talking about this song, Bono said this:

“...the most important thing [about the people I mention in “Grace”] is that they personify my favorite word in the lexicon of the English language. It’s a word I’m depending on. The universe operates on karma, we all know that. … There is some atonement built in: an eye for an eye… Then enters Grace and turns that upside down. I love it. … Christ’s ministry really was a lot to do with pointing out how everybody is a screw-up in some shape of form, there’s no way around it. But then He was to say, well, I am going to deal with those sins for you. I will take on Myself all the consequences of sin. Even if you’re not religious I think you’d accept that there are consequences to all the mistakes we make. And so Grace enters the picture to say, ‘I’ll take the blame, I’ll carry your cross.’ It’s a powerful idea” (U2 by U2, p. 300).

Having found grace in Jesus Christ, Bono seems now able to integrate the good and bad in his life. Take this quote, where he describes his new take on life and work:

“I thank God on a daily basis for my life in U2 because not only did this job put my talents to use, it put my insecurities and weaknesses to use. That’s the miracle for me.”

There are echoes here of the great Reformation insight that we are both saved and sinners, that we are totally justified (by a God who justifies the ungodly) and still weak human beings who fail daily. The Gospel allows us to be honest about this reality, to breathe, and to enter into a place of freedom where God does the work, and we mostly just watch.

U2: Seekers to Saints to Sinners to Saved (by Grace)--Part 3

Part 3: Sinners

Our four-part series on U2's spiritual journey continues with a look at how the band dealt with the failure of their early aggressive form of Christianity. As we saw last week, their spiritual seeking had led them to a deep faith in Jesus. But it was in the context of an extremely legalistic community. They could not reconcile the grace they saw in Jesus with the rules-based living this community sought to enforce.

You can hear a lot of the ensuing doubt in the 1987 classic album, The Joshua Tree, especially in the super-obviously-titled, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (Watch the video here--sorry, embedding is disabled. The fun-loving Bono in the video contrasts with super-serious Edge, a good analogy for the tensions between the band and their Christian faith.) In the song, Bono sings of his simultaneous faith and doubt: "You broke the bonds/And you loosed the chains/Carried the cross/Of all my shame/all my shame/You know I believe it/But I still haven't found what I'm looking for." He seems to be saying, "I love you, Jesus, but this Christianity thing doesn't seem to work too well in my life." Ever have a day like that?

This tension also comes out in their song, "With or Without You." Bono describes what he was feeling:

"There I was. Loyal, but in my imagination filled with wanderlust, a heart to know God, a head to know the world, rock star who likes to run amok and a sinner who knows he needs to repent... That song is about torment, sexual but also psychological, about how repressing desires makes them stronger."

In short, U2 had tried the Law, but the law had failed. Thus U2 enters what I call the "Sinners" phase. This coincided with the release of The Joshua Tree, the album that catapulted U2 into the rock 'n' roll heavenlies. Album of the Year. 25 million copies. You know the deal. But the combination of serious religious doubt with global superstardom put the band in a wierd place.

The good thing was, they relaxed a bit. (Kind of like what happens when "good Christian kids" go off to Penn State.) Bono said this:

"It was a period of thawing out for the more uptight side of the band.”

While recording their follow up album, Rattle and Hum, Edge remembers

"Bono and the others were basically off partying harder than ever before... Here
is the band that wrote about civil rights and God going ‘native LA.’"

So they were trying out some freedom. But, interestingly, the pressure of the Law was still there. Edge says this about that time:

"We had become a very successful band, we were hanging out with Bob Dylan, but our success wasn’t bringing us a sense of artistic validation, it actually made us feel worse. We could see the flaws, the areas where we hadn’t delivered. We were really trying to live up to the respect and the opportunity we’d been given through our fans, to take on this position of being such a big group. So it was tough going at times. Bono, particularly, went through some really intense doubt about himself and the group as a whole."

After Rattle and Hum, the band took a break. (The Law forces you into hiding.) When they finally released the amazing 1991 album Achtung Baby, Edge said the opening chords were the sound of "chopping down the Joshua Tree." The band was still looking for a better way. In Jesus' terms, they wanted new wineskins for new wine. Stay tuned next week for part 4, where they come back to the heart of the matter.

U2: Seekers to Saints to Sinners to Saved (By Grace)--Part 2

Part 2: Saints

Our look at U2's spiritual journey continues. Last week, I looked at the pain Bono suffured as a young man desperate for his father's approval. This need for acceptance, along with the death of his mother, made Bono a spiritual seeker from an early age. In 1976, Bono--along with Edge and Larry Mullen--became a born-again Christian.

These three members of U2 became part of a Christian community called Shalom. It was a serious group. That's why I call these guys "saints" during this phase. Shalom had weekly Bible studies, prayer meetings, and the like. They were working hard at being saints. But the boys in U2 began to feel something was amiss.

Check out how Larry Mullen, the drummer, recalls those times:

"I felt that the meetings were starting to get scary, people were becoming really radical. Myself and my father had come to blows over the whole thing... Shalom continued to get more and more intense, there were frequent prayer meetings and considerable pressure to attend every one. It was as if you were awarded stripes for being there, and if you didn’t show up, somebody was asking why. It was starting to feel all wrong."

"The idea was to create a Christian community, where people would live and work under strict Christian standards... But there was something terribly wrong with the concept. It was like the bigger commitment you made, the closer you were to heaven. It was a really screwed-up view of the world and nothing to do with what I now understand a Christian faith to be."

In other words, Bono and company had found grace, but it quickly turned to law. Bono remembers: "[Edge] was feeling at this point that he couldn’t serve both God and man. I decided I couldn’t either, so we both quit."

In that version of Christianity, apparently, you could not play music in a rock band. It was the same kind of thinking that has driven countless Christian converts to burn their Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd CDs. It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to divide Christians into "good" and "bad"--like Jeff discussed in his post last week on Carrie Prejean. And it's the kind of thinking that is very far from the heart of "the friend of sinners."

U2: Seekers to Saints to Sinners to Saved (by Grace)--Part 1

Part 1: Seekers

Everyone knows that Bono, lead singer for U2, is an outspoken Christian. But do you know the story behind the band's faith? Bono, Larry Mullen (drums), and Edge (guitar), were all members of a Christian community in Dublin called Shalom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While in high school, they had all had deep conversion experiences of the “born again” variety. (Bob Dylan was doing the same thing in LA at the time, by the way.) Their faith deeply informed their early work—songs like “Gloria,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and "40" (see an amazing 1983 live performance here with Edge on bass and Adam on guitar! Really cool to see the audience chanting the chorus at the end.)—and has been one of the central themes of all their subsequent records.

I’ve been reading U2 By U2, a massive chunk of a book featuring an amazing collection of interviews and photos of the band—essentially the four rockers telling their story, with occasional interjections from Paul McGuinness, their long-time manager.

What’s interesting is that four distinct stages emerge in Bono’s (and the band’s) spiritual journey. In a series of posts, I’d like to lay out the narrative arc, the path that these guys have traveled. It may be a road you’ve been on too.

The story begins with seeking, with a hole in the heart. Bono grew up feeling confused and lost. He had a great sense of emptiness, a great longing for more. His mother died while he was in high school, and he grew up with his father, a strict man who had difficulty expressing emotion. Bono sought release and acceptance, but he found neither at home.

One story illustrates this powerfully. After Bono’s grandmother died, the family decided to sell her piano against Bono’s protests. The piano had been a place he found peace when he felt like “my head was exploding.” The sale of the piano deeply affected him: “That really bothers me even now. Trying to write on the piano is difficult for me.” Bono reflected further: “So they wouldn’t let me have a piano. … It’s so odd, it’s the thing I can’t figure out. It was almost like my father’s whole attitude was: don’t dream. This was his unspoken and sometimes spoken advice. To dream is to be disappointed, that was the running theme… But… if you were a kid like me, [selling the piano] is like somebody taking away your oxygen tank. You can’t breathe.”

Taking away the piano was a rejection at the heart level, a rejection and a judgment of who Bono was. So the hole in Bono’s soul was born. And listen to how he describes the result: “I think the seed of ambition were sown, paradoxically by this repression of the spirit. If you keep telling somebody not to do something then that might just be what they become driven to do. Megalomania might have started right here. I was going to have my revenge on the world. Everyone was going to have to listen to me! Which, of course, is psychological shorthand for ‘my father would have to listen. When it gets down to it, there’s only ever really one person in the audience… ”

This demonstrates a couple of recurring themes on this blog.

First, judgment and commands (theologically known as the Law) actually produce the opposite of what they demand. Tell a kid he can’t have a piano, and he becomes one of the world’s most famous musicians. Tell a teenager not to touch the liquor cabinet, and she gets drunk the next time you leave her home alone. Tell your husband to take out the trash, and he “forgets” to do it. (The current John and Kate Plus Eight saga is further evidence of judgment and constant criticism driving a man to act out in hurtful ways. I’m not excusing John Gosselin’s behavior, but if you watch the show, it’s certainly not hard to understand from a psychological and theological perspective.)

Second, the deepest longing of the human heart is for acceptance and love from our Father in heaven. Often this need is sublimated into a search for approval from other people, but ultimately it’s about raising your eyes to heaven and crying out, “Does Anyone up there love me?”

So the first stage in Bono’s journey was to be made a seeker, a human who had experienced soul-crushing judgment, creating in him a desperate hunger for acceptance and love.

By the way—even after Bono’s conversion and musical success, the pain was still there. In a concert in Atlanta in 1985, Bono brought his dad, Bob Hewson (see photo on left), to the States for the first time and had him as a guest at the show. Here is how Bono describes what happened after the show: “…I heard footsteps behind me and I looked around and it was my dad and his eyes were watering and I thought: ‘This is it! This is the moment! Finally he’s going to tell me something!’ This is a moment I’ve waited for all my life. My father was going to tell me he loved me. And he walked up, put his hand out, a little shaky, a little unsteady, he’d had a few drinks, looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Son… you’re very professional.’”

Unknown Caller

On my way back from NYC I was rocking out to the new U2 album, trying to stay awake, and got stuck listening to this song over an over again. It made me think of Steve Paulson's - and the Bible's - words about death and resurrection, forgiveness of sins, and Jesus saying, "Go home" to the healed paralytic. Apparently Bono was thinking about this too (or alternatively, perhaps he just has a lot of problems with technology in his life). Either way I could relate.

Footnote: This song immediately follows the track "Moment of Surrender" in which Bono says, "I've been in every black hole, at the altar of the dark star. My body's now a begging bowl that's beggin to get back to my heart...to the rhythm that yearns to be released from control."



Unknown Caller

Sunshine, sunshine
Sunshine, sunshine

I was lost between the midnight and the dawning
In a place of no consequence or company
3:33 when the numbers fell off the clock face
Speed dialing with no signal at all

Go, shout it out, rise up
Escape yourself, and gravity
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Force quit and move to trash

I was right there at the top of the bottom
On the edge of the known universe where I wanted to be
I had driven to the scene of the accident
And I sat there waiting for me

Restart and re-boot yourself
You're free to go
Shout for joy if you get the chance
Password, you, enter here, right now

You know your name so punch it in
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Then don't move or say a thing

10 Favorite Non-Album U2 Tracks

The band is back in the spotlight in a major way this week, with the release of their new record and their stint on Letterman. Needless to say, it's put me in a serious U2 phase. But having heard their more well-known songs so many times, I find myself digging deeper and deeper into the catalog to get my fix. Here's my current top ten non-album tracks, heavy on latter-day material:

1. Staring At The Sun [Monster Truck Mix]. I have to confess, after Achtung Baby, Pop is my favorite U2 record. And being a sucker for Oasis, I always loved "Staring At The Sun". But this mix trumps the album version in pretty much every regard and would've made much more sense on the record.
2. The Wanderer [Bono vocal]. Johnny Cash sang the original version on Zooropa, but the band played their own version in tribute after he died. One of their best songs, period.
3. Lady With The Spinning Head. The most fun b-side from a band that loves to make fun b-sides.
4. Original Of The Species [single version]. They replaced the keyboards with real strings and tightened up the arrangement. In this version, it would've been a centerpiece of the How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.
5. She's A Mystery To Me. Written for Roy Orbison, who liked it so much he named his final record after it. "Mysterious Ways" is my favorite U2 song, and the imagery works well here too.
6. Stuck In A Moment [acoustic]. Another home-run reinterpretation.
7. Stateless. A song that catches fire in its second half. From the Million Dollar Hotel Soundtrack.
8. Gone [live from Boston]. Another Pop tune that wasn't quite done justice on the record. In concert it packs a punch.
9. Dirty Day [Junk Day mix]. The bridge is perfect.
10. Everlasting Love. In general, I tend not to like their covers that much. But this one works.

I Found Grace Inside the Sound: U2's No Line On The Horizon

Over the weekend Mockingbird received an anonymous, theological review of the new U2 record, which was just too good not to post. The record is out 3/3/09:

Good music is like a diamond; one can look at it from many different angles and see various facets of beauty. The new U2 album is like this, and I could have written a review about many other topics, such as its guitar riffs, its “moments of surrender”, or whether or not it is the “best ever” U2 album. Instead, I’m going to focus on the facet that played loudest to my ears: the repeated lyric, "let me in the sound."

If the title No Line on the Horizon refers to a yearning for the removal of the barrier between heaven and earth, then I assume it is evoked from Jesus’ prayer to his Father, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is an idea displayed in visual form on the album’s cover, which is a photograph of a blurred line where the ocean meets the sky, and an “equals” sign over it (…on earth as it is in heaven). The theme certainly would fit within the larger context of Bono’s theology of eschatological tension (the “already / not yet” reality of Christ’s Kingdom), so poignantly painted in the scenes of Sunday Bloody Sunday and many other examples.

In that earlier U2 era, the tension was mostly focused on the brokenness of life on earth’s side of the horizon line (“broken bottles under children’s feet”). It sometimes alluded to the Kingdom on heaven’s side, showing us that it would include unity and hope (“tonight, we could be as one”). That unity was later analogized as radiant color, for example in the lyric “then [in heaven] all the colors will bleed into one” in I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.

So many times, Bono has pleaded with the Divine to come down through the barrier once again. He would wonder why the delay (“how long must we sing this song?”), especially in the face of such a mess here on earth. He even pleaded by mocking God’s absence in Wake Up Dead Man: “I know you’re lookin’ out for us, But maybe your hands aren’t free?”

But on this latest album he has started to paint a fuller picture of that “other place,” the Kingdom (not yet) come, on the other side of the horizon line.

Moving beyond the color analogy, Bono here describes heaven as full of sound.

In the new song Breathe he has us imagine “the roar that lies on the other side of silence” and in I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, he sings “…the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard.” I think this sound--a roar!--must be the same vision of heaven described in Revelation 4 and 5, where all the living creatures in heaven and on earth say/sing without ceasing “Holy Holy Holy” to the lamb on the throne.

Pointing us toward that sound, Bono invokes a prophetic tone by asking God to be witness to the truth of the Kingdom (“let me in the sound!”) and then he declares that he’ll be communicating that truth on earth, singing to the hearer, “Listen for me, I’ll be shouting. But we’re gonna make it all the way to the light.” Like a prophet, he then gives a rally cry to his people: “Let’s shout into the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light.” This lyric is an obvious footnote to the Bruce Cockburn lyric that Bono quoted on Rattle and Hum, “gotta kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” But here, instead of kicking at evil, Bono asks us to sing into it. He asks us to listen for Jesus’ tune, then sing with him that not-yet-heard melody of the Kingdom.

Walk out into the street,
Sing your heart out.
The people we meet,
will not be drowned out.

The song concludes its last verse with this:

We are people born of sound,
The songs are in our eyes.
Born to wear them like a crown, oh.

Walk out into the sunburst street
Sing your heart out,
Sing my heart out.
I found grace inside the sound,
I found grace, it's all that I found.

Like a minister reminding his flock of their mission to be salt and light, Bono declares to us that we were created to sing of God’s grace. If we would yearn to hear, as he does, the song already being sung on the other side of the horizon, we might catch a note or two. We might “tune our hearts to sing God’s grace”, as the 18th century hymn Come Thou Fount also beckons. We might sing these notes in the darkness until we see sparks of light.

How long must we sing this song? Until that day when Christ returns and there is no line on the horizon.

The Pilgrim And His Lack Of Progress

A couple more soundbites from Bono, this time from his Rolling Stone interview in 2005:

Q: How big an influence is the Bible on your songwriting? How much do you draw on its imagery, its ideas?

Bono: It sustains me.

Q: As a belief, or as a literary thing?

Bono: As a belief. These are hard subjects to talk about because you can sound like a d---head. I'm the sort of character who's got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it's sort of underpinning for me.

I don't read it as a historical book. I don't read it as, 'Well, that's good advice.' I let it speak to me in other ways. They call it the rhema. It's a hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in the moment you're in. It seems to do that for me.

Q: You're saying it's a living thing?

Bono: It's a plumb line for me. In the Scriptures, it is self-described as a clear pool that you can see yourself in, to see where you're at, if you're still enough. I'm writing a poem at the moment called 'The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.' I'm not sure I'm the best advertisement for this stuff.

(The man himself with my friend and fellow fanboy, Nathan Hart!)

Bono

The fashionable view of Bono is that he's full of himself, the most pretentious of all rockstars, that instead of crusading around the world, he should shut up and sing (or just shut up, period). Though I understand where this view comes from - after all, his kind of earnestness can definitely be off-putting - I think it's overly cynical. The man has guts, yet is quick to admit his own hypocrisy. And if you've ever seen him in concert, you know he's a born performer. So I admire him greatly.

Then again, maybe I just like the fact that we've been photographed together...


I recently stumbled across this excerpt from an interview he did a couple years ago, taken from the book, "Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas":

Q: As I told you, I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

Bono: Yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Q: I haven't heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma and into one of Grace.

Q: Well, that doesn't make it any clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics – in physical laws – every action is met by an equal and opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so will you sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Q: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Q: The son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: "Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's mortality as part of your very sinful nature and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions." The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not
reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humble… It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.