The Wondrous Incarnation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 


The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

- The Gospel of John, Chapter One, verses one and fourteen

When the God, whose voice created a vast universe replete with planets, stars, galaxies and quasars, chose to breathe His own essence into one of His creatures, Goodness was defined. But when He chose to humble Himself and become one of them just to reveal His deity, Goodness was overlaid and infused with incomprehensible Love. This moment, the birth of Jesus Christ, is the single most amazing moment in history.

Bono, in his conversation with writer Michka Assayas describes the moment when he first understood the astounding beauty of the incarnation like this:

Got home for Christmas, very excited of being in Dublin. Dublin at Christmas is cold, but it's lit up, it's like Carnival in the cold. On Christmas Eve, I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I had done school there for a year. It's where Jonathan Swift was dean. Anyway, some of my Church of Ireland friends were going. It's a kind of a tradition on Christmas Eve to go, but I'd never been. I went to this place, sat. I was given a really bad seat, behind one of the huge pillars. I couldn't see anything. I was sitting there, having come back from Tokyo, or somewhere like that. I went for the singing, because I love choral singing. Community arts, a specialty! But I was falling asleep, being up for a few days, traveling, because it was a bit boring, the service, and I just started nodding off, I couldn't see a thing. Then I started to try and keep myself awake studying what was on the page. It dawned on me for the first time, really. It had dawned on me before, but it really sank in: the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw... a child... I just thought: "Wow!" Just the poetry... Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it's not that it hadn't struck me before, but tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this. Because that's exactly what we were talking about earlier: love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It's actually logical. It's pure logic. Essence has to manifest itself. It's inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.

In the oft-skipped second verse of his famous carol Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Charles Wesley proclaims the jaw-dropping awe produced by this Love becoming flesh:

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Amen!

May the wondrous incarnation, poor baby boy/God with us, be the core of your hope and joy this Christmas.


If you are a Bono apologist or cynic, and you haven't read Bono in conversation with Michka Assayas, you should. It's available from Riverhead Books.

And if you love Christmas as I do, enjoy this little piece of Glen Hansard's Christmas Eve busk in Dublin. Bono and Liam O'Maonlai join and make it a Christmas to remember.

They Sold Their Souls...

There are two sides to every coin, every fish, and every argument. Here we see the best of both sides. Dig in and let me know where you stand once you've heard it all.

EITHER Bono and U2 are closet Satanists fooling the world with their holy horseplay...

 

If video doesn't load, watch it HERE.

OR Bono and U2 actually believe in all that Jesus junk. Who knew?

 

If video doesn't load, watch it HERE.

"Friday night running to Sunday on my knees." 

- U2, In A Little While 

P.S., I think you know which way I lean so it won't be surprising to you that I appreciated this article by Doug Beaumont about Pastor Joel Schimmer's series on rock music.

P.P.S., I think you know which way I lean, but you might be surprised that I love me some J.T. Chick. Check out his exposé on the evils of rock music in the graphic novel Spellbound.

The Ultimate Battle

Apollos or Paul. Pope or Nope. Calvinism or Arminianism. Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen. No issue has divided the Christian church, and it’s pop culture equivalents, more than the state of Bono’s soul.

Okay. I know that’s going a bit too far. But I can’t tell you how many times I have stood face to face with friends and strangers in churches, bars, clubs, and amidst the throng at U2 concerts debating this very question—Is Bono a Christian? Whether well-meaning or provoked or venomous, people seem drawn to the debate and it can get pretty passionate.

It’s a fun topic to argue. With well-known lyrics to back up either argument, both sides make great points and get to have their say. Because Bono has never really put the questions to rest (although some argue that he has), it’s a subject filled with mystery and frustration. And like the parable of the four soils, there are eye-rolling skeptics, sold-out believers, outright rejecters, and the blissfully indifferent ones who don’t see why it matters.

You might be a skeptic. You’ve grown up with U2’s music as a backdrop to your culture and it’s not bad to listen to, but every time ‘Bone-O’ opens his craw to scold us on this or that social no-no, you want to puke. He’s a loudmouth loser with a messiah complex. Put him in a box with Babs, Oprah, and Clooney, and ship them off to Cuba. Besides, you agree with Henry Rollins; U2’s bassist sucks.

You may be the type who cannot and will not believe that Bono is a Christian. To you, he is a charlatan of the worst kind. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. A con who, along with Led Zeppelin, Marilyn Manson, and Lady Gaga, wants to drag our unsuspecting kids along with him to h-e-double-hockey-styx. He says the f-word for Pete’s sake! Unless he tells you his personal confession of faith, in person, with your own trusted pastor or priest standing by for inspired verification; unless his personal testimony comes with references to the four spiritual laws, the five points of Calvinism, and a riveting tale of his near-death baptism experience, you won’t be satisfied. And anyway, no regenerate Christian could ever say that he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for!

You could be the one who believes whole-heartedly that Bono is your brother in Christ. His lyrics and music are as worshipful to you as the old hymns. It is no wonder to you that modern worship leaders do their best to copy the U2 sound. If they ever held a U2 mass at a church near you, you’d slap on a black t-shirt and your Chuck Taylors and go. Bono’s interviews with Bill Hybels, or his speech at the national prayer breakfast, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is washed in the blood of the Lamb. His lifelong passion and actions to intervene on behalf of the suffering widows and orphans are the visible fruit that only can come from a life that’s fully grafted to the vine. You know Bono is one of us, and “40” makes you cry.

Or maybe you’re indifferent to whether Bono is or isn’t a Christian. It doesn’t make any difference to you. It’s none of your business. It is up to him whether he believes in Jesus or Allah or Buddha or L. Ron Hubbard. Coexist, right?

Maybe.

Maybe the reason U2 fans and U2 haters alike get so passionate about this question is that it does make a difference what Bono believes. It matters because this question applies to each of us. What you believe about life and how it relates to what happens after death, is crucial to how you will ultimately live. The way you act toward your family, the way you do your work, the way you find meaning in your own existence is directly affected by what you believe about God.

Then, Bono stands up on a stage and hints that he has a clue about who or what God is, and we wonder if he’s got it right. He becomes a window into our own post-modern, collective soul. We see in him the same violent yearning to get it right that we face every day. And some of us are willing to fight for the answer.

So the age-old battle begins again. Is Bono a Christian? Does it matter? If you knew the answer, would it change anything for you?

Discuss amongst yourselves.