Crashing into a World of Karma: Unplugging U2’s “Grace”

Part 2 in the U2 Unplugged Series

“I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge.” — Bono

What comes around goes around…What ye sow, so shall ye reep…You get what you deserve.

The world is built on these expressions of karma, the idea that you if you do good things in life, then you’ll be rewarded; if you do bad, then you’ll get punished. Look around and you’ll see karma everywhere. In school, your diploma depends on your ability to know the correct answers. At work, your worth to the company is based on how well you perform in your job. Within the marketplace, you matter only so much as your credit rating.

Religion smacks of karma as well. Hindus believe how you live this life determines what sort of creature you are in the next. Obedience to the Five Pillars of Islam is the ticket to Paradise for Muslims. In Judaism, Mosaic Law proclaims “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” What’s more, all you hear coming out of some Christian circles is a long list of “do’s and don’ts”.

Every part of our lives seems to depend on our ability to measure up. When we succeed, life can feel pretty good. But, when we don’t make the cut, life sucks.

Yet, regardless of how well we thrive in school or a career, there’s one area of our lives in which we instinctively know that we don’t measure up: our relationship with God. Our conscience screams of our failure. Personally, I can’t go a day without sinning, let alone a lifetime.

Just when it looks like we are doomed, however, something amazing happens: a sudden, miraculous, and unexpected twist occurs in our story. Like a meteor from above, grace crashes into this bleak and hopeless existence. Grace transforms the worst possible situation into the best promise imaginable.

In the song “Grace” [Lyrics] [iTunes], U2 explores this otherworldly stuff called grace, which is the idea at the very heart of what Jesus Christ – and authentic Christianity – is all about.

The One Real Law

Grace is a free gift that God gives to people who don’t deserve it and can’t earn it. As the song “Grace” begins, U2 doesn’t spend time talking about why’s and how’s of grace; instead, they start with the assumption that you and I need this “thought that changed the world”, even if we don’t fully realize it.

Grace matters because of the you’ll get what’s coming to ya way in which the world operates. Author Dorothy Sayers explains, “There is only one real law – the law of the universe. It may be fulfilled either by way of judgment or by the way of grace, but it must be fulfilled one way or another.”

The classic C.S. Lewis book and recent film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe gives a powerful illustration of this truth. In the story, Edmund Pevensie is a boy who enters the magical world of Narnia. But, for revenge, power, and appetite, he betrays his siblings and the Christ-like figure of Aslan and goes over to the side of the evil White Witch. Later in the story, when Edmund comes to his senses, he tries to go back to Aslan. But, as he does so, the White Witch protests, saying, “[Edmund’s] life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.” The Witch’s claim is based upon what Lewis calls “Deep Magic”, or karma-like laws that are at the heart of Narnia. When the Deep Magic is broken, justice must be carried out.

Aslan doesn’t argue with the Witch over her claim. But instead of handing over Edmund to certain death, Aslan does something totally shocking: he agrees to die in Edmund’s place. When Aslan is slain, grace invades Narnia and defeats karma’s power.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis symbolizes the whole reason Jesus Christ came to earth to die and rise again from the dead. To paraphrase Romans 3:23, each person has sinned and fallen short of God’s “Deep Magic”. Much like Edmund, the unmistakable consequences for our sin is death and judgment, with Satan telling God that our blood is his property. All would be hopeless if it weren’t for Jesus Christ stepping in and taking on the punishment that was due to us (Romans 5:8). As Bono says, “Love interrupts…the consequences of [our] actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

Muscular Grace

Grace then is this amazing gift that God gives to us: Jesus Christ dying for our sins so that we can receive a new life. Practically speaking, grace is muscular, offering us real power that makes a difference. In their song, U2 reveals how God uses grace to cleanse, heal, transform, and liberate us – both for this life and the one to come.

First, grace cleanses and removes the junk from our lives. As “Grace” begins, U2 sings of the cleansing power of grace:

Grace, she takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain

In his sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus Christ performed these three actions to free us from the bondage of karma: he took our blame, covered our shame, and removed our stains of sin. Isaiah 1:18 puts it like this: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” No matter the baggage we’ve strapped to our backs all of our lives, God promises to remove it. Psalms 103 confirms, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our [sins] from us.” As a result, we are no longer tainted goods. When we accept his grace and believe in Jesus Christ, our relationship with God is fully and completely restored.

Since we are cleansed by grace, God is actually able to see us in a different light: in his eyes, we become far more than the shamed and stained creatures that we turned ourselves into. A scene in the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind helps give insight into this reality. In the story, the main character John Nash is a paranoid schizophrenic, who starts having delusions and ends up losing all grip on reality. After his paranoia surfaces, his wife, Alicia, is confronted with the harsh reality that her marriage wasn’t what she signed up for; John was a far different person than who she thought she was marrying.

And yet, in the midst of this suffering, Alicia demonstrates the profound power of grace by the way in which she chooses to love her husband anyway. Instead of focusing on his obvious faults, she does the opposite. Alicia explains, “I look at him and I force myself to see the man that I married. And he becomes that man. He’s transformed into someone that I love. And I’m transformed into someone that loves him.” Alicia is able to look at her husband with what author Philip Yancey calls “grace healed eyes.” In the same way, because of the cleansing power of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, God is able to gaze upon us and see – not our defects and disobedience – but the actual people he created us to be.

Second, grace heals us emotionally and spiritually. The karma-based world around us is filled with circumstances and relationships that heap pain and suffering on everyone in their path. Maybe it’s the pain caused by a rocky relationship with your parents, an abusive relationship from someone you trusted, or a wrecked marriage. Perhaps Westley, the hero of the 1987 classic The Princess Bride, sums it up best, saying, “Life is pain and anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.”

However, in the midst of trials and tragedy, U2 sings of the healing power that grace supplies us:

What once was hurt, what once was friction
What left a mark no longer stains
Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

Grace becomes much like a salve you apply to an open wound. As it cleanses and disinfects, the salve kicks off the healing process.

Third, grace transforms us. In the third verse, Bono sings that grace “carries a pearl in perfect condition”. When a pearl is formed inside of an oyster, it starts out as a piece of sand that irritates and pains the oyster. In an attempt to get rid of the irritant, the oyster begins adding layers of a silky gloss coating that eventually hardens into a pearl. Likewise, our sin was the real source of pain that caused Jesus Christ to suffer on the cross. But, instead of spitting us out, God coats us with grace that transforms you and I from dirt and scum into flawless treasures. The Apostle Paul adds that, when we accept God’s grace, we actually become a “new creation” and take on a “new self.”

Fourth, grace liberates us. Bono sings that grace “carries the world on her hips”. As it does so, grace offloads everything that enslaved us in our past, breaks the shackles of karma, and enables us to live newly liberated lives. Galatians 5:1 proclaims boldly, we are a freed people. Therefore, as we trek through life, God carries our burdens instead of you and I, allowing us to experience his freedom in Christ.

What Grace Is Not

In popular culture, the word grace easily floats from our tongues to express many different things. For example, we say that an athlete exhibits grace when he performs at the top of his sport. Or, a defeated presidential candidate is said to show grace when he accepts defeat with class and dignity. Because the word grace is overused, we can easily confuse real grace with something else. In “Grace”, U2 helps make the distinction between the two. Bono sings in the second verse:

Grace, she’s got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She’s got the time to talk

He continues in the next verse:

Grace, she carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips

In these lyrics, U2 contrasts grace with other substitutes that we can easily confuse for grace. Grace is not the beauty and allure of this world, symbolized by a model who walks “on a ramp” and carries a “champagne flute”. At the same time, grace is also not plain niceness, sung about in the song as a child who “twirls or skips” and plays games with “chalk”. Instead, real grace has “got the walk” and “got time to talk.” In other words, grace meets you and I where we most need it.

Hopeless Cases

Each of the three verses of “Grace” end emphasizing a key truth of Christianity: the sweeping, all-inclusive nature of grace. God’s grace is for everyone. The third verse puts it like this:

Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything

U2 is pointing out that no one is ever too bad for the love of God. Jerry Bridges writes, “Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”

The thief that was crucified along side Jesus Christ is perhaps the ultimate proof that there are never hopeless cases. The story, as told in Luke 23, is an open-and-shut case of karma; the thief was a nasty man who went on a crime spree so bad that he deserved his gruesome death.

All was going according to karma’s plan when, in his dying moments, grace happened. The thief began to grasp exactly who this man was that was being crucified along side him. As time went on, he turned to Jesus and, in total desperation, simply asked Jesus to remember him when he went to Heaven. Finding beauty and goodness in the faith of the man beside him, Jesus responded, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.”

No Strings Attached

When grace moves and acts in this world, beauty and goodness follow close behind. Bono adds that “you can hear the strings”, perhaps alluding to sounds of beautiful tunes that follow in grace’s wake.

Certainly the one thing that “the strings” do not represent in the song is obligation. Grace has no strings attached. As is said in the film Babette’s Feast, “Grace demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.”

Yet, when you start to understand that there are no strings attached, your gut reaction may be: What’s the catch? Are you selling something? After all, people don’t really get somethin’ for nothin’, do they?

Make no mistake: grace is free, but it’s not a freebie. It’s much more than God simply being a swell guy; far more than a sort of “forgive and forget” sentimentality. At its heart, grace has a price tag on it: not for the person receiving it, but for the God who gives it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “[Grace] is costly because it cost God the life of his Son…and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

Holding Out

“I’m holding out for Grace,” says Bono. “I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.”

As you consider your life, ask yourself the same question: Are you basing acceptance from God on being a “good” person? If so, you’re depending on, to use Bono’s words, your “own religiosity,” which is always a dead-end road. Instead, in “Grace”, U2 invites you to consider an alternative: Let karma’s stronghold go; embrace the grace that comes crashing down from above.

Action Steps

In the song “Grace”, U2 explores the ultimate gift God gave to humans – grace. Once you’ve listened to the song and unplugged the lyrics, take the next steps below:

• Watch the 1998 film version of Les Misérables. Explore how an act of grace transforms the life of Jean Valjean.
• Read Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace?. Discover the difference between real grace and legalism, the substitute that believers all too easily settle for.
• Go to the source: read through the Gospel of Luke and see the power of grace played out in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• If you’ve never done so before, make an explicit decision to accept God’s grace. Simply pray to him, opening your heart to Jesus Christ and commit your life to him.

Diving Deeper

Babette’s Feast film (1987)
C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10:9; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:23; Psalms 103:12; Luke 23:39-43; Ephesians 2:8-9