Love For a Cross-eyed Culture: Unplugging U2’s “God Part II”

Part 3 in the U2 Unplugged Series

We live in a cross-eyed culture: 9 out of 10 people in our society believe in God, but less than 2 out of 10 believe in an absolute right or wrong. Clearly, we like the idea of God, but we don’t want to accept the reality that would result if that God actually existed.

Perhaps then John Lennon’s song “God” serves as a worthy anthem for our postmodern society. Wake up and stop deceiving yourself, sings Lennon in this 1970 song. God is not real. He’s nothing but “a concept.” Since there is no objective reality or absolutes, you can’t believe in anything beyond yourself. John’s inevitable conclusion is “I just believe in me.”

A generation later, U2 released “God Part II” [Lyrics] [iTunes] on their Rattle and Hum album. The song serves as a sequel and a believer’s response to the original Lennon song. Politely refuting the Beatles legend, Bono sings that belief in yourself or the world is a sure-fire, dead-end road. Instead, the only thing worth believing in is the love of God.

Tactics from Below

The postmodern mindset that is expressed by Lennon in “God” illustrates the self-reliant, self-absorbed nature of a world without Jesus Christ. When we dismiss the God of the Bible, we must turn to ourselves for answers. “The characteristic of [unbelievers] is their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves,” observes C.S. Lewis. As a result, reality for us becomes limited to what we can see, hear, or touch. The spiritual world is, like Lennon’s view of God, merely a concept. Wishful thinking.

Dismissing God and the spiritual world as a whole is certainly one of Satan’s most effective strategies in the twenty-first century. In fact, in his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis frequently talks about Satan’s tactic of giving us what we might call “spiritual attention deficit disorder”. This condition causes our complete attention to be fixed on the stream of events and circumstances that are taking place before us. We rarely step back and look at the big picture, at the things that may not be so obvious to the naked eye. As a result, Lewis writes that Satan’s strategy for his tempters is: “Teach him to call [his daily routine] ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real.’” Moreover, Satan wants to trivialize the idea that spiritual could have any importance on reality. Therefore, when any good thing happens in our lives, he tries to coerce us into believing “only the physical facts are ‘real’ while the spiritual elements are ‘subjective’.

As “God Part II” begins, Bono refutes this strategy of Satan:

Don’t believe the devil
I don’t believe his book
But the truth is not the same
Without the lies he made up

Satan will use the natural tendency we have to cling to ourselves and the familiar rather than accepting the reality of an unseen God.

Dead-Ends

Self-reliance is touted in popular culture as a quality that enlightened people aspire to. America, in particular, has a sense of “rugged individualism” that is ingrained into our culture and national heritage. The only problem with self-reliance, however, is that we’re not reliable creatures and we know it. Throughout “God Part II”, Bono underscores the fact that he can’t believe in himself, because he’s undependable, inconsistent, and prone to hypocrisy. He says one thing and yet does the exact opposite. Bono doesn’t believe in wealth, yet he lives in luxury. He speaks against “forced entry and rape”, but struggles with lust. Violence is something to be cursed, yet Bono finds himself responding to evil with deadly force. Finally, while hating drugs, he does them anyway.

In these lyrics, Bono captures the central struggle of humanity: we know what is right, but we don’t have the ability to live it out in our lives. The Apostle Paul sums up this problem in Romans 7:18-20:

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Our sin makes it impossible for us to rely on ourselves. However, at the same time, Bono also realizes that the world is no better. Throughout “God Part II”, all of the issues that Bono brings up aren’t worth believing in either. Materialism, lust, violence, and drugs lead to nowhere. Bono sings that the 60s generation romanticizes their former glory, all the while the “future dries up.” Further, don’t look to rock ‘n’ roll too as the answer, says U2. It spins around, but never advances or brings us closer to any purpose or meaning.

Overall, U2 paints a far different picture of reality than John Lennon. Lennon’s world view called everything but himself illegitimate, while U2 claims that we’re the ones that have no legitimacy apart from God.

All You Need Is (Agape) Love

“God Part II” is a song packed full of examples of failed attempts at truth and meaning. However, at the end of each verse, Bono contrasts these struggles with the one thing that he does embrace: “I believe in love.” Bono is clearly not speaking solely of God’s love, but of God himself as well. “God is love,” writes the apostle John in 1 John 4:8. As a result, love is more than just a quality that describes God; instead, it lies at the very center of who God is.

We have one word in English that is used to describe all types of love, but the Bible speaks of four types: storge (affection, family), philos (friendship), eros (sexual), and agape (sacrificial, unconditional). The love that Bono is speaking of in the song is not just a vague, feel-good emotional attraction. Instead, he’s referring to agape love. Throughout the fourth chapter of 1 John, John gives us several insights into the nature of this type of love. Specifically, God’s love is:

• Selfless and giving. God came into the world as Jesus Christ so that we can have eternal life through him (4:9).
• Sacrificial. Jesus Christ gave himself willingly as an “atoning sacrifice” for our sins (4:10).
• Forgiving. Since Jesus died for us, God has forgiven us completely from our sins. We now can be confident of that forgiveness on the day of judgment rather than fear it (4:17).
• Completing. God’s love is made complete in us (4:12).
• Giving. God has given us his Holy Spirit (4:13).

Bono ends “God Part II” by reminding us of the constant presence of Jesus Christ in our lives:

Feel like I’m fallin’
I’m spinnin’ on a wheel
It always stops beside a name
A presence I can feel.

Jesus Christ, therefore, is the ultimate expression of agape love. Borrowing from the lyrics of the song, Christ “kicked the darkness til he bled daylight” through his sacrificial death on the cross. In other words, he loved us so much that he willingly battled evil even to his own death so that through his blood we can experience victory.

Our cross-eyed culture craves freedom and love, yet can’t seem to understand we will never experience either without looking for the author of both concepts. But, when you honestly search for the love that Bono sings about in “God Part II”, you’ll always discover Jesus Christ in the process. If you seek me, you will ever surely find me, says God in Jeremiah 29:13. Bono says that Christ is “a presence” that he can feel. That opportunity is freely open to you as well.

Action Steps

The “God Part II”, U2 contrasts the postmodern view of the world with truth of Jesus Christ. Consider the following steps to make Christ’s love more real in your life:

Examine yourself to see whether you have a problem with “spiritual attention deficit disorder”. If you have a hard time seeing life outside of the immediate experiences of your day, commit yourself to getting alone with God at least 15 minutes a day. A daily “quiet time” with God in prayer and Bible reading will help increase your awareness of God’s and Satan’s role in your daily life.

Regardless of what you say you believe, get real with yourself and examine whether “God” or “God Part II” best expresses how you actually live your life on a daily basis. Do you rely on yourself to make it through the day? Or do you recognize that you aren’t reliable and need to surrender to the love of Jesus Christ instead? Make a commitment to God to rely fully on him in your life.

Look up John 3:16 in your Bible and spend several minutes studying this verse as if you’re reading it for the first time. John 3:16 is sung about in most any kid’s Sunday School class and displayed on banners in football games. As a result, it is undoubtedly a victim of its own popularity. Yet, this verse contains the most potent message of love in world history: God loves us so much he was willing to come to earth as Jesus Christ and die for your sin, so you could join him in eternity.

Diving Deeper
1 John 4, Romans 7:18-20, Jeremiah 29:13.
C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves