Read the rest of the article at New Man eMagazine »

• “Wherever you are, be all there”. Read »
• God designed the soul of a man for adventure. Read »

Mark is certainly not unique in his outlook. It’s common for a man to define himself in terms of what he does in his profession. I think of times when I introduce myself to a man at church or a social event. We will say our names to each other, and then the conversation inevitably turns to a mutual exchange of And what do you do?

Read the rest on my Amazon Blog »

Read the rest on my Amazon Blog.

Here’s a video overview:

Stay tuned. Much more info on The Expeditionary Man will be posted here over the coming weeks.

On Wednesday night, my sister and others from her church were volunteering at Solomon Center, a food pantry in the Cincinnati area. They have been running very low on supplies lately, as the need has increased twofold and they’ve not been able to financially to double their supplies. As a result, they had a list of items that they were out of posted on white board.

A guest using a walker to get around came down to receive services. While there, he must have scanned the white board and seen that the food pantry was out of shampoo. After he received his order, he slowly ascended up the stairs, visibly struggling with his walker on each step. Once outside the Center, he walked in the pouring, driving rain to his car that was parked on the other end of the lot. Pushing his walker aside, he climbed into his car and got a plastic cup filled with—of all things—shampoos from a hotel. The old man then got back out of the car, walked all the across the parking lot with his walker, down the stairway, and—now thoroughly soaked to the bone—gave the gift to Sandi and her crew to help people who needed shampoo. Without fanfare, he then walked back up the stairs and back to his car to go home.

The volunteers at the Center were all humbled and overwhelmed by his generosity. Just like the widow who gave the mite in Jesus’ parable, this man gave out of his poverty. How many of us do the same?

As you read through the U2 Unplugged series, I encourage you to dive into the meaning behind each song’s lyrics, discover their biblical foundation, and get practical about how you can apply these truths to your life. To help you out, I’ve included two things at the end of each chapter: an Action Steps box providing specific challenges to get you started living out the truth seen in the song, and a Diving Deeper box giving you Bible verses, books, and films that you can turn to for further exploration of the song’s theme.

Finally, keep in mind as you read U2 Unplugged that music is an art, not a science. U2 lyrics, in particular, are famed for their ability to be interpreted in many ways. While I attempt to tap into the meaning Bono and the others had in mind when they wrote the song, I am certain that I will take their lyrics into directions much different than U2 ever intended. So as you read through this book, keep in mind that I am offering an interpretation of the lyrics but not the official interpretation.

However, that’s one of the best qualities of music. We can experience the music for ourselves on our own terms and allow God to use it to transform our lives, even in ways that U2 never dreamed of.

Table of Contents

Preface: An Unmistakable Gospel Trail

Part One: Love’s Victory

1. The Club Vertigo Letters, “Vertigo”
2. Dancing the Perfect Storm, “Drowning Man”
3. Crashing into a World of Karma, “Grace”
4. Love for a Cross-Eyed Culture, “God Part II”

Part Two: God & Me

5. The Courting of an Untamed God, “Wild Honey”
6. Thirsty Worship, “Gloria”

Part Three: A Complete Faith in an Incomplete World

7. A Gritty Faith, “40”

8. The Overturned Sardine Can, “All Because of You”
9. Glimpses of a Far Off Country, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

Part Four: A Disciple’s Life

10. Mysteriously Ever After, “A Man and a Woman”
11. Sleeping Giants, “Crumbs from Your Table”
12. A God of Positive Promise, “Yahweh”

Note: The “chapter order” above is actually quite different than the date order in which they were posted onto the blog.

When asked to describe U2, Bono recently reflected, “The band always feels like it’s coming, never that it’s arrived.” Not only does Bono’s description reflect the ever-freshness of their music and their ability to reinvent themselves, but also the spiritual journey of the band members themselves: Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullin. Since the band released their initial album Boy in 1980, each of the foursome have experienced the best and worst the world has to offer. To borrow from one of their most popular tunes, each has both “climbed the highest mountains” and “held hands with the devil”.

Yet, regardless of the highs and lows of their personal walks of faith, the Christian truth expressed in a large body of their work is unmistakable. Whispers of Christ’s teaching show up in some spots, and direct quotes from scripture are found in others. And, when you look at their discography as a whole, you can see a clear “Gospel trail” – signs that much of their music is written from a perspective that assumes, even requires, biblical Christianity.

I discovered that “Gospel trail” for myself growing up in the 1980s when I listened to my first U2 album, War. In fact, I was recently reminded of the spiritual influence that their songs had on me during that time period. During the process of writing the U2 Unplugged series, I serendipitously stumbled upon an old, worn-out Bible that I’ve kept stored away since my high school days. A photocopy of the lyrics to “Drowning Man” was taped inside the front cover of the Bible. Perhaps foreshadowing this series, several lyrics were circled with notes scribbled in the margin. Even back then, I was eager to unplug the Christian truth found inside their songs.

The Faith Watcher

U2 is described in the media as hip, savvy, timeless, globally conscientious, and spiritual. But it is that “spiritual” element that has always been so hard for me to fully understand over the years.

Are they or aren’t they? That’s the question that I tossed around since the mid-1980s concerning the faith of U2. When I first heard their War release back in high school, I rapidly jumped on their wagon. I was excited about this new band from Ireland singing bold expressions of faith in the mainstream rock music world. Yet, the band’s historic reluctance to fully discuss their faith, their shunning of the “Christian band” label, lack of association with any church body, and sometimes outlandish behavior left me both cockeyed and bewildered as the years passed.

I remember first growing skeptical with the release of Joshua Tree in 1987. Instead of straightforward expressions of faith that I was used to hearing in the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) world, I was shocked to hear what seemed to be a murkier message in the album. Bono’s confession that “he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for” caused me to superficially conclude that U2 was no longer satisfied with Christianity and was looking elsewhere for answers.

Then, as the 1990s rolled in, the band seemed to be moving even further and further away from where they began. Gone were explicit statements of faith in their lyrics, replaced by songs that seemed to be obscured with irony. Some of the on-stage antics of Bono in their Zoo TV tour seemed a far cry from what I considered acceptable “Christian behavior”. In fact, MacPhisto, Bono’s on-stage persona who was supposed to be the devil himself, made it seem to me like Bono had gone over to the “dark side.” From my perspective, the “band of consciousness” moniker was being replaced by a reputation of being sensational and outlandish. At some point in the 1990s, I suppose I wrote them off for good, concluding that U2 abandoned whatever Christian roots they had in favor of rock stardom.

Yet, throughout this time, David, a close friend of mine, always saw things differently than I did. A long-time believer and diehard U2 fan, he urged people like me to look beyond the obvious showmanship and see what was really happening. David pointed to the deep spiritual questions that were raised by the Zoo TV and PopMart tours, even if the presentation didn’t seem “Christian”, at least to evangelicals. He held up Bono’s MacPhisto as an updated version of something C.S. Lewis himself did in The Screwtape Letters. He argued that I was too easily distracted with the superficial stuff, such as obsessing over the title of the song “The Playboy Mansion” while completely ignoring the profound biblical message contained in its lyrics.

I’ve come to embrace David’s perspective, especially since the releases of All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The band seems to not only be returning to its musical roots in these albums, but Bono, at least, appears to be more open about his faith than ever before. In addition, I am not sure whether spiritual maturity or artistic direction is driving the changes, but U2 seems less concerned with irony and shock these days and more bent on delivering clearer messages in their music. Plus, because of his passion over the AIDS crisis in Africa, Bono is reaching out to evangelicals more than ever before, and building bridges in the process.

The difference in perspective that I’ve had goes beyond just what U2 has done, however. I’ve changed as well. As I mature in my spiritual walk, I am discovering that I need to dive deeper and not be so quick to react to appearances. I need to look at the heart and motivations of person rather than being distracted by his or her outward behavior. What’s more, I need to awaken to the truth that God can use a believer who is much different than I am, in ways that I may not always understand.

Therefore, looking back, I realize that my dismissive attitude towards U2 in the 1990s was, in part, because of my personal lack of grace. If I am quick to hold up that “I’m not perfect, just forgiven” expression for myself, why am I so stingy in letting others used it? Instead, I’ve discovered that I can disagree with Bono on some issues, but still see him as a sinner saved by grace in Jesus Christ. I can lament that the fact that the band members have not more vocal in their personal witness, yet have my Christian walk be transformed by their music anyway.

Finally, because U2 is constantly in the spotlight, I can be tempted to hold them up to a standard like I do such people as Billy Graham or such CCM fixtures as Casting Crowns or Steven Curtis Chapman. Whether those expectations are fair or unfair is secondary to the realization that every believer – Bono, you, or I — is on a spiritual journey. We all do stupid things. We all do things earlier in life that we cringe at later. In short, we are all sinners that fall short of the glory of God. By God’s grace, however, we are all slowly maturing in our walk with Christ. Therefore, my desire is to show the same grace towards U2 and my neighbor and Jesus Christ shows me.

I am convinced there is a “Now gene” swimming inside every human body. A two-year child reaching out for a toy at the counter never sees next week as an option. A couple madly in love yearns to be together tonight, not tomorrow. Much of our postmodern economy, in fact, is built on the importance of Now: credit cards, downloadable music, video-on-demand, lottery tickets, to name but a few examples. Pundits call us the “instant society” for obvious reasons.

If we have a “Now gene” that influences us towards instant gratification, I can easily guess its source of origin – our humanness. On the one hand, you can make a case that this desire for the immediate isn’t altogether bad; perhaps it is the natural response that any person, bound by time and space, will inevitably have. On the other hand, Satan recognizes “Get It Now” as one of his most effective weapons, because it allows us to receive what we most desire without requiring any inward change on our part to get it. The net effect of an undisciplined “Now gene” is that we become spoiled, unappreciative, and self-absorbed creatures.

But, as you explore the scriptures, you will see that God has a much different sort of genetics in mind: he wants to infuse our spiritual blood streams with a “Waiting gene.” When we need his help, God promises to be there for us. But, before he takes action, God often wants us to hold out, just a while longer, and then he will engineer circumstances in our lives and rescue us according to his timetable.

On the War album, U2 features two songs, both heavily influenced by the Book of Psalms, that show two different types of rescues that God makes in our lives. In “Drowning Man”, they sing of God’s instantaneous rescues, particularly when eternity is at stake. The final song on the album, “40” [lyrics] [iTunes], explores a much different sort of saving act: a deliverance from earthly pain and hardship that takes a far longer time to realize. Echoing the words of David in Psalm 40, “40” initially sounds like a simple song of worship. But, as you look closer, a remarkable real-world texture begins to surface. The juxtaposition of gratitude, hope, and desperation in the song reflects the ups and downs every believer has living in this world.

God’s Certain Rescue

Life’s problems have an uncanny way of weighing us down. A serious health ailment. Financial crisis. A shattered relationship. A personal betrayal. When circumstances like these arise, we can become so overwhelmed with life that we feel ourselves sinking deeper and deeper into a bottomless hole. That’s exactly what Bono sings about in the song “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” from the All You Can’t Leave Behind release. We can dig ourselves into a pit so deep there is no way we can possibly free ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and even physically.

If “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” explores the problem of the mud pit, the song “40” shows the way out. We can’t pull ourselves out of life’s holes, but God will eagerly do so for us if we only call on him for help. As “40” begins, the song speaks of that promise by quoting the first two verses of Psalm 40. In the words of David, Bono sings:

I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay

When you find yourself in a pit and cry out to the Lord, he will “incline” – or turn to you – and hear your cry. Throughout the Bible, you read God’s response. To paraphrase 2 Chronicles 7:14: If you will humble yourself, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from your sin; then will I hear your cry, will forgive, and will rescue you. Even more revealing is the father’s response in the parable of the Prodigal Son, told by Jesus in Luke 15. When the father sees his down-and-out son returning to him, he is so stricken with affection for his disobedient son that he sprints out to rescue him.

When you experience God’s deliverance firsthand, you begin to develop the kind of steadfast faith in God that is evident throughout “40”. No longer can his help be dismissed as mere coincidence. Seeing how God engineers circumstances, you realize the active role that he plays in your life on a day-in, day-out basis.
In the song’s second verse, Bono continues reciting from Psalm 40:2:

He set my feet upon a rock
And made my footsteps firm

God’s rescue is merely the starting point for us. He sets our “feet upon a rock” so we can grow closer in relationship to him. The “rock” Bono is singing about is God himself. A rock is a common symbol used throughout scripture to refer to the steadfastness and dependability of God. “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,” says David in Psalm 18:2. He adds later in verse 31, “Who is the Rock except our God?” Jesus Christ is also described by the apostle Paul as being “the Rock” in 1 Corinthians 10. Once our lives are based on him, then we can be certain that when we experience problems, we will not be alone; Jesus Christ is right beside us and is our source of strength. The apostle Paul sums it up, saying “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim 4:18).

When we experience the delivering power of God working in our lives, our natural response is, using Bono’s words, to “sing a new song”. We can’t be the same people as we were when we wallowed all alone in the “miry clay.” This new song is full of hope, trust, and confidence that God loves us, is watching over us, and engineers circumstances in our lives.

As we “sing a new song” in a life of faith, we will naturally help draw others to him. “Many will see and fear,” sings Bono. The fear he is singing of isn’t a panic-stricken emotion. Instead, he is talking about a deep respect and awe for how great the Deliverer really is.

Rollercoasters

This new song, however, must be sung with patient lips. “I waited patiently before the Lord,” sings Bono at the very start of “40”. It’s clear that God does not immediately wave his magic wand and deliver him from the pit. Instead, the song conveys the sense that his rescue was a long time in coming. Patience, therefore, is a key character trait that a believer needs to build up in our lives when we look to God for help. The song “40” reinforces that belief: you see an unmistakable message that God is faithful in answering us, but in his time, not ours.

Patience, however, plays out as a rollercoaster ride. In full sincerity, we commit to being content in the midst of difficult times. And when the storms begin to hit us, we can echo the apostle James and “count it all joy”, knowing that God is working in our lives. Yet, as the days, months, and maybe even years drag on, we’ll inevitably begin to cry out just as Bono does in the song’s refrain, “How long to sing this song?” This honest question of “How long?” rings loudly through many of the Psalms. Sounding much like the refrain of “40”, Psalm 6 says:

I am absolutely terrified,
and you, Lord—how long will this go on?
Come back, Lord, rescue me!
Deliver me because of your faithfulness!

David goes even further in Psalms 13:

How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me?
How long will you pay no attention to me?
How long must I worry,
and suffer in broad daylight?
How long will my enemy gloat over me?
Look at me! Answer me, O Lord my God!
Revive me, or else I will die!

Even Psalm 40 starts with a content hope (“I waited patiently for the Lord”), but concludes in verse 17 on a far more impatient tone: “O my God, do not delay.”

The strain expressed in “40” between patience, hope, and desperation mirrors the reality of what it is really like living as a believer in a fallen world. A gritty faith contrasts with a Teflon-coated, smiley-faced faith that is often lauded in churches but rarely lived out consistently in our lives. Like David illustrates throughout the Psalms, we live in a state of constant tension between our spiritual hope in God’s deliverance and our human desire for it to happen now.

Fortysomething

“How long?” is an open ended question in “40”, just as it is in real life. The lack of concrete answers can make us wonder whether God is simply being cruel to us since he could make anything happen with the snap of a finger. George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon begs to differ, “Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out.”

Perhaps the song title itself even gives a clue as to “how long” God will allow pain and suffering to continue in our lives. Thumbing through the Bible, you’ll see that the number “40” has a special importance throughout the Old and New Testament. When Noah was in the ark, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness before returning to Egypt to free the Israelite slaves. The newly freed Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the desert before entering the Promised Land. And, just before Jesus started his earthly ministry, he spent 40 days fasting in the desert, being tempted by Satan for much of that time.

For each of these long periods of waiting, God had a specific purpose to accomplish. As these people went through trials, they had to fully rely on God and trust in his deliverance. In the same way, God uses the “fortysomething” periods of our lives to prepare, transform, and bring us closer in relationship with him. Author Oswald Chambers observes that God deals with us just like he did with his Son Jesus Christ: “God engineers our circumstances as He did those of His Son; all we have to do is to follow where He places us. The majority of us are busy trying to place ourselves. God alters things while we wait for Him.”

On this earth, our spiritual blood streams will always have a mixture of “Now genes” and “Waiting genes”. When we are young in our faith, impatience for immediate results will rule our lives. But, as we grow closer in our relationship to God and allow Christ to be the “Rock” of our lives, he begins a spiritual transfusion: replacing the “Now genes” one at a time with “Waiting genes”. As we permit this to happen, we become molded into, to borrow a C.S. Lewis term, “little Christs.”

Action Steps

In “40”, U2 explores the rollercoaster nature of the Christian faith. As you ride that coaster, take the following action steps:

On a piece of paper, draw a maze that has a path from a beginning opening to an ending. Then, trace a route from start to finish. As humans with a limited perspective, we can only see life in the here and now, while God sees now in light of eternity. It’s as if we are going through a life-size maze in search of the exit door. Yet, as we walk through this giant puzzle, we can only see what’s immediately before and behind us. We can’t even grasp how far our current position is from the exit nor make sense of how where we are relates to the overall maze. In contrast, God has a bird’s eye view of the entire puzzle: he clearly sees the best path to take between the beginning and end points. As we walk through the maze, his path can seem dead wrong – an unnecessary series of twists, turns, and detours. But, from God’s standpoint, he knows the path you are on is necessary to accomplish what he has purposed – reaching the prize.

Watch the film Signs and observe how God engineers circumstances in the life of Graham Hess to lift him from the “miry clay” to save his son and restore his faith. Remember that in real life, God does the same thing.

Diving Deeper

Psalm 40, 6, and 13. James 5:10-11

But, if C.S. (or Jack, as he liked to be called) were here today, I believe he would quickly bring us back to reality, warning us not to get caught up with “what’s in” at the moment. Lewis believed fashion – what’s cool and hip – is one of Satan’s most powerful seducers. It subtly distracts and derails our faith. Lewis illustrates this point several times in The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. However, you may not have realized that he even expresses this same belief in The Chronicles of Narnia: Susan’s eventual loss of faith in The Last Battle seems to be based, in part, on her preoccupation with acting grown-up and her penchant for being fashionable.

Fashion may have been a big deal in Lewis’ day. However, “what’s popular” is far more seductive and alluring in today‘s media-saturated, attention-starved world than ever before in history.

To Jack, when you are preoccupied with the latest and greatest, you are focused on the temporary world rather than on things that really matter for eternity. Consider the following examples:

Clothing. When you are overly preoccupied with stylish clothes, your self-image and self-worth can become dependent, not on God, but on your wardrobe. Take, for example, What Not To Wear, a reality TV show that gives a style-challenged person a fashion makeover. I have watched the show occasionally and find it entertaining, but I believe that people can easily come away from watching that show feeling like they matter only so much as their approval rating from stylists Stacy and Clinton.

Entertainment. In the world of entertainment and pop culture, we can easily become obsessed with the Next Great Thing – the next generation iPod, the newest CD, or the upcoming blockbuster film. However, if we aren’t careful, the Next Great Thing can easily become an idol to both our heart and pocketbook.

Academics and philosophy. A preoccupation with fashionable thought – the latest trends in philosophy, religion, or another discipline – is dangerous. The drive to come up with an original, state-of-the-art idea ends up becoming more important than whether or not that theory is grounded in actual truth. In religious academic circles, for example, Lewis believed biblical Christianity is often looked down upon, not because of its truth claims, but because of the fact that its hard to be “cutting edge” with a 2,000 year-old, unchanging faith.

Church. Even within the church, believers need to guard against becoming fashion conscious. We can get so preoccupied with the latest methods of “doing church” or “reaching others” according to Willow Creek, Saddleback, or other popular model. But, in so doing, we risk neglecting what’s far most important: the simple gospel message of Jesus Christ.

Lewis believed that fashion in all of these areas is a dead-end street. “The more ‘up to date’ the look is, the sooner it will be dated,” says Lewis. What’s more, even if you are successful at being hip and up with the times, he warns that your days of being “in” are numbered. Jack writes in Experiment in Criticism, “If you take your stand on the ‘prevalent’ view , how long do you suppose it will prevail?…All you can really say about my taste is that it is old-fashioned; yours will soon be the same.”

In the end, we Lewis fans can enjoy the fact that C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and his other works are being read and appreciated by more people today than ever before. But let’s heed Jack’s advise and refrain from becoming distracted at the success of having “our man” getting so much worldwide attention.

Since God created man in His image, one way to tackle this question is to look at God’s greatness and see what principles trickle down to man. There are limitations to this approach, of course, since He is omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite, and the last time I checked, I was not any of those. Nonetheless, I’ve found that there are some intriguing parallels to consider.

In all of God’s dealings with the world, arguably the two most significant acts He has ever done is to (a) create the world and (b) serve the world by becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ and dying on the cross for our sins. If these are the two climatic activities of God in His relationship with man, isn’t it possible that these acts also serve as models for us? Perhaps you and I can share greatness when we create and serve in His name. (Or, as J.R.R. Tolkien used to say, a more theologically correct term for human creation is “sub-create” since God is the only one who truly creates ex nihilo, from nothing.

This fact was brought home to me while watching the A&E/BBC movie Longitude , the story of John Harrison, an 18th century English clockmaker who discovered the solution to the age-old “longitude problem”— determining a ship’s longitudinal position while at sea. I loved the film, but what has remained with me since was a statement at the film’s end reflecting on Harrison’s accomplishment:

What makes a man great? A man may be great in his aims, or in his achievements, or in both, but I think that man is truly great who makes the world his debtor… who does something for the world which the world needs and which nobody before him has done or known how to do.

Just as Harrison “made the world his debtor” by inventing a special timepiece that solved the longitude problem, so you can do the same when your creative efforts or servant heart fills a void left empty before you came along. For in the end, perhaps living a life of true significance is achieved only when you create or serve in Jesus’ name.

The Four Verbs Of A Disciple’s Walk

Nearly all of life’s activities for a Christian disciple can be boiled down into just four verbs: create, serve, survive, and consume. Let’s explore each of these four action verbs to determine their relevance to your Christian walk.

Create

We have a creative God, one who created the earth and the skies out of nothing, filling it with boundless diversity and imagination. The Lord has given many people this gift of creation and discovery, whether it be writing a song, preparing a sermon, authoring a book, discovering the law of gravity, or finding an answer to “longitude” problem. Throughout history, the human race has been indebted to “creators” like Michelangelo, Sir Isaac Newton, C.S. Lewis, and Isaac Watts. You and I not only owe much to these all-time greats, but to great people closer to home as well – my pastor for his piercing messages each Sunday or my wife when she exercises her artistic talents.

To create something out of nothing and to make a discovery heretofore unknown are God-breathed activities, divined and ordained by the Lord – both for this world and the one to come. In doing so, we give God glory by revealing more of His nature, truth, and creation to others. In Longitude, John Harrison reflects this same attitude when talking about his motivation for his life’s passion:

Why did [God] encourage me to build the perfect timepiece in the first place? For the blacksmith to start work five seconds earlier or later? Or was it to give us the ability to explore His creation in safety? To move without fear in the space He has given to us to inhabit.

Serve

Not every disciple is called to create, but all disciples are charged to serve in one manner or another. Serving is the second God-breathed activity, for when you serve, you are doing a task that someone – be it your spouse, neighbor, or a hungry child in Haiti – needs for you to do.

Striving for greatness may perhaps sound self-centered and contrary to the attitude of a servant’s heart. But for the earnest disciple, the desire to be great need not be an ego-centric obsession. Instead, our motivation should be greatness in God’s eyes, not the eyes of the world; to create and serve for His acclaim, not for the applause of others. Ten Shekel Shirt sums it up well in its song “Great”:

Greatness in this world is different than greatness in your eyes
To love my enemies
To serve others until I become the least
To be genuine in my love for others and for you is to be great.
To be great in, great in your eyes, is my dream
To be the one who makes you smile is everything

(Note: Lines in lyrics rearranged for this purpose.)

Survive

Survival is how I’d classify the 9-to-5 life. We work our jobs to survive – to place food on the table, put a roof over our heads, and send the kids to college. I am not deriding those of us (like me) who are working in the marketplace, because God calls us to these roles. And, if our motivation is pure, we give glory to the Lord while doing this work.

One of my favorite lines from the film Chariots of Fire speaks to that fact: “You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection.” In other words, no matter what we do – even a task as lowly as peeling a potato – we give glory to the Lord when we do it to our utmost. Thus, for many of us not in full-time Christian service, one of our major charges is to “survive” in such a way that gives glory to God.

At the same time, we should not get confused and believe that surviving is the equivalent to creating or serving, because it is not. In the end, neither you nor I will ever make the world our debtor simply by surviving.

However, holding a secular job need not prevent us from creating and serving. Take John Harrison, for example; he was a carpenter by trade and for years had to continue that trade to provide for his family, while he worked at night to create his maritime timepieces. Harrison is not unique: most people who create and serve in God’s name do it in time they manufacture, apart from their normal work day hours.

Consume

The final action verb that disciples undertake is “to consume”. Consuming is any activity that is inward focused, whether it be eating, watching TV, reading a book, appreciating art or music, vacationing, or pursuing a hobby. Just as we have to eat to survive, so too consuming is an integral, required part of a disciple’s walk. One needs to receive before being of any use to others, just like one cannot run a marathon on an empty stomach.

Having said that, remember that even godly and honorable activities like studying Scripture are inbound activities, and do little good to anyone else if the fruit of this activity remains on the inside, hidden from the world.

Breaking The Survive-Consume Cycle

A disciple’s life is a balance between these four verbs; survival and consumption should be offset by our efforts to create and serve. Unfortunately, many in the world today are in a Survival-Consume cycle – putting all energies into surviving and consuming, yet consuming so much that even more work is required to survive. In this cycle, little effort is given and little energy is left for outbound endeavors.

Seinfeld , the popular TV sitcom in the 90s, had a foursome of characters that personified this self-absorbed Survival-Consume lifestyle. In one episode, the four made an effort to “make a difference” by volunteering and serving others, but that enthusiasm faded quickly when it proved uncomfortable to them, so they went back to their normal life routine. How often do we fall into this same trap of ravenously consuming life rather than creating something original or serving others around us?

In addition, look to “recycle” the energy that you spend on consuming, turning it into a fuel for an outbound opportunity. After you watch a great film or read a book, imagine how it can be used as fodder for a sermon, Bible study, or in a Christ-leading discussion with a neighbor. Or, when you are camping, determine how this love of the outdoors can be utilized as a vehicle for serving people in your church or community.

Life is fleeting. An entire lifetime can go by without doing anything of true significance. Working to survive is no more than treading water. Consuming fills your storehouses, not the world’s. But creating and serving in His name produces greatness – on occasion, in the eyes of this world, but always in the eyes of our Lord and Savior.

Make the world your debtor. Harrison’s timepiece is ticking.

Originally published in 2002.

“I Found It”. This slogan was used by an evangelistic organization back in the mid-1970s as a creative way to spread the gospel through mass marketing techniques. As a child growing up during that era, I remember yellow “I Found It” bumper stickers, t-shirts, billboards, and advertisements appearing everywhere around our home town. But as I look back at that campaign, I wonder how effective the slogan really was. There’s some truth in the message, but “I Found It” seems too simplistic and perhaps even misleading to describe the Christian faith. After all, believers aren’t immune to problems: we still struggle with addictions, experience tragedy, and make lousy decisions. We get a taste of Jesus Christ and his fantastic plans for us in the future, but never experience them fully as long as we are living in this sinful world.

In one of their best known songs from their entire discography, U2 sings about an incomplete journey of faith in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” [Lyrics] [iTunes]. On the surface, the title may sound like a confession of unbelief. But, in reality, the song is an honest look at the struggle that all believers face as we seek a fulfilled life.

Flickers

A longing. It’s the pang in your stomach when you’re in love. You can sense it as you gaze over the glorious snow-capped peaks of the Colorado Rockies. You can feel it in your soul during a great worship or prayer time. C.S. Lewis observed that this intense desire, which he refers to as “joy”, is for something that nothing on earth ever truly quenches. You can catch a glimpse of it, but this longing is fleeting. In his poem Dymer, Lewis reflects on joy’s unattainable nature: “Joy flickers on the razor-edge of the present and is gone.” Lewis believed that was exactly how God intended it, that joy is meant to be a clue or a pointer to the fact we are made for another place, for his “far off country.”

In “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, U2 explores our search for joy, as we seek fulfillment for that deep longing inside each of us. As the song begins, Bono sings of his efforts at finding God:

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you

As believers, we can fall into the trap of thinking that our efforts alone will allow us to discover the prize we desire. If we’re just good enough or involved in enough ministries at our church, then we will be blessed by God and find total contentment.

Yet, human effort alone is a dead-end street. Even if we could somehow live a life of faith that ranks along side the best of all time, we will still fall short. Biblical greats like Noah, Abraham, and Moses each had great faith and did mighty deeds for God, but none of these men “found what they were looking for.” Hebrews 11:14 gives the sobering truth, “All of these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcome them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.” U2 reflects this passage in the chorus of the song:

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

Yet, in spite of the fact that this truth is plainly evident by opening the pages of the Bible, you rarely hear this message being preached on Sunday mornings. We much prefer to hear about the “abundant Christian life” that comes to us when we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ. We don’t want to admit that despite a steadfast faith and our best efforts at obedience, none of us have fully found what we’re looking for. We’re driven to seek, but we never fully find it on earth.

Christ’s purpose in our lives is never to offer total fulfillment today. Instead, Jesus heals us from the past, provides joy and contentment in the present, and offers certain hope that our deepest longings will be fulfilled in the future.

Detours

When we fail to recognize that the longing is pointing us towards God and his future kingdom, we take detours looking for joy in things much closer to home. In the song, U2 highlights three common substitutes that we turn to instead of God.

First, we seek fulfillment in physical and emotional relationships. Alluding to Proverbs 5:3, Bono sings in the second verse:

I have kissed honey lips

Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

We can look for meaning through a blissful romance or for satisfaction through something cheaper and easier. We can be driven by “this burning desire” and think we’ve found “Heaven on Earth.”

Second, we get trapped in spiritual experiences. Bono sings that he “spoke with the tongue of angels”, perhaps alluding to the time Bono, Edge, and Larry were part of the charismatic group Shalom in the early 1980s. Within the church, sometimes we can get so caught up with experiencing God through emotion-driven spiritual expressions of faith, such as “speaking in tongues”. However, when “experience” becomes our preoccupation and source of fulfillment, then it detours us from God himself.

Third, we look for fulfillment in the world apart from God. “I have held the hand of the devil,” sings Bono. We can hold the devil’s hand and sell out our faith when we look to the world as our source for joy. Not only do big ticket items like career success, money, or fame derail us, but also the everyday things like shopping, hobbies, or our obsession with our favorite sports team.

Each of these areas offers partial fulfillment, so much so that you can get lost for decades searching for completeness in them. Lewis recognized that when we experience joy in real life, the danger is putting your focus on the wrong things. He writes in The Weight of Glory:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; [joy] was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things…are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of the worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited.

In the end, when you take a detour apart from God, you’ll always end up sounding like Mick Jagger, saying “I can’t get no satisfaction”, since nothing but God will truly quench our thirst for joy.

Pressing On

In the final verse of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, U2 identifies a surprise twist for Christians with “I Found It” stickers on their bumpers: The more you grow in your faith, the more you realize your inevitable incompleteness in this life. Bono sings of his steadfast belief in Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death on the cross. However, in spite of that faith, he finds himself “still running”. The lyrics go like this:

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
But yes I’m still running
You broke the bonds
You loosed the chains
You carried the cross
And my shame
And my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

Some Christians listen to this part of the song and conclude that Bono is turning on his faith — complaining that he’s still not satisfied even after coming face to face with the reality of Jesus Christ. Yet, far from saying anything radical, Bono is simply expressing the same thoughts that the apostle Paul wrote Philippians 3:12-14:

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Like Bono, the apostle Paul made it clear that he still hadn’t found what he was looking for. Instead, his focus was to strain forward to what is ahead and press on towards the goal of joy in Jesus Christ.

Action Steps

U2’s classic “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is an honest, heartfelt account of a believer who realizes that he won’t find true joy on this earth. As you consider your faith, check out the following action steps:

Get out a piece of paper and jot down five areas of your life in which you seek fulfillment. After you make your list, go down each item and consider how each of these areas fall short of the fulfillment that we are looking for. Then, give each of these areas over to Jesus Christ.

Carve out a portion of your day today for a special prayer session, being honest to God about your faith journey and your search for joy.

Take Hebrews 11 and spend several days studying the “Hall of Faith” chapter. Each day, focus on a person mentioned in the passage, looking at his or her life, expression of faith, and the degree to which they realized their life’s goals.

Diving Deeper
Phil 3:7-16, Hebrews 11.

More ugliness. That’s what I expected to see as I rode in the back of a pick-up truck into La Saline, the poorest slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Since traveling to the Caribbean nation on a missions trip, I’d seen, smelled, and tasted ugliness all week long; the early morning truck ride offered up more of the same: poverty; disease; and malnutrition.

My destination was a church located in the heart of La Saline. The truck soon pulled up to the makeshift shelter: scraps of sheet metal bound together, resembling an overturned sardine can for the church’s 200 worshippers. As I made my way into the building and took a seat, I was not in a spirit of worship; I was just looking forward to the ride back to a more palatable part of the city. But as the morning service got underway, and I began to look around and see what was happening around me, something radical happened. The ugliness of the slum faded away. God offered me a window into what real beauty is. The worshippers had a beauty that went far beyond anything else the world has to offer – be it a sunset in Fiji, a fashion model, or a Michelangelo masterpiece. In their worn, weathered faces, I saw how “knock-out gorgeous” a full life with Christ can be. The joyful eyes and deep smiles in that church were far more infectious than the disease found in the open sewer outside the church building. Beauty, I came to realize, is not skin deep at all; it springs from the fullness of a soul transformed by Christ.

In “All Because of You” [Lyrics] [iTunes], U2 looks at this kind of inner beauty. The song contrasts the ugliness of the world with the completeness of a life transformed by Christ.

Dead-Ends

As U2 begins “All Because of You”, Bono sings about the ugliness of the world apart from God:

I was born a child of grace

Nothing else about the place

Everything was ugly but your beautiful face

And it left me no illusion

Ugliness in our world can take on many forms. We are repulsed by the ugliness scattered over CNN and the evening news – terrorist attacks, child abuse, and gang killings. An exposé on the tattered lives of a picture-perfect Hollywood couple reveals a hallow, empty existence underneath. Even the beauty of nature cannot escape ugliness’ wrath: Darwinists speak of nature in the most unattractive of terms – a cruel, gritty planet where only the fittest survive.

Throughout “All Because of You”, Bono sings about the unattractiveness of a world apart from God. In a universe where survival-of-the-fittest reigns, “people get squashed crossing the tracks”. In a world of guilt and emotional disorders, “people carry high rises on their backs.”

Even for people who seem to have it together, U2 speaks of the rotten core that selfishness and pride can produce in us – a self-absorbed, bull-headed attitude. Bono sings:

I like the sound of my own voice

I didn’t give anyone else a choice

Apart from God, all roads lead to ugliness, in one form or another. We can mask the ugliness for a little while, but it always wins out in the end.

Though most of us don’t live in slums like La Saline, we still see ugliness all around us, even if its covered over with a coat of pretty paint. As we live in the midst of a polluted world, God often seems so far away. However, you will see his hand in everything if you only look around for him. Bono sings of this reality:

I saw you in the curve of the moon

In the shadow cast across my room

Sometimes we can be, in Bono’s words, an “intellectual tortoise” before we discover it. But God will make himself known to people who are looking for him. His presence may be revealed through nature, circumstances, or even our consciences.

Being Complete

“All Because of You” is an expression of gratitude to God for the people we become when we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ. The song is a realization that without Christ, our lives are ugly. But, with Christ, all is possible: we are fulfilled, complete people. Being fulfilled in Christ is a theme that U2 also touches upon in “Gloria”. “But only in you I’m complete,” sings Bono in that early worship song from the October album. In the chorus of “All Because of You”, Bono offers a similar message in a different tune:

All because of you

All because of you

All because of you

I am, I am

“You are complete in Jesus Christ,” exclaims the apostle Paul in Colossians 2:10. The great nineteenth century pastor Charles Spurgeon adds, “All things are in the cross – by this we conquer, by this we live, by this we are purified, by this we continue firm to the end. While sitting beneath the shadow of our Lord we think ourselves most rich, for angels seem to sing, ‘Ye are complete in Him.’” In this chorus, we can identify four ways in which God fulfills us like Paul, Spurgeon, and Bono talk about.

First, because of Jesus Christ, we have an identity. In a world without God, we are much like Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity: an anonymous person who wakes up in a confusing world, not sure where he is or what he is doing. We are left to our own devices to make the best of the situation. Yet, when you to come to Christ, you are given an identity. You are no longer a faceless, unknown person in a world of billions. The Bible says you are now a child of God (Ephesians 2:9, 1 Peter 2:9-10), a part of his family (1 Corinthians 2:27), and are even called a friend by Jesus himself (John 15:15). Those are not just throwaway lines: they are points of fact.
What’s more, as you live for him, you are known by Christ. He recognizes the real you, even when you cannot. Bono puts it like this:

You heard me in my tune

When I just heard confusion

As these lines reveal, an incredible truth of Christianity is that the God of the universe knows us even better than we can ever know ourselves. He can make sense of our feelings and scatterbrained ideas, even when we cannot.

Second, because of Jesus Christ, we have a purpose in life. One of the wrong ideas that some believers have is the idea that God calls a few people to be his “ambassadors”, while the rest of us are left to make do of our careers as best we can. However, God calls each person to a “purpose-driven” life, not just pastors and missionaries who go into the ministry as a profession. The Bible indicates that every believer is called by God to a variety of walks of life – whether it is a software programmer, McDonalds manager, social worker, or pastor – and that no calling is more special to God than the next. In other words, when you follow God’s calling and do your work unto God, you are free to live out your life according to his purpose.

Third, Jesus Christ gives us a future. When we come to Christ, he will exchange a hopeless existence into one that has a promise – that life after death is far greater than what we can imagine today. C.S. Lewis describes our future hope as “the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

U2’s use of “I am” in the chorus might even allude to this reality. It certainly seems to be a reference to a term that appears multiple times in the scriptures expressing God’s unchanging nature — that God is “I am” yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You and I obviously aren’t unchangeable or infinite creatures, but in one way, we do wear that “I am” moniker on our sleeve – that from the point of faith onward, we are promised a life forever with Christ. We’ll always exist, always be an “I am” – whether we are on earth or in Heaven with Christ.

Fourth, Jesus Christ is in the process of molding us into perfect people. When you give your life to Jesus Christ, he begins to transform the ugliness in your life into something perfect. Bono sings, “I’m not broke but you can see the cracks / You can make me perfect again”. This promise is not meant just for “good and decent” people; it is for anyone who comes to Christ, no matter how rotten. In fact, Philip Yancey makes the point that being imperfect is actually a prerequisite to receiving God’s grace. “Light only gets in through the cracks,” says Yancey. Once God shines his light of grace through us, we start to become like Christ.

Departure
As I left the sardine can church in La Saline that morning, I said goodbye to my newfound friends. Yet, in the process, I was cut to the heart by their gracious response to me: “I’ll pray for you.” Their words revealed that they weren’t fooled or intimidated by my nice clothes or North American origins. Instead, they knew these were only superficial differences and understood that, living in a richer county, I perhaps had more temptations to deal with than they did. They sensed, better than me, that completeness isn’t based on anything we have in this world, but it is based on who were are in Christ.

“I was born a child of grace,” starts out Bono. Bono’s confession is true for all of people who believe in Jesus Christ. All we need to do is open our eyes and see Christ apart from our ugly surroundings and experience a perfect, beautiful completeness in him.

Action Steps

The underlying message of “All Because of You” is the completeness that we can have in Jesus Christ. Consider the following steps to make this a reality in your life:

Examine yourself. What do you see in your life as ugly? Your job? Your surroundings? Yourself? Give over the ugliness to God and let him fill your heart with his beauty.

Prayerfully consider what your purpose is in life: What is God calling you to? What are you doing that has eternal significance? Wrestle with those questions until you hear God’s answer and then act upon what he tells you.

Diving Deeper

Colossians 2:10, Ephesians 2:9, 1 Peter 2:9-10

A Coke bottle drops from the sky. That’s the surprising introduction to modern society that a bushman gets as he walks through the Kalahari Desert in the 1980 screwball comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy. In the film, the bushman isn’t sure what to make of a bottle falling from a passing airplane, and so he concludes that it must be a gift from the gods. After he takes it back to his tribe, together they try to figure out what to do with it. A musical instrument. A fire starter. Perhaps a cooking utensil. But in the end, they give up. Thinking the gift is more trouble than it is worth, the bushman goes on a journey across the desert to return the bottle to the gods.

All my life, I viewed joy as something like that Coke bottle. It descended unexpectedly from the heavens and fell into my world. And like the bushman, I had been puzzled my whole life about what to make of the gift. I tried various ways to mold it into something I could understand and work with. But when my dumbed-down versions of joy let me down, the whole experience became disillusioning. In my mind, God must be crazy for making the kind of promises that he does.

I became determined to shed my pidgin understanding of joy once and for all. Over the years, I’d studied various passages in the Bible that deal with joy. I probably even led a Bible study or two on the subject. But I wanted to look again at the Scriptures in light of joy and see what I had always been missing.

It’s no exaggeration to say that joy, in all its many forms, is a driving force of Scripture, being sprinkled over 350 times from Genesis through Revelation. It sweeps through the Garden of Eden, the Promised Land, Jesus’ earthly ministry, the early church, and the future second coming of Christ. “Joy is the great note all through the Bible,” seconds Oswald Chambers.

There are several Hebrew and Greek words used in the Scriptures that express joy and its derivatives, such as to rejoice and joyful. But if I summarize these various terms, I can translate joy as an “extreme delight or gladness which is outwardly expressed.” A translator may be pleased with this definition, but I wasn’t. To me, it sounded far too much like the happiness that always produced a dead end in my life.

I became convinced that there was more to the story than textual analysis alone. As I read through more of the Scriptures, it dawned on me that even in spots of the Bible that do not explicitly talk about joy, there is a clear undercurrent of joy throughout the text. I realized that if I was going to fully understand joy, then the underlying motivations of God throughout the Old and New Testaments must also be considered. Plainly speaking, the God that is revealed in the pages of the Bible is a God of joy. He’s a loving father, bursting at the seams, so to speak, in his desire to share his delight with the people he created. “He will rejoice over you with singing,” exclaims Zephaniah (3:17). Charles Spurgeon adds, “Man was not originally made to mourn; he was made to rejoice.” Jesus Christ emphasizes this truth in John 15. After calling his followers to obedience and remaining steadfast, he concludes, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”. Joy emerges from Scripture as one of the primary ways in which God chooses to reveal himself, express his amazing love to humankind, and equip us for living in a fallen world.

Like a bolt of lightning from above, the nature of joy finally hit me, and I discovered a meaty biblical response to the pidgin joy that plagued me. Joy is something worlds apart from an emotional reaction or a smiley face. Instead, joy is nothing less than the nature of God pumped through our bloodstream. It’s a blessed invasion of the Spirit of God deep into my soul. Oswald Chambers puts it like this: “Jesus does not come to a man and say ‘Cheer up,’ he plants within a man the miracle of the joy of God’s own nature.”

I know, defining joy in this way sounds a bit mysterious. After all, there is hardly anything more mystifying in the life of a Christian than trying to grasp the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. While the particulars of what goes on inside of us may be difficult or impossible to grasp, don’t take this definition as sounding too abstract to make any practical significance for your life.

I am convinced that if we can just grab hold of the fact that joy really is the nature of God living inside of us, then our Christian walk will never be the same again. Our confusion and disillusionment will start to fade away, and the “joy gap”—the crack between God’s promises of joy and our actual experience in the real world—will begin to vanish.