Part 10 in the U2 Unplugged Series

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.

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