A few weeks ago, while cruising the local Books-A-Million, my 14 year old son spent his allowance to buy Bono - in conversation with Michka Assayas. He read it in less than a week and then started harassing me to read it. He’s a huge U2 fan, and although I really like U2, I wouldn’t describe my fandom as huge. But, I have been impressed with what I had read before about Bono’s faith and his work on behalf of the poorest people on earth, especially the people of Africa, so he didn’t have to harass me too much to put that book in front of all the unfinished books in my reading queue.

I took it up and could hardly put it down. It is insightful, funny, poignant and provocative, all at the same time. It records a series of conversations that a French journalist, Michka Assayas had with U2 Front Man and lead singer, Bono, from 2002 to 2005. I am going to write several posts with generous excerpts from the book. I will focus a few posts on Bono’s christian faith. Then my next few posts will focus on Bono’s work on behalf of the people of Africa.

I have the same level of doubt that Bono’s faith in Christ is genuine as I have for my own. The whole discussion of whether or not someone who claims to follow Christ is REALLY a christian to me is most often a waste of oxygen. There are exceptions, If someone claims to be a Christian and then denies cardinal doctrines of the faith such as the deity of Christ or the trinity then the church, institutionally, has a responsibility to examine the faith of that professor. But otherwise, I am a big believer in that big tent of what C.S. Lewis calls “mere” Christianity, and I think there are is a great diversity of people living underneath that tent. Based on what he says in this book, I definitely feel that Bono is in there, too.

ON AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE CULTURE WARS

BONO:Whats always bothered me about the fundamentalists is that they seem preoccupied with the most obvious sins. If those sins, sexual immorality and drug addiction , come out of unhappiness, then I’m sure God wants to set people free of that unhappiness. But I could never figure out why the same people were never questioning the deeper slyer problems of the human spirit like self-righteousness, judgmentalism, institutional greed, corporate greed. You only have to look to unfair trade agreements that keep the developing world in the Dark Ages to see the hypocrisy I’m talking about. These people talk about the debasing of culture. Whats about the debasing of hundreds of thousands of real lives. P. 186

ON TERRORISM AND RELIGION

BONO: . . .Mercy is the outworking of love, but love demands that you try to see things from another person’s point of view.

MICHKA: Terrorists are focused on big ideas. You’re quite aware that there are no greater idealists. Most of them revere the notions of God and holy justice. I guess for a person like you, who is deeply religious and idealistic, it must be very disturbing.

BONO: I’m a lot of other things as well. But you see, Michka, people who are open spiritually are open to being manipulated more easily, are very vulnerable. The religious instinct is a very pure one in my opinion. But unless it’s met with a lot of rigor, its very hard to control.

MICHKA: Correct. But you’ve also never seen a skeptic or an atheist smash himself to pieces in order to kill as many people as possible. I mean, atheists would organize concentration camps or would plan collective starvation, but this kind of terror we are dealing with now is of a spiritual nature. You can’t hide from that.

BONO: Its true. Yeah smashing other people to pieces doesn’t need the same conviction. Most terrorists want to change the material world. Well, add eternity to that, and people can go a lot further to pursue their ends. It’s a big prize, isn’t it, eternity? It’s not a two-term or three-term presidency. [laughs] But of course, this is always a corruption of some holy thesis, whether its the Koran or the Bible. My understanding of the scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. Whats does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don’t let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that’s not so easy.

MICHKA: What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn’t so “peace and love.”

BONO: There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament its was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the cross.

The Faith of Bono - To be Continued.
part 2
part 3

Scott