In a way that only Bono could pull off, the U2 frontman turned an interview with Rolling Stone this week into a raw discussion of God, faith, and the Bible, filled with spiritual insight, self-honesty and expletives.
The unorthodox interview that turned into Bono’s elaboration on some of his both orthodox and unorthodox views, comes on the heels of his band’s latest album, “Songs of Experience,” topping the charts, a feat the band has managed every decade since exploding onto the international scene in the mid-’80s.
When asked by Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner how his faith got him through some of the difficulties he’s faced recently, particularly a major health scare which Bono has been elusive about, Bono launched into a discussion of the man who wrote a large portion of the New Testament in a way that no pastor has likely ever quite phrased it.
“The person who wrote best about love in the Christian era was Paul of Tarsus, who became Saint Paul. He was a tough f***er,” said Bono. “He is a super-intellectual guy, but he is fierce and he has, of course, the Damascene experience. He goes off and lives as a tentmaker. He starts to preach, and he writes this ode to love, which everybody knows from his letter to the Corinthians: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. … Love bears all things, love believes all things’ — you hear it at a lot of weddings. How do you write these things when you are at your lowest ebb? ‘Cause I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t deepen myself. I am looking to somebody like Paul, who was in prison and writing these love letters and thinking, ‘How does that happen? It is amazing.'”
After praising Paul, Bono then made clear he condemned Paul’s views on women and homosexuality.
“Now, it doesn’t cure him of all, of what he thinks of women or gay people or whatever else, but within his context he has an amazingly transcendent view of love,” said Bono. “And I do believe that the darkness is where we learn to see. That is when we see ourselves clearer — when there is no light.”
Describing his “brush with mortality” as giving him a “sense of suffocation,” Bono admitted that despite his faith and his wife’s consistent comfort, last year he “felt very alone and very frightened and not able to speak and not able to even explain my fear.” But with the help of “grace and some really clever people,” he got through it, and now his faith is “strong.”
That’s when he once again brought up a biblical figure, this time from the Old Testament: David. Here are the key excerpts of his mini-sermon on the famous poet king:
BONO: I read the Psalms of David all the time. They are amazing. He is the first bluesman, shouting at God, “Why did this happen to me?” But there’s honesty in that too. …. [H]e is a very attractive character. Dances naked in front of the troops. His wife is pissed off with him for doing so. You sense you might like him, but he does some terrible things as he wanders through four phases — servant, poet, warrior, king. Terrible things. He is quite a modern figure in terms of his contradictions. …
But if you go back to his early days, David is anointed by Samuel, the prophet Samuel, and, above all, his older brothers, a sheepherder presumably smelling of sheep shite, he is told, “Yeah, you are going to be the king of Israel.” And everyone is laughing, like, “You got to be kidding — this kid?” But only a few years later, Saul, the king, is reported as having a demon and the only thing that will quiet the demon is music. … Makes sense to me. David can play the harp. As he is walking up to the palace, he must be thinking, “This is it! This is how it is going to happen.” Even better, when he meets the king and gets to be friends with the king’s son Jonathan. It’s like, “Whoa, this is definitely going to happen! The old prophet Samuel was right.” And then what happens? In a moment of demonic rage, Saul turns against him, tries to kill him with a spear, and he is, in fact, exiled. He is chased, and he hides out in a cave. And in the darkness of that cave, in the silence and the fear and probably the stink, he writes the first psalm.
And I wish that weren’t true. I wish I didn’t know enough about art to know that that is true. That sometimes you just have to be in that cave of despair. And if you’re still awake . . . there is this very funny bit that comes next. So David, our hero, is hiding out in the cave, and Saul’s army comes looking for him. Indeed, King Saul comes into the cave where David is hiding to . . . ah . . . use the facilities. I am not making this up — this is in the Holy Scriptures. David is sitting there, hiding. He could just kill the king, but he goes, “No, he is the anointed. I cannot touch him.” He just clips off a piece of Saul’s robe, and then Saul gets on his horse as they go off. They’re down in the valley, and then David comes out and he goes, “Your king-ness, your Saul-ness, I was that close.”
Asked about a line from one of his new songs in which he asks, “Jesus, what have you got for me?,” Bono explains that he has recently learned to “let go,” then quoted a famous psalm.
“There is an unbelievable release in letting go. I thought I already had, but this was the next installment in trust,” he said, adding later, “I’ve learned to try and put time aside to meditate on the day ahead. I don’t want to get all religious on your ass, so do forgive me, but if you’re interested, this is today’s meditation. I will share this with you because it is beautiful and because it might make you smile. Here it comes. This is Psalm 18, and it is one of those psalms of David that has been translated into a modern idiom by this man called Eugene Peterson — great writer. It goes: ‘God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now, I’m alert to God’s ways. I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works. I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.'”
During the wide-ranging interview, Bono also mentioned that his son believes that the new “rock & roll revolution is around the corner.” Asked if he agrees, Bono suggested modern rock has lost its masculine “rage.”
“I think music has gotten very girly,” he said. “And there are some good things about that, but hip-hop is the only place for young male anger at the moment — and that’s not good. When I was 16, I had a lot of anger in me. You need to find a place for it and for guitars, whether it is with a drum machine — I don’t care. The moment something becomes preserved, it is f**king over. You might as well put it in formaldehyde. In the end, what is rock & roll? Rage is at the heart of it. Some great rock & roll tends to have that, which is why the Who were such a great band. Or Pearl Jam. Eddie has that rage.”
Related: Bono Declares War On Trump: ‘There’s A Bully On The Bully Pulpit And Silence Is Not An Option’
