The Goal is Soul

On U2’s Elevation Tour of 2002 their opening song ended with a chant that would prove to be the intensity of their intentions. Posturing into the crowd with all the fervour he could muster Bono would scream, respectively “The goal is soul!” Two hours of songs were then laced with prayers from The Message, “thank yous to the Almighty,” and Hallelujah’s that turned a rock show into a revivalist meeting where Bono would declare “The Spirit is in the house” and even sceptics were agreeing that something transcendent was going down.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb continues the goal is soul mission. This is a spiritual album. It opens in the vortex of all life’s temptations, a whirlpool of choices and the possibility of empty pleasure. Vertigo worries about letting the mind drift even if the soul is anchored. It hears the devil tempting sell out. Then in an unlikely place, a dancer whose nails are scarlet but who has a cross around her neck, Jesus brings salvation and the conclusion is the lessons of prayer – “Your love is teaching me how to kneel.”

That kneeling is a recurring theme throughout the album and indeed in retrospect on U2 career but the album moves quite literally from the dance club called Vertigo to the prayerful streets of the Holy city in the closing Yahweh. This is a “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee” type declaration. It is a band at the top of the world of rock openly asking Yahweh to take their hands and lips and hearts and do something with them. That those who are richer than most in their country and lavishly pampered with the accesses of rock should ask that God would “take this heart…and make it break” is unique and powerful, prophetic and profound.

So too with much of what goes on in between. There are songs about a plethora of subjects and all give insight and wisdom for everyday living from a Christian perspective. A Man And A Woman is a rare thing – a love song with depth. Bono differentiates between the fickleness of love and the longevity of love. In a world where his peers fill the pages of Hello with their idea that marriage ends with infatuation U2 hold out for something more. Original Of The Species fights the corner for the teenager caught up in the slavery to fake that the magazine editors demand. It asks for more of who we are and less of who we are not. It is an antithesis of everything else on in the magazines that U2 feature in.

There are songs of war and the need for peace and love and songs that live in real hope that drugs will be discovered and distributed to those dying of AIDS. Indeed Crumbs From your Table is written out of Bono’s recent experiences re-entering the evangelical Christian world speaking in Churches, Christian colleges like Wheaton and hanging out with Christian rock stars like Michael W Smith. It asks that the Church gets less caught up with “signs and wonders” and gets down to the seemingly ordinary that is actually spectacular, feeding the poor and campaigning for HIV/AIDS sufferers. Where you live should not decide whether you live or die they sing and then even more challenging in an every day taking up your cross and following Jesus discipleship – “would you deny to others/What you demand for yourself.”

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