I used to know this guy who was an accomplished bass guitarist, and occasionally he would quip that Adam Clayton is the luckiest bass player in the world.
For him, the joke was that Adam Clayton is one of the most successful and wealthy bassists on the planet, despite his relatively rudimentary skills on the bass.
You could say similar things about the other members of U2. The rock-and-roll legend about lead singer Paul Hewson—aka Bono—is that his nickname came from an Italian phrase, "bono vox," which means “beautiful voice.” He earned this mysterious sobriquet as a kind of ironic nod to the fact that he is not an especially great singer. Passionate, yes. Distinctive, of course. Endowed with a compelling urgency, sure. But his voice is not considered by most—even among ardent fans—to be particularly “beautiful.”
Nor is the Edge exactly a guitar virtuoso. In saying that, I don't mean any disrespect to his music, because more than half of everything I know about guitar I probably learned playing U2 songs. And I don’t mean to imply that he lacks talent, either. When it comes to creating atmospheric soundscapes, the Edge is, in my opinion, a genius at his craft. When it comes to riffs, scales, licks and phrases, however, he does not have an especially diverse vocabulary. If you’ve learned three or four different U2 chord progressions, you’ve pretty much learned them all. There is a telling scene in the movie Rattle and Hum, where U2 is rehearsing the song Love Came to Town, with blues guitar legend B. B. King. As they’re preparing the arrangement, King says something about how he doesn’t usually play chords, to which Bono replies: “Don’t worry, Edge can do that—there’s not much chords in this song; I think there’s only two.”
For all their fame and admiration—a renown that is, in my opinion, well earned—still, none of the members of U2 are truly virtuosos of their respective instruments. When you strip away the layered studio production and surreal sound effects that makes their music so distinctive, few of their songs rate much higher than campfire choruses, when it comes to musical complexity.
Which I don’t bring up in this series on U2 as a criticism. It’s only to illustrate something profound about their music that makes the band so fascinating to me: the fact that U2 is one of the more compelling instances of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
In sociology, we use the word “emergence” to describe this phenomenon. According to sociologist Christian Smith, emergence refers to the process of “constituting a new entity with its own particular characteristics through the interactive combination of other, different entities that are necessary to create the new entity but … do not contain the characteristics present in the new entity” (Smith, p. 26). Emergence occurs when two or more entities at a ‘lower level’ interact, serving in this way as the basis for a new, ‘higher level’ entity with characteristics that cannot be reduced to those of the lower entities.”
To consider how emergence works, we might examine one of U2’s most popular songs, ranked 93rd in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” According to Wikipedia, many critics consider it to be one of the greatest rock songs of all time—U2’s “Let it Be,” as it were. It has certainly always held a special place in my heart as one of the quintessential songs of my growing up years.
Musically, however, the song is relatively simple, and easily dissected: a modest 3-chord progression and a relatively straight-forward melody, with a couple of chiming guitar parts composed of relatively simple arpeggios on some suspended major chords, played with a delay over a four-note bass line . It’s true that the drum groove is unique, and helps to make the song so memorable, but even so, it is not an especially complex composition.
When all these rudimentary parts come together, however, something profound emerges that cannot be reduced to this mere list of its basic components. I have always felt that “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” opens a window onto something almost archetypal, something not present in any of its individual parts, or even in the arranging and recording of the tune, but is only audible when it's all heard together and taken as a whole.
One might argue that this is true of music generally, and in some ways, it is. One of the reasons music is such an evocative medium, I think, is its ability to bring into existence polyphonically something that somehow cannot exist when individual sounds are simply made on their own.
There is something especially “emergent” about the music of U2, however. As basic as so much of their music is, what emerges when the four of them make it together is irreducible. It probably has something to do with the earnestness with which they tackle their art, the genuine desire to connect with their audience, the sincere love they seem to have for each other, as much as it has to do with the musicality of their playing, but whatever it is, there is an “emergent mystery” to the music of U2 that I’ve always admired.
It might be pushing it to draw this connection, but I like to think about the church in a similar way: the community that emerges when followers of Jesus bring their simple, rudimentary gifts together, I mean, allowing the Holy Spirit to bind them together for the glory of God, is also impossible to reduce to a simple sum of its constituent parts. In the case of the church, of course, it is the presence of Christ himself that causes the “transcendent something” to emerge, whereas U2 has been notoriously ambivalent about their Christian convictions. Even so, the way the church becomes something far greater than just a collective of individuals, an emergent body of believers loving the world with a love not present, or even possible, in any one individual’s passion or care, is perhaps symbolized beautifully by the way four mediocre musicians from Ireland took 4 basic chords and a whole lot of heart, and turned them into something that could touch lives and change the world.
Three Chords and the Truth: Christian Thoughts on the Music of U2 (II)
Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World: Christian Thoughts on the Music of U2 (I)
I share this as both an explanation and an apology for the series I’m starting today, a theological analysis of the music of U2. By way of explanation, it’s simply to point out that a Christian examination of a popular rock band like U2 does fall in line with the general theme and purpose of my blog. By way of apology, though, it’s to acknowledge that in some ways, the music of U2 is far too easy a target for a blog that is ostensibly intent on finding theological meaning in unexpected places. When I was exploring the theological meaning of the popular Disney show, Gravity Falls, all sorts of surprising theological gems kept bobbing unexpectedly to the surface; it’s less likely that a similar exploration of U2’s music is going to yield near as many surprises.
They are, after all, one of the most Christian “secular” bands on the planet. Their song lyrics are replete with overt Christian imagery, and their approach to the rock-star lifestyle never really shocked the world with its hedonism, making them one of the safest choices for a Christian kid who didn’t really want to listen to Christian music. They were one of the only non-Christian bands my youth group leader endorsed in the semi-fundamentalist church of my teen years. Even today, their lead singer Bono is regularly quoted for his opinions on the deity of Jesus, the resurrection, or God’s preferential option for the poor. So they’re maybe not the best candidates for an unlikely source of theological reflection.
That said, I still think there may be some unexpected glimmers of theological gold to be found, if we take some time to pan in the musical river that is their 47-year-long career. For starters, we might note the uneasy relationship they have with the evangelical sub-culture, or the unique way they bridged the sacred and the secular in their song-writing, or their social-justice advocacy work, which so often rang with echoes of the Old Testament prophets.
We will get to each of these in turn, and more, as we survey the breadth of their musical output (which, at 15 plus studio albums is impressive by any count). I grew up listening to U2, and though they’ve never really been my favorite band, they’ve always been an ubiquitous presence in my musical trajectory. I am sure I listened to my cassette version of Joshua Tree until it wouldn’t play clearly any more. To this day I can still remember listening to Zooropa for the first time, and feeling like I was stepping into a musical world I never could have imagined existing, but was still strangely, intimately familiar to me.
I sort of lost track of the band after No Line of the Horizon, listening to Songs of Innocence a handful of times then moving on, and somehow missing Songs of Experience and Songs of Surrender altogether (to this day I still have to give those outings a listen). Nevertheless, there have been long stretches of my life where U2 was almost the only band I listened to, and when I was starting out as a guitarist, a good 75% of my repertoire consisted of U2 songs. Suffice it to say, then, that I will be speaking from a place of warm familiarity and tempered appreciation. After all, it was U2, I think, who challenged me to think through how the thing that makes Christian music truly Christian might not have anything to do with amount of Christian jargon it has in the lyrics, and how truly caring about the world—loving it well in the midst of all its political messiness and social injustices—is a vital Christian activity.
I hope to say much more on those themes in the weeks to come. In the meantime, and perhaps to establish some credibility as a fan, let me offer the list of my top ten favorite U2 albums, here in closing.
1. Achtung Baby
2. The Joshua Tree
3. Zooropa
4. All That You Can’t Leave Behind
5. Rattle and Hum
6. The Unforgettable Fire
7. Pop
8. How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb
9. No Line on the Horizon
10. Songs of Innocence
Stephen's Martyrdom and Paul's Forgiveness, a reflection on Acts 7
In his commentary on Acts, Luke Timothy Johnson points out how carefully Saint Luke has crafted this narrative so that it mirrors the crucifixion of Jesus. Stephen glimpses “heaven standing open” (7:56) in a way similar to how Jesus saw heaven opened at his baptism (Luke 3:21). The angry mob drags Stephen outside the city to stone him (7:58) in a way similar to how the angry mob drove Jesus outside town to kill him (Luke 4:29). Stephen commits his spirit into the Lord’s hands (7:59) in a way similar to how Jesus commits his spirit into the Father’s hands on the cross (Luke 23:46). And, as mentioned, Stephen prays that the Lord would not hold the sin of his murderers against them (7:60), in a way similar to how Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him (Luke 23:34).
It seems like Luke wants us to read Stephen’s execution as participating, in some way, in the story of Jesus himself, and, especially, in the death of our Lord on the cross. Stephen’s martyrdom, that is to say, is a cruciform death, one informed by and patterned after the death of Jesus himself.
That, on it’s own is a sobering thought, but it becomes all the more so when you read the very next verse that follows. Because immediately after we read Stephen’s prayer asking God to forgive his executioners—a prayer patterned after the prayer of Christ on the cross—we read in 8:1 that Saul (aka Paul) was standing there, “giving approval to Stephen’s death.” Whether Paul personally threw a stone or not is moot, here; the narrative clearly implicates him in the travesty of justice that happened that day. Very likely it was this moment that Paul himself had in mind in places like 1 Timothy 1:15, where he describes himself as “the chief of sinners” (see also 1 Cor 15:9).
Here is where the connect-a-dot of Bible verses forms a fascinating picture, though. Because those who have read the Book of Acts to the end will know that Saul goes on to become one of the most influential and indefatigable missionaries for the cause of Christ the church has ever known. The Saul whom Stephen prayed for on the day of his death would eventually become Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, who counted everything as dung in comparison to knowing Christ and roamed the world seeking places to preach Him where the name was not yet known.
In other words, God literally answered Stephen’s prayer that day, and showed his executioners His divine mercy and grace. Certainly in Paul’s life, at least, he did, because by God’s grace, Paul became an apostle of Christ Jesus himself, forgiven and empowered to preach the name he once persecuted. Speculating about “what ifs” is kind of futile when it comes to the Sovereignty of God, but even so, I can’t help but wonder: how might Paul’s story have turned out differently, if Stephen had not followed his Lord’s example and prayed for the forgiveness of those who persecuted him.
It reminds me of Jesus’s promise to his disciples in John 20:23, that anyone they forgive will be forgiven, and those they don’t forgive will not. More than reminding us of them, Stephen’s story vividly illustrates them. Stephen forgave Paul (if not directly, certainly as part and parcel to his prayer for all those who murdered him that day). God forgave Paul (Acts never directly connects Paul's forgiveness to Stephen’s prayer, but the fact that Act 8:1 follows directly on the heels of 7:60 make it fair game, I think, to align the two). And Paul, forgiven, goes on to champion the Gospel of Reconciliation that he once tried to snuff out.
What if Stephen had not learned the lesson of the cross so well?
And what might God do in the lives of those we forgive, if we will learn the message of the cross as well as Stephen did?
A Labor of Love: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (IX)
Even though he has starred in two of my favorite movies (Forrest Gump, and Joe vs. the Volcano), Tom Hanks is not my favorite actor. And even though he has starred in nearly every genre of film imaginable, from sci-fi thrillers to gangster movies, I do not think of him as an especially diverse actor. I think he is a gifted actor, in some ways, and the scope of his film credits is impressive, but still: whenever I see Tom Hanks performing in a film, it’s hard for me not to see, first and foremost, Tom Hanks performing. By this I mean that, unlike those actors who entirely lose themselves in the role—exhibiting the acting version of what Keats famously called “a negative capability”—Tom Hanks the man is always relatively easy to spot in, through, and beneath every character he plays.
In any other actor, I would take this as the sign of an amateur, that who they are as a person is always somehow apparent—vaguely present—in whatever character they are portraying. With Tom Hanks, however, I think this is part of his appeal, indeed, part of his skill. When Tom Hanks performs a duty-bound World War II Captain, for instance, the fact that you can see Tom Hanks himself projecting through that portrayal allows you, in some strange way, to imagine what it would be for you yourself to be one. When Tom Hanks portrays a desperate castaway stranded on a deserted South Pacific Island, the fact that the cast away is so clearly Tom Hanks, allows you to put yourself in the same shoes, and wonder if you would have fared any better.
Unlike those actors who “become” their character, Tom Hanks seems more intent on “faithfully partnering” with the character to tell their story well.
From a Christian perspective, the term for what I’m trying to describe here, I think, is love. Not romantic love, of course, but one of the other versions of that highest of Christian virtues: “philia” love, maybe, or even “agape.” What makes Tom Hanks’s characters work is not so much the depth of his performance, but the fact that he seems so clearly to love the character he is portraying. You see this show up clearly for the first time, I think, in the movie “Punchline,” a 1988 drama where he plays Steve Gold, a struggling comedian striving to make it big. Hanks’ portrayal of Steve Gold is replete with quirks that will later become signature Tom Hankisms, yet he seems so genuinely to love the character of the struggling comic he is playing, having entered into his story with such appreciation and care, that you find yourself drawn in before you even realize what’s happening. You see the same love evident in his more famous and mature roles. What makes you root so earnestly for Forrest Gump, I think, is that Tom Hanks the actor seems so obviously to love the character, making it almost impossible for you, as the viewer, not to.
There are two lessons Christians might take from this observation, once it’s noticed. On the one hand, the love Tom Hanks brings to his portrayals of his best characters should remind us of the power of love to transform all kinds of human work. Whether your job is film acting or brick-laying, it is possible to do it as an expression of love, and, when we do, it is possible to see that work redeemed.
On the other hand, though, I think Tom Hanks’ loving approach to the characters he plays and the stories he tells through them, could stand as a metaphor, or perhaps a microcosm, for the call of the Christian to lovingly enter into the lives and the experiences of our neighbours, to “faithfully partner with them” in the telling of their stories, and lovingly learn how to see the world through the eyes of the other, as we do.
Earlier I suggested that were he a different kind of actor, there might be something “amateur” in the way Tom Hanks’s true persona “leaks through” in his acting. The word “amateur,” however, literally means “for the love of it…” An amateur, that is to say, is one who pursues their craft, not for the wage, but simply for the love of it. Tom Hanks has been amply compensated for his work as an actor, of course, but given what I’ve said about the obvious love he brings to his roles, perhaps he still is, and maybe always will be, an amateur, in this technical sense of the word.
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