All is Quiet on New Year's Day

The title of this post, as many of you probably know, comes from U2’s “New Year’s Day” from their 1983 album War (which, incidentally, is the first U2 song I ever heard, after which, at age ten, I went out and bought the LP. The rest, as the fella said, is history). So here I am, 26 years later on what will in two hours be New Year’s Day, sipping Bunnahabhain, reading Hemmingway, listening to U2’s latest album No Line on the Horizon, and wondering where all the time has gone.

Exactly ten years ago tonight, at the turn of the millennium, I was preaching a sermon from Romans 9 to a group of Hungarians from the Calvary Chapels of Miskolc and Debrecen on the glory of God displayed in both the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate (I was young). Less than a month later I would find out that we would be kicked out of Calvary because of sermons like that, and three months later my wife and I would move back to the U.S. and figure out what the next step would be.

At this moment it is hitting me with an almost crushing sense of wonder that the ‘90s were no longer last decade, but now the decade before last. I began that decade a 16 year-old and ended it at the ripe old age of 26. I spent almost a year of it in Africa and six years of it in Europe, and it was during those years in Hungary especially that I sort of became who I am, both personally, philosophically, and theologically. It is probably the hours and hours I spent wandering the streets, alleyways, and courtyards of Budapest thinking about love and life and lamentation that are to blame for my ever-increasing desire to get back there somehow (for now I must content myself with videos like the one below, directed by an old friend). Ah, nostalgia: It ain’t what it used to be….

So anyway, here I am, waxing pensive and realizing once again that all my desires—whether for things past or things to come—are really just a big ol’ farce, nothing more than a longing for heaven that is every bit as hounding as it is haunting, equally intransient as inconvenient. “My mind races with all my longings,” sings the poet, “but can’t keep up with what I’ve got.” But I suppose I’m in good company, for if Adam longed for something better than Paradise, then who am I to be content with life in a passing age, characterized as it is by a servile bondage to decay and death?

A raising of the glass, then, to the coming decade—may it be filled with mirth as well as melancholy, laughter as well as lament. May we rise high above our feats and defeats, knowing that at the end of the Day when all is said and done, earth simply isn’t worthy of us.

(But I sure like it sometimes....)

My Life According to U2

Here's my version of Facebook thing that's going around....

***

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think!

Pick your Artist: U2

Are you a male or female: Drowning Man

Describe yourself: Stranger in a Strange Land

How do you feel? Numb

Describe where you currently live: City of Blinding Lights

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? The Playboy Mansion

Your favorite form of transportation: Kite

Your best friend is a: Lady With the Spinning Head

You and your best friends are: Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World

What's the weather like? Bad

Favorite time of day: 11:00 Tick Tock

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called?: Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk

What is life to you: Running to Stand Still

Your current relationship: Party Girl

Your fear: Staring at the Sun

What is the best advice you have to give? Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

Thought For the Day: Love Is Blindness

How I would like to die: Miracle Drug

My soul's present condition: So Cruel

My motto: Love and Peace or Else

Anything Else to Add? I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight

Pierced by a Freeway

Speaking of sacramental worldviews, perhaps no one does a better job of beholding nature through the lens of spiritual reality that Bono himself. In the song "Heartland" from 1988's Rattle and Hum, he sings about the Mississippi River using the metaphor of a woman, and then goes on to sing:

She feels like water in my hand;

Freeway, like a river, cuts through this land

Into the side of love, like a burning spear.

Just like Rich Mullins refers to an open road as "a woman made from a rib cut from the sides of these mountiains, these great sleeping Adams," so Bono sees Route 66 as cutting through America like the spear that pierced the Savior's side, out of which a river of blood and water flowed.

I'll have what he's having....

A Tale of Two Covers: A Coincidence, or Divinely Ordained?

You Two and Three

Why is U2 obsessed with the number three?

On the song "Breathe" from their latest al-bum No Line on the Horizon (which was released, [co]incidentally, on 3/3/09), Bono sings,

16th of June, 9:05, doorbell rings,
Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer,
There's three things I need you to know. Three.

In "Unknown Caller," the protagonist finds himself "lost between the midnight and the dawning, in a place of no consequence or company." Then, at "3:33, the numbers fell off the clock face." This may be a veiled reference to the cover of the band's 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, on which they had the display in the upper left altered to reference Jeremiah 33:3, which Bono calls calls "God's phone number."

Referring to the fact that we tend to kill those whom we admire ("Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration, then sing about the grief"), Bono sings in "Hold Me, Thrill me, Kiss Me, Kill Me":

They want you to be Jesus,
They're going down on one knee;
But they'll want their money back,
If you're alive at thirty-three.

And then, of course, it was "three o'clock in the morning," when "it was quiet with no one around," that the character portrayed in "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" heard "a bang and a clatter, as an angel hits the ground."

.

If you've got an interpretation, then by all means weigh in, because I haven't a clue....

Finding Grace Inside a Sound

Following Scripture, Reformed theology has always placed great emphasis on the ear over the eye. The gospel is called by Paul "the word of faith," a message that produces belief "by hearing the Word of Christ." The opposite of faith, of course, is not doubt but sight. A person is most faithless, therefore, not when disbelief is mingled with his belief, but when he demands to see, to experience, to feel the truth before he'll believe it. "We walk by faith," says Paul, "and not by sight."

Go ahead and roll your eyes, but I maintain that Bono understands this. U2's music often elevates faith over sight as, for example, in 1987's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," where Bono sings:

I believe in the Kingdom Come,
When all the colors will bleed into one,
But yes I'm still running.
You broke the bonds, you loosed the chains,
Carried the cross, and all my shame, all my shame;
You know I believe it,
But I still aven't found what I'm looking for.

On 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind, Bono sings of the "grace that travels outside of karma," which, "when she goes to work, you can hear the strings." Get it? Grace is something you hear.

This theme is prevalent on their new release, No Line on the Horizon, as well. In the song "Moment of Surrender" Bono sings:

At the moment of surrender,
I folded to my knees;
I did not notice the passers-by,
And they did not notice me.

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

True surrender, in other words, can only happen with "visibility" is relinquished.

.

In their lead single "Get On Your Boots," Bono repeats the line "Let me in the sound!" over and over (the same line is also sampled in "Fez - Being Born"). Lest we scratch our heads over what this "sound" is, the song "Breathe" tells us:

We are people borne of sound;
The songs are in our eyes,
Gonna wear them like a crown ...
I’ve found grace inside a sound,
I found grace, it’s all that I found;
And I can breathe,
Breathe now.

Remember, Newton told us that God's grace is not only "amazing," but that it's "the sound that saved a wretch like me." This is why ears are better than eyes, and why blindness is to be preferred over deafness.

Some First Impressions of U2's New Album

I posted this on Facebook, and I thought I’d put it here as well (especially since I am rather uninspired of late).

So I downloaded U2’s new album No Line on the Horizon on Tuesday night (it doesn’t come out until March 3, but it was leaked early, being accidentally sold online for a couple hours that night. I was in the right place at the right time).

I am hesitant to say too much about it because No Line on the Horizon, like the best of U2’s albums, is not the kind of thing that just walks into the light, undresses, and suggests itself to you. It is subtle and complex. When I first listened to 1991’s Achtung Baby, I remember not liking it very much at first. In fact, it took a good two years before I realized that it was the best album U2 had ever made.

So turning to No Line on the Horizon, I would definitely say that, unlike 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind or 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (neither of which I find particularly remarkable), this one’s a grower. There are certain songs that are immediately catchy like “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” and “Get On Your Boots” (the latter of which is easily the album’s worst song), but more often it is the case that No Line on the Horizon’s songs are so layered and interesting that they’ll need some time to sit with the listener and let him get to know them a bit before he feels ready to opine too much about them.

If I had to venture an opinion about No Line on the Horizon at this early stage, I would say that it is a cross between 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire and 1993’s Zooropa. There's ambience as well as experimentation. As one reviewer put it, this current incarnation of U2 “has one leg in the shallow, concentrate-version of U2 that the world has taken at face value for a decade, and one leg in a future as exciting as anything they have hitherto allowed us to glimpse.”

For my own part, I am very excited about this album, I think it is the best thing they have done since the early ‘90s. Sure, I’ve got some nit-picky complaints about this or that lyric or production decision, but after almost a decade of U2 putting out albums that were decidedly less than the sum of their parts, it’s nice to hear an album that can be described or debated as a whole, on its own terms, without even mentioning what the individual songs sound like.

So well done, lads. You’ve given us an album that is bold, unpredictable, and when it comes to song structure, quite unconventional. Thanks for not playing it (too) safe.

An Open Letter to U2

Dear U2,

OK, we get it: Your new album, No Line on the Horizon, is coming out in a month, and it’s "the best thing you’ve ever done," blah, blah, blah. Allow me to remind you that we’re not morons, and that we realize you would make the claim that your new album is your best ever whether you believed it or not. You know your last album, the one about the Atomic Bomb? You also claimed that was your best work, remember? Guess what? It wasn’t. Not even close.

Your new single, "Get On Your Boots," makes us nervous, mainly because it’s completely unremarkable. It sounds like "Vertigo" (as in, almost exactly like "Vertigo"), except the chorus is worse (if possible). So far, no good.

.

But I will admit this much: Bono, your voice has been sounding really good lately. After hearing your last two albums I wanted to write the band and beg them to let you sing in a range with notes you could actually hit. But lately you’ve been sounding pretty comfortable in that upper register, which gives us hope.

So please, don’t embarrass us. No more songs about moles digging in holes or monkeys stealing honey. No more lines about New York being hot as a hair dryer or people in Ireland tearing down trees and using them on their enemies (what does that even mean?).

Take us back to the experimental vibe of the ‘90s. Give us fat grooves and filthy, give us sensuality, give us a bit more tenebras and a bit less lux. Give us more songs like "Acrobat."

We’re counting on you, lads. The reviews have all been positive, but you’ll have to forgive us for keeping our enthusiasm to a minimum. We don’t want an album that we have to convince ourselves to like because it’s by U2. The Joshua Tree wasn’t brilliant because you made it, it was brilliant regardless. We didn’t have to force ourselves to like Achtung Baby, it was a masterpiece in its own right. So all we’re asking with No Line on the Horizon is that you don’t put us in the awkward position of having to keep re-convincing ourselves that you’re the best band in the world.

You are. So please—prove it to us again, just once more....

Bono, Luther, and the Seeds of Modernity

I’ve been on a bit of a ‘90s U2 kick of late (possibly due to the scheduled release of No Line on the Horizon in March, which has been compared to Achtung Baby), and so I’m (re)reading Bill Flanagan’s U2 at the End of the World. The author has been a close friend of the band’s since the early ‘80s and was given permission to follow them around during their ZooTv tour (’92-’93) and basically be privy to every show, every party, every conversation, and every recording session. Not a bad job this Flanagan fellow has.

Anyway, I read this passage the other night that I found interesting:

Bono is quick to admit that many of his ideas are instinctive, not intellectual—he does not have the time to be rigorous in researching or testing them. One of the theories that gets him into great arguments is that he believes that modernism started with Luther, with the Reformation, with the dismantling of the iconography of the culture and insistence on simplicity and function…. Bono is convinced that all this stripping down and directness goes back to the Protestant impulse, back to Luther, and that the modernists made the great mistake of taking on the antireligion of the existentialists and lost that thread. (It’s one of the wonders of Bono’s considerable intellect that he can construct a unified field theory of all his interests—even when they have nothing to do with each other.)

Now I know that my Catholic readers will jump on this and say, “See? Even Bono realizes that the seeds of modern man’s supposed autonomy are to be found in the Reformation with its individualistic doctrine of Sola Scriptura.” And it may very well be the case that when you mix together Sola Scriptura, anti-authoritarianism, and Descartes, you may not exactly like what you get as a result. Still, I can’t help but wonder how we are to avoid some degree of individualism, whether our home is Geneva, Saddleback, or Rome. We are all evaluating some body of data, whether it is Scripture or the early church fathers (or both), and coming to some conclusion or another about what they have to tell us.

So maybe evangelicals should stop dismissing Presbyterians for our refusal to let the Bible speak for itself; and maybe Presbyterians should soften our self-congratulatory tone when slapping ourselves on the back because of how well we avoid the individualism of the Bible-only, Anabaptist evangelicals out there; and maybe Catholics should stop looking down their noses at all of us and admit that they employ the same private judgment to determine that the Magisterium replaces private judgment as we do when we determine that the Bible speaks clearly enough on its core teachings that even children can understand its basic message.

Happy Birthday, Nelson

I don't know about you, but this clip makes me pretty excited about U2's new album due out later this year (it was performed via satellite for Nelson Mandela's birthday). Bono's hitting those high notes like it ain't no thang.

Enjoy.

High on a Desert Plane

This week's U2 concert is from Paris on their 1987 Johua Tree Tour. It is a really strong performance as well as a perfect recording. As is my wont, I made a few artistic changes, such as:

1. It was one of the only shows on that tour that didn't open with "Where the Streets Have No Name," so I added the version from the Rattle and Hum DVD.

2. On the Joshua Tree tour U2 would alternate their setlists, playing "The Unforgettable Fire" one night and "One Tree Hill" the next. At this show they played the former, so I added a version of the latter as well. The quality isn't quite as perfect, but the performance of the song is great.

3. I added the well-known live (ahem) version of "A Sort of Homecoming" after Electric Co.

4. I edited a bit out of "With Or Without You" where Bono makes the band stop playing so he can yell at a security guy for hassling a fan.

Enjoy.

The Vertigo Tour As It Should Have Sounded

Sorry for beginning this week's U2 Friday a few hours late (I was up late watching the Lakers lose, but I'd rather not go there).

This week's free download is a really superb show, despite all the negative things I said last week about the "New Millennium" incarnation of the band: U2 Live from Chicago (Vertigo Tour, 2005). The band, as always, sounds perfect, and Bono's voice is incredibly strong (it was early in the tour, after all).

Now, I must say a word to those of you who own the DVD from which this audio is ripped. As you may have discerned by now, I am very opinionated about U2's concert setlists, which is why I have taken some liberties here, such as:

1. I have replaced "Elevation" with "Gone" from their Boston 2001 show. This song should remain in U2's live arsenal, even though it's from Pop (which is a much better album than most will admit). Plus, "Elevation" is kind of lame, at least in the way they played it this time around. The transition from "Vertigo" to "Gone" is pretty seamless, as I always combine edited tracks into one file to make the transtition less noticeable.

2. I added "Until the End of the World" after "An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart," which is where the band should have played it.

3. I got rid of "New Year's Day." Lads, either reinterpret the song or move on, please.

4. I added "Kite" before "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own." It fits, and it's one of those songs that deserves to be played for longer than just the tour that supports the album it's on. How the band doesn't get this is beyond me.

5. I replaced "Pride" with "Please" from Rotterdam '97. "Please" is another song that gets overlooked because it's from Pop, but in my view it deserves a place is the band's ongoing live repertoire (from which "Pride" needs to be mercifully expunged).

6. Lastly, just before "40" I added "Walk On." Again, it annoys me that U2 claims not to want to become a Greatest Hits Band, but they almost always fall back on their '80s classics while letting their good new material die after its respective tour ends. "Walk On" holds up, and they should have played it.

Enjoy the show....

New Millennium U2

U2 Fridays continue as we turn our attention to “New Millennium U2.” First, though, a couple orders of business: I plan to make one concert from each tour available for download (each for a limited time). Last week we did Zoo TV, this week’s is from 2001’s Elevation Tour in Boston (many think the Slane Castle show was better, but I like this set list much more).

I actually vacillate quite a bit about U2’s last two albums (2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb). Don’t get me wrong, I really want to like them, and sometimes I really do, but there’s also some cringing involved as well.

ATYCLB was hailed as “U2’s third masterpiece” (I trust I don’t need to tell you what the first two were). In my view, this album has some high highs (Kite, Beautiful Day, Walk On), but unlike their other two magna opera, it also has some pretty low lows (Wild Honey, Peace on Earth).

HTDAAB, I think, is the better of the two. Its best songs (Original of the Species, City of Blinding Lights, Crumbs From Your Table) may not have the staying power of Beautiful Day, but its lows (A Man and a Woman) aren’t as low as Peace on Earth, either.

On to Bono’s lyrics. He has obviously stopped trying to consciously write beautiful lyrics (which he hasn’t done since 1988’s Rattle and Hum), but sometimes it seems like he’s stopped trying altogether:

“Freedom has a scent, like the top of a newborn baby’s head.”

“I like the sound of my own voice; I didn’t five anyone else a choice; an intellectual tortoise, racing with a bullet train.”

“Where I grew up there weren’t many trees; where there was we’d tear them down and use them on our enemies.”

“In New York summers get hot, well into the hundreds; You can’t walk around the block without a change of clothing.”

(And don’t even get me started on the whole “monkey stealing honey” debacle.)

Still, when you see or hear them live, they’re still the best band in the world. I just wish Bono would take better care of his voice so it holds up until the tour ends. And lads, drop me a line and I’ll help you choose your set lists….

All the Secrets, But No One to Tell

Man, this place is a snoozefest lately....

Maybe this will wake you all up, it's a perfect recording of the best show U2 ever played.

Enjoy.

U2 At Their Best

(Unfortunately I will not have internet access until late Monday, but feel free to comment anyway and I’ll respond when I can.)

In my view, the 1990s gave us U2 at their artistic peak (there, I said it).

Here’s why I think so….

If U2 had done what many wanted them to do (and what many bands in fact did), namely, kept doing what made them famous by recording The Joshua Tree Part II, Part III, Part IV, and so on, then today when we heard the name “U2” we would say: “Oh yeah, U2. Weren’t they that Scottish band from the eighties with the singer prancing around waving that white flag? What ever happened to those guys anyway?”

But by reinventing themselves and seemingly repudiating their former earnest selves (remember: Bono described the sound of their then-forthcoming 1991 album Achtung Baby as “the sound of four guys chopping down The Joshua Tree”), they really did breathe new life into a career that they were all pretty bored with anyway.

The best album of their ‘90s threesome was, of course, Achtung Baby. It was dark (it works best at night, you know, unlike The Joshua Tree, which should be listened to in broad daylight), it was sensual, and it was very European. Everything changed with this album, especially Bono’s songwriting. Instead of overt attempts at beauty, it was all about irony: “Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration, then sing about the grief” (The Fly); “She wears my love like a see-through dress, her lips say one thing, her movements something else” (So Cruel); “To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal; If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel” (Mysterious Ways).

I’ll narrow things down even more. There was a night when U2 actually reached their zenith, a high point that I doubt they’ll ever reach again. That night was August 28, 1993 (and yes, it depresses me that this was 15 years ago). That night they played the RDS Stadium in Dublin, and speaking as someone who owns scores of U2 bootlegs, this was the best show they have ever played. Bono’s voice was perfect (remember those days?), the setlist was almost ideal, and with the exception of one screw-up by Edge during One, the band was spot on.

On that night more than any other, being U2 fan was the coolest feeling in the world.

U2 Friday, Part Two

U2 Fridays continue here at De Regnis Duobus, this week focusing on one of the two best epochs of the band’s history, as well as upon one of their two best album triads. The years under consideration are 1984 – 1988, and the albums being discussed are The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Rattle and Hum.

1984’s The Unforgettable Fire marked a radical departure for the lads. Gone were the anthems, the rebel songs, and the white flags that decorated the stage during the War Tour. This album was very European and quite sensual (by which I mean the very opposite of cerebral). Most of the songs can be likened not so much to stories being told, but to pictures being painted (“Carnival, the wheels fly and colors spin, through alcohol, red wine that punctures the skin. Face to face, in a dry and waterless place”). No, it doesn’t make much sense, but that was due to producer Brian Eno’s insisting that Bono improvise most of the lyrics. In fact, the penultimate song (“Elvis Presley and America”) resulted from Eno playing some random, slowed-down music backwards and handing Bono a mike and telling him to improvise one take, which is what appears on the album (“And you know, though no one told, you tried; and your heart is left out from the side”). Amazing stuff.

1987’s The Joshua Tree is perhaps the band’s best album (certainly the best of this threesome). Unlike its predecessor, this is American through and through (the band originally wanted to call it The Two Americas). Whether The Joshua Tree is U2’s best effort or not, I would certainly argue that it represents the band at their lyrical best. Some great lines include: “She runs through the streets with her eyes painted red, under a black belly of cloud in the rain. In through a doorway she brings me white gold and pearls, stolen from the sea” (“Running to Stand Still”); “She stands with a naked flame; I stand with the sons of Cain, burned by the fire of love” (“In God’s Country”); and “I don’t believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts while bullets rape the night of the merciful” (“One Tree Hill”).

Rattle and Hum (1988) is the soundtrack to the film by the same name. An eclectic mix of live recordings and new songs, I find it hard to listen to all the way through. I prefer to skip songs like “Pride” (which I rarely like when played live) and “Freedom For My People” (obviously). The song that stands out, in my opinion, is “Heartland” (“Freeway, like a river, cuts through this land into the side of love like a burning spear”). And though I’m not a huge fan of “When Love Comes to Town,” I love the line, “I was there when they crucified my Lord; I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword; I rolled the dice when they pierced his side, but I’ve seen love conquer the great divide.” In the words of B.B. King (who sang that line) to Bono: “You mighty young to write such heavy lyrics!”

I miss ‘80s U2….

A New Topic for Fridays

Now that we have dedicated the last several Fridays to discussing (read: arguing about) the best music, films, and television of the past three decades, I would like to focus our attention for the next few Fridays on arguably the best rock band of the last thirty years: U2.

In my view, a question like "Which U2 album is the best?" is virtually unanswerable—not because they’re all great, but because there are, by my count, four distinct U2s.

Let me explain….

The albums released in 1980, 1981, and 1983 (Boy, October, and War) are so different from what they put out during the rest of the decade that they belong in their own category. The same goes for ’84, ’87, and ’88: The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Rattle and Hum form a threesome (I almost said “trinity”) that stands on its own. And the other two U2s, of course, are Nineties U2 (1991’s Achtung Baby, 1993’s Zooropa, and 1997’s Pop) and New Millennium U2 (2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb).

Early ‘80s U2 was awesome. Growing up in Orange County I used to listen to KROQ 106.7 as a kid, and to this day I remember where I was when they played "New Year’s Day" in 1983. As a lad of ten I recognized how good these guys were. I went to Licorice Pizza (!) and bought War (the best of the first threesome), and the rest, as the fella said, is history.

My favorite song on War is, brace yourself, "Like a Song" ("Angry words won’t stop the fight; two wrongs won’t make it right; a new heart is what I need; O God, make it bleed"). "Drowning Man" and "New Year’s Day" are runners up.

And I don’t care what anyone says, I like the October album, which was their sophomore effort (you know, the one about God?). I have a killer, and very rare, live version of "With a Shout" ("I want to go to the foot of Mount Zion, to the foot of he who made me see"). Best song on their debut album Boy? Either "Another Time Another Place" or "Shadows and Tall Trees" ("Do you feel in me anything redeeming? Any worthwhile feeling? Is this life like a tightrope hanging from my ceiling?")

And yes, I own the original British LP of Boy with the shirtless kid, Peter Rowan, on the cover. Jealous?

The Cross, Glory, and 80's "Christian" Rock

If you had the privilege of being a Christian in the 1980's, and if you found most of that era's Christian rock deplorable (with the possible exception of the Altar Boys), then my guess is that there were two "secular" bands that you desperately tried to convince yourself were actually Christian in order to appease your conscience.

Those bands were U2 and The Alarm.

As an avid fan of both, I remember it being easier to make the case for The Alarm's Christianity than for U2's. After all, they were so blatant, confident, and outspoken about their faith. They sang things like, "When the nails are biting into your hands, and the cross is heavy on your heart, now's the time to really make a stand," or in their ode to the devil they sang, "You are the Deceiver, you are not welcome in my life, and I will break your hold."

U2 on the other hand? Well, they were somewhat less convincing: "You broke the bonds and You loosed the chains, carried the cross and all my shame... but yes, I'm still running. For I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Not exactly the confidence I was hoping for. Or consider this line: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow, yet I will fear no evil. I have cursed Thy rod and staff, they no longer comfort me. Love, rescue me."

And remember, this was before the 90's when Bono left his Father's kingdom "by the back door, and threw away the key."

But looking back now from a more mature and educated perspective, my diagnosis has flip-flopped. Having come to understand Luther's distinction between the "theology of glory" and the "theology of the cross," it would appear that the spiritual doubts expressed by Bono were never doubts about God's existence or his ability to save, but doubts about his own ability to hang on to God's hand: "I try to stand up, but I can't find my feet. I try to speak up, but only in You I'm complete." Bono has never thought very highly of his own Christianity, but he certainly thinks highly of the Christ in whom he has professed faith for the last 25 years.

In short, I think the music of The Alarm and U2 furnish us with a perfect illustration of the difference between the theologies of glory and the cross, respectively.

And what's more, since the theology of glory is more consistent with postmillennial eschatology while the theology of the cross is more consistent with amillennialism, it is only fitting that a Two Kingdoms advocate such as I would still be a die-hard U2 fan after all these years.

The Alarm's still great, but my own sinfulness requires that I be reminded every few days that "Grace... travels outside of Karma."

And thank God....