U2: Questions and Redemption

Throughout their "musical journey," U2 challenges the listener with a tension between the beauty of divine promises and the ugly realities human beings confront and inflict upon one another. In their early song, “October,” we are presented with the image of an autumn tree, stripped bare of life, bracing against the oncoming winter. The tree is immediately contrasted it with the glorious idea of an eternal, unchanging being who transcends death and winters (“Kingdoms rise / and kingdoms fall / but You go on, and on”). Much later, in his song “Peace of Earth,” Bono contrasts the Christmas promise of peace with ugly realities of human history: “Jesus this song you wrote / The words are sticking in my throat / Peace on Earth / Hear it every Christmas time / But hope and history won’t rhyme / So what’s it worth? / This Peace of Earth?”

Within such a framework of glorious, but seemingly forever deferred promises of redemption, U2 seems to suggest that questioning can be an act of faith. Thus, their song “Wake up dead man” becomes a simultaneous act of affirmation and questioning: “Jesus / I’m waiting here boss / I know you’re looking out for us / but maybe your hands aren’t free.” Taken to an extreme, this attitude culminates in the rather sympathetic portrayal of Judas Iscariot in U2’s masterpiece song, “Until the End of the World.” Judas seems to say to his betrayed Lord: “In my dream I was drowning sorrows / But my sorrows they learned to swim … / In waves of regret, wave of joy / I reached out for the one I tried to destroy / You, you said you’d wait until the end of the world.” Judas, acknowledging guilt, reaches out to someone who, thankfully, has deferred final judgment into the future. The eternally deferred redemption allows for an eternally possible repentance – if only we can bring ourselves to do it.

The spiritual elevation of questions, confusion, and doubt, however, is matched by an equally strong celebration of divine promises. U2, follow up their questioning refrain of “Peace on Earth” with a gentle ballad called “Grace.” In this song, Grace, personified as a divine female force, quietly works to clean up the messes of human life: “What once was hurt / What once was friction / What left the mark / No longer stings / Because Grace makes beauty / Out of ugly things.”

So, how does one navigate a theology that simultaneous celebrates divine promises with one that recognizes (as we must recognize) that the fulfillment of such promises is often delayed or absent? Bono’s answer is simply to wait, to seek, and to persist. “If you walk away, I will follow,” Bono proclaims, betraying an attitude persistent, even stubbornness, in awaiting a forever-not-yet-arrival of a redeeming Messiah. Even if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, there is spirituality in the quest itself.

The latest album sums up the spirituality of questioning, the acknowledgement of forever deferred redemption, and the value of persistent waiting. In the last song, “Yahweh,” Bono calls out for help in transforming himself into something better (“Take these hands / Teach them what to carry”), and then slurs the divine name to sound very much like a repeated chant of “Yeah I’ll wait.”

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before the Child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?