Let me unpack a bit why I draw on the song “Hallelujah” and especially this phrase, “Broken Hallelujah,” for thinking about pop culture in relation to faith. It is a shorthand way to point to a fundamental view of human life as a broken reality, and broken beyond our ability to fix. The Christian term for this is “sin” which many people today see as an antiquated and unenlightened idea. However, that cultural shrug in response to the idea of sin usually is a reaction to the idea of sin as sins. The shrug throws off the presumed legacy of a medieval and psychologically damaging introspection in relation to sinful acts and impulses which modern liberated society now knows are actually normal. Like: sex is supposed to feel good. Or drinking in moderation is good for you.

While some Christians are still pretty focused on these sorts of issues (e.g., if having sex or drinking are sinful) that is not what I mean. I actually mean we are broken to the core. The Christian tradition sometimes calls this by a Latin phrase I find helpful: incurvatus in se. I’ve discussed it here. It means basically “the self curved in on itself.” I love that phrase. It reminds me of the interpersonal conversation joke: “Well, enough about me. What do you think about me?” As if there is nothing more interesting that what I think and feel. Add to this, then, an overoptimistic sense that we can work out some spiritual peace for ourselves (through Yoga or “just being a good person” or attending church). So we think we’re really okay–in relation to God and to our daily lives. It’s the old, “I’m okay, your okay” thing.

The song, however, is grounded in another view of life. I see it saying that we want to pretend that we have a “holy hallelujah” to offer God when actually all we ever have is broken hallelujah. But the Christian story is that through the gift of Jesus Christ we are judged fairly, seen for what we are, and despite it all, forgiven. That gift of God’s holiness, through Christ, gives us a ‘holy hallelujah’ to sing even if our lives are always ‘broken.’ We share in something ‘unbroken’ if you will. Cohen gets at this beautifully in his portrayal of the one who, despite it all, is able to “stand before the Lord of Song” with “nothing on my lips but Hallelujah,” a circumstance that implies something like the Seraph putting the hot coal on Isaiah’s lips. It is a way of saying that God gives us a standing we do not earn, and a purity that is not from us even as it begins to draw us into becoming what we were intended to be and will be in the end. Living in this mixed state, with unclean lips yet bearing the gift of God’s purifying touch on our lips, points to another classic Latin phrase, if you don’t mind: simul justus et peccator. We are by birth into a sinful world, and as sinful creatures, simply “peccator”, that is, sinners through and through. That means we seek ourselves even in doing good; we presume that we are good, worthy, righteous because of our own good acts. Or, more likely, we just love our selves and our pleasures so much we don’t give a shit about doing good. Britney Spear’s new anthem, recorded and released in the midst of her personal flame-out, is ironically titled “Gimme More”. Its not that I think Britney or anyone else needs to find Jesus and thereafter only sing songs of Glory in the narrow sense (as in hymns or spiritual songs in an explicit way). That orientation often means the person feels they must either earn or prove their salvation through good behavior. No, instead when one finds themselves confronted by the accusing judgment of God, and gives up, literally, by dying to themselves and being ‘born anew’ then one can begin to live out of a “justus”, that is, a right-ness that is not one’s own but given.

Let me try this all another way, looking at the way I think of this stuff in relation to Bono and U2.

I like to use the formal terms of a “theology of glory” and a “theology of the cross.” Bono calls these two orientations to God “karma” and “grace.” Both karma and grace are coherent theologies that begin with varying understandings of human beings. One sees sin as a minor defect, simply making us predisposed to act badly. Thus we are optimistic that with a little energy boost from Christ—as if he’s a can of Red Bull, we can be who God expects us to be and thereby have certainty that we are blessed. The other sees sin as something wrong at our core, something we cannot overcome alone. We stumble but on account of Christ we have hope. We are joined to his death and resurrection, dying to sin and being made alive in Christ.

I think Bono, U2, and Philip Yancey (in What’s So Amazing About Grace) are on just the same page here in saying, as I say in my book, that too many Christians think their “good” behavior will earn them passage through the pearly gates of Heaven. And notice where this view leads: as we mature in faith, we spend more time with other Christians, make up rules about what “Christian behavior is like,” and judge others by how well they follow these rules.

Bono might say that as we mature in faith, we should spend LESS time with other Christians and more time with people who look like those Jesus spent time with. Why? So that we can communicate the love of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s why! If we truly are given the gift of God’s love and forgiveness while we are yet sinners, as St. Paul says, then the issue is not how do I behave so that I earn God’s love, but how do I participate in what God is doing in the world because God’s love found me? Well, God says (Isaiah 65, Revelation 21) that God has promised a new heaven and a new earth, a place where there is no longer suffering and tears. We experience that “other place” in worship, and then we’re sent out into the world to meet God who is already in the world working to bring this “new” reality to birth.

Unfortunately, U2 loses some potential audience among some Christians because their music doesn’t fit with a theology of karma that says, “if you admit doubt, your faith is not strong enough and God won’t bless you.” See how it starts with an “if”? So this group says, if U2 are explicit enough about their faith, we’ll listen. If they are explicit about their doubt, we’re pretty sure they are lost and we’re tuning out. Ouch! That is a shame, and misunderstands both U2 and God. That is a strong statement, I know, but read on.

We live in the “long Saturday” between Christ’s coming and his coming again to make all things new. We have the victory, but it has not been brought to completion. And because of that first coming, we who have received the Grace of God by faith are drawn into the work of praying, watching and working for the day when all things are made new. Doubt is simply part of that reality of faith. We have salvation now, but it is not complete. The world is changed, but it is not transformed. So when we see terrible things happen in the world, or experience great suffering in our personal lives, we do doubt and it is something we can and should bring directly to God. If we can’t admit anger at the world’s suffering, or admit feeling adrift because it seems God is not present to us, and admit these things in prayer, in hymns, in Christian community, then isn’t our faith actually weak rather than strong?

There is no secular if you believe that God is creator of heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them (Psalm 146:6; Acts 14:15). When Jesus says that God makes it rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5), he said something profound in relation to how we regard popular culture. Recently I watched the film “Walk the Line.” It is a movie about Johnny Cash and June Carter. It is a complex story, including deep suffering, drug addiction, divorce and also great love, repentance, and an experience of healing. Was God only present in Cash’s “gospel songs” or was God somehow present also when Cash sang “Folsom Prison Blues” to a room full of prisoners?

U2 present us with this challenge. Bono, while meeting with religion reporters after his “homily” at the National Prayer Breakfast last year, said, “I’m asked, ‘Why doesn’t your music proclaim Christ?’ and my answer is that it does.” He went on say that “creation has its own proclamation of God and I’d like to think our music has the same qualities to it.” (source) Can the Church find a profound enough view of sin to see its own faults, and a profound enough view of creation and grace to see God’s presence working in the world? U2 might ask us: “Do we proclaim God only when we sing about divine love in the songs ‘Gloria’ or ‘Grace’ or do we proclaim God also when we sing about human love in the songs ‘Desire’ and ‘Discotheque’?” If we split it like this, sacred on one side and secular on the other, we risk missing the very human presence in “Gloria” and “Grace”, and miss the heavenly resonances in “Desire” and “Discotheque.” More importantly, our imagination is constrained by a shrunken view of the scope of God’s domain.

U2 have always been about holding the tensions together—earth and heaven, spirituality and sexuality, faith and doubt. At root, as they see it, the issue is a theological issue, an issue about being true to who God is and who we are created to be.

Next up: bringing this to bear through reflection on a Kings of Leon show.

+anon