Is anyone paying attention?

I can remember it with the vividness of epiphany. It was October 1981 and it was a good time to buy an album called October, especially as I was very patriotic to my birthday month and had those birthday tokens to blow on something I always wanted to try. I had read the Christian gossip about these young upstart Dublin boys and Boots in Belfast became one of the places in my life where the axis of my future tilted. The sheer euphoric worship of Gloria and Tomorrow resonated around my youthful and zealous soul and my feet moved too. My idea that worship could be anything but Presbyterian and a century or two old was most blessedly vanquished forever.

Since then I have been a fan or an admirer of all that this band have done in bringing art and rock together with a depth of insight that is socially observant, politically radical, culturally provocative, introspectively honest and all emanating from a departing point that asks how Jesus Christ could possibly have anything to do with all of them. I have been unable to wait even a night sleep in order to buy that album, race home and give it a play and a thorough scan for depth charge couplets that would be rippling on for some time to come. I have bought albums, on date of release, at one minute after midnight in Belfast, Dublin and Cork and even got Joshua Tree and my Bible signed when they turned up in Belfast at five past midnight!

So why does it matter? This is such a good question. I was first asked this about Bob Dylan on a Radio 2 interview and it quite throws the aficionado to think of a rational grown up answer. But do not fear I really do believe that there are a few. As a sixties child, on the very corner edge of what has been described as Generation X I believe that the axis of education and philosophical thought swung towards rock music in my formative years. When Springsteen said, “I learned more from a three minute record, baby, than I ever learned in school” he was speaking more the vast majority of us. From Dylan on rhyming couplets were stones skimming across our minds and hearts and souls, the ripples changing our lives.

For me Dylan’s conversion to Christianity happened at the same time as my own. I sat on the grass, as a seventeen year old brand new believer, while on holiday in Ontario and read in Rolling Stone that Dylan was making “Christian” music. That gives some moral strength to a young music fan who is dealing with how Jesus might change his life. Yet, for me Dylan, never seemed to get out from his early innocent naïve faith. His pastors got him born again but somehow were not very helpful at allowing him to grow up again. I’m not saying his faith crashed to the ground but in its prophetic impact into my life it kind of spends a lot of time off the radar.

U2 is another story. These guys were born around the same corners of Generation X as me, and on the same little island if under a different government. My piece of history, my piece of land, and also my piece of Christian experience; they became obvious companions. They also became the biggest band on the planet.

So I have rushed home with albums and left no stones unturned as I have tried to understand I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Bullet The Blue Sky, Until The End Of The World, Mofo, Walk On and so many others. I have celebrated in almost worshipful ways during a 1982 concert and then had my head wrapped around postmodern media drained society in the mind-blowing theatre of Zoo TV. I have read interviews, watched videos and tried to make sense of it all. As I have done so as a hobby it has crashed into my preaching and teaching and making sense of the world and how Christian faith effects or is affected by it.

It has saddened me and frustrated me and indeed whipped me into a rage that many have missed the message, ignored the impact and even more than that looked for way to condemn and judge their faith rather than embrace and support it. It reminds me of Flannery O’Connor’s words in Wise Blood;

“The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole order of the universe and would take all time to complete. NO ONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION TO THE SKY.”

The capitals are mine for effect. My aim in Walk On has been to encourage people to pay attention to the sky of U2’s work. I only hope, and doubt that I am worthy of such an honourable task. Look up and listen, ears have never had such a fantastic noise to have truth sent to them through.

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