The Overturned Sardine Can: Unplugging U2’s “All Because of You”

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.

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