In "Bono: The Biography" (Piatkus, 2001), Laura Jackson describes the powerful effect the U2 singer can have on an audience. In the middle of a 1983 Los Angeles concert, Bono leaps from the stage in what has become by then his customary effort to make authentic connection with the crowd.
Draped in a white flag, he's raised from the ground by screaming fans. The flag is torn to pieces as he's swept through the arena and onto the balcony. Up there he's mobbed; his clothes are torn, he feels the situation getting out of control. He tries to settle the crowd by threatening to jump if they don't calm down.
In the shouting and confusion, through the sound of the rest of U2 still playing on stage, Bono leaps and descends twenty feet towards the crowded floor below.
He's caught by a mob of excited fans.
Clothes tattered, he rushes back to the stage. But in his wake, several enthusiastic fans follow his lead and hurl themselves from the balcony. Thankfully, they too are caught by the audience below. Later, Bono is horrified to learn about his fans' lemming-like behavior and realizes the tragedy to which it could have led.
The Christian as rebel
In my late teens, U2 was one of my first contacts with Christianity and the idea that there could be a God-a God who might even have relevance for my life.
With friends on a hedonistic 18-hour car trip to Northern Australia-where the beer is cold and the girls tanned and golden-haired-I first listened closely to a pirated tape of U2's music. I liked the songs; they seemed somehow different from most radio pop fare.
Shortly thereafter I read Eamon Dunphy's The Unforgettable Fire, a "definitive" 1987 biography of the band. I discovered for myself the group's-especially Bono's-spirituality. From my reading U2 appeared to combine passionate commitments to authentic artistry, social justice, and the Christian faith.
For the first time in my life Christianity began to make some kind of sense. It was 1987 and The Joshua Tree had been dominating charts and airwaves for several months. I'd never owned a U2 record, but now was clearly the time. With a handful of dollars-mainly provided by my mother-I went out and bought both The Unforgettable Fire (1984) and The Joshua Tree on cassette.
Like Jack of Beanstalk fame, I showed these cassettes to my mother. I did it in part because she always liked to know what I was doing with "her" resources. But it was also an act of reconciliation.
For most of my teens I'd fought with my mother. Some of these clashes were physical, as when she had attempted to keep me from seeing my girlfriend. In my mid-teens, I had rebelled against my parents' values. Although they weren't Christians, their values were sacrosanct and my binge drinking, drug-taking, sex before marriage, and frequent blatant disrespect for them (sometimes publicly) put me at a distance from my mother.
"What have you gone and spent your money on that stupid pop music for?" she screeched. I tried to explain that this band was "Christian"-tried to explain, in that way teenagers have of saying a lot without saying anything, that my purchase marked also a change of attitude.
"You waste your money like that again and you won't get another cent from me, do you understand?"
I walked out of the room enraged-and firmly committed to the two U2 tapes in my hand. My mother may have wanted to throw her Jack's "worthless beans" out the window, but I had them in my possession and was determined to see what would grow from of them.
I think the Bono that Laura Jackson describes would get a kick out of this little story. Wasn't he the guy who in high school flirted with both Christianity and punk's outward rebelliousness; who attended prayer groups and was at the same time dubbed "the anti-Christ" because of his punk attire and individualism?
So, too, my exploration of Christianity became inextricably linked with youthful rebellion.
Christ, but not church
Not long after my twentieth birthday, in the words of the U2 song, "Promenade," I climbed the "spiral staircase to the higher ground" and became a Christian.
U2's music was a key plank in my conversion. Accompanied by some of the most creative sounds rock had ever produced, Bono's God-infused lyrics penetrated the soil of my soul, which had been earlier ploughed by two Christian friends.
The church-at least in the institutional sense-played almost no role in my conversion. I attended various churches as a young Christian and couldn't get out the door and past the pastor quick enough. What I experienced in those services-from Catholic to Pentecostal-bore no relevance to the cultural, artistic, supernatural, and nature-centered experience of God I had enjoyed in my conversion.
For five years I drifted-and my chief "discipler" became Bono Vox from the rock group U2.
The public Christian
In 1987, his face and faith splashed across the pages of Time magazine, Bono was the loudest voice in rock and one of the most public professed Christians in the world.
It was at this time, according to Jackson, that Bono tried desperately to ensure he wasn't idolized. I'm not what the archetypal idol should look like-or feel like he said. He didn't want to buy into the adulation his band was surrounded by at that stage, which evoked comparisons with the Beatles.
"We think we're overrated," Bono said.
Inwardly Bono was struggling both with dealing with his band's success and holding together his crumbling private life. He was throwing himself into worldwide causes at the same time he was becoming prone to heavier drinking. With a heavy touring schedule forcing months of separation from his wife, Ali, his marriage was under enormous pressure.
But sections of his live audiences began copying the "outward" Bono's every move. While commentators quizzed him on whether his followers were displaying mindless devotion, he insisted U2 fans were free-thinkers.
Some may have been. But not this fan, who'd planted his U2 tapes and was watching and hoping the tall plant growing out of them would lead to spiritual treasure.
Another late-eighties' U2 book release was Bono: In His Own Words. Given my limited involvement in church (and my only passing interest in the Bible), this book became my holy scripture. Its only contents were quotes from Bono-on all aspects of life. So there it was. How to live the spiritual life. I became a Bono fundamentalist.
A new fundamentalism
What I gleaned from Bono: In His Own Words (which may have been very different from what he intended to be gleaned from these out-of-context quotes) was that religion was the enemy of God; the Pope was the devil; the Bible could barely be trusted; morality was secondary to following the spirit (whatever interpretation of "spirit" you may bring to the word); and being good to people was what mattered.
I had all my "how-to-live" information. Now I just needed something to do with my life.
I was a Christian. I loved music. I could write a bit. I could hold a tune. And I knew there was one thing underpinning all Bono's opinions and attitudes-even his Christianity. He was a rock star. (Plus, his real name was Paul Hewson. It couldn't be a coincidence that I was christened Paul as well, could it?)
With no musical background, it took me more than a year to learn guitar and quite a bit longer to learn to sing properly. But I felt convinced God had called me to rock stardom, so for hours every day I sang and wrote the best songs I could-and played them to my helpless housemates.
It took a couple of years to get a band going. It took hours of writing and practice to get some songs together. Took a few more months to get a gig. Took another band before there was a decent crowd. Couldn't ever get a record deal.
But it did take five years of my life. Five years where I followed the rock star/Christian/evangelist/artist life: Bono's life.
It did take more than two years to fill the hole in my life that remained once I finally realized I'd never play before a stadium full of adoring fans. It was a hole that often took on the shape of suicidal thoughts. But I filled it-and am still filling it-with God. Minus an idol or two.
Heaven and hell
Towards the end of my "rock star" life, I decided to give up drinking as a "witness" to my non-Christian friends (I didn't have any Christian ones), people who were drunk or stoned several times per week.
It was hard. But I felt I was doing it for Jesus. I was making a sacrifice, and it was worth it to ensure that my friends came to heaven. If there was one thing my conversion had left me certain of it was the distance between the heaven I was going to and the hell I'd been rescued from.
Plus, hadn't Bono and other members of U2 made similar sacrifices? As Laura Jackson mentions in her biography, the band members (except for Adam Clayton) were well known for shunning "rock star" pleasures.
Before rehearsal one afternoon during this sober period, I read a Rolling Stone feature interview with Bono. The "Zoo TV" tour was just starting and U2 and Bono were undergoing a metamorphosis. The article spoke of Bono's smoking, drinking, partying, flirting, and naked romps on the beach with women other than his wife. He cursed and swore. And then he talked about U2's music and his band's place in the world:
"I want heaven and hell for my band," Bono said.
Heaven and hell? As in the marriage of the two that William Blake wrote about? For me, Bono was the closest thing to Christ on the planet. But the hell I knew I'd been dragged from couldn't be put together with any notion of heaven.
Now, as a 33-year-old, I have a strong appreciation for the artistic and other struggles U2 was going through at that time. It was a period in Bono's life when, as Laura Jackson writes, the singer didn't know where the stage personas he'd created ("Mephisto," "The Fly," et al.) ended and Bono began. But as an early twentysomething man trying to be the next Bono, my idol's behavior and words had let me down. I was crushed, beached. What was I going to do now? Where could I look for guidance?
The way out
I ended up back into drugs, Richard Bach books (it was a bad time), heavy drinking, womanizing. I believed in Christ and reincarnation. I saw spirit beings (which I later learned weren't angels). I "astral traveled."
But then another mentor appeared in my life: Eunice, a 78-year-old Pentecostal woman. During my rock music phase, I still needed to earn a living (unlike the millionaire Bono) and did so by caring for disabled people in their homes. Eunice lived with her cerebral-palsied son. Through many conversations, she helped me see that the seeds U2 had planted were still growing. I was still climbing toward the treasure at the top of the beanstalk-I was just on a detour. She prayed for me and I received the Holy Spirit.
I looked also to other mentors: C. S. Lewis, Soren Kierkegaard ... the Bible became important. Finally, even church became significant in my spiritual walk.
As a twentysomething, I was shattered by what was for me Bono's "infidelity" revealed in Rolling Stone. But as a 33-year-old, I'm glad I read that article. The aftermath, despite its ups and downs, was a much-needed step toward my becoming the free-thinking human being that Bono hoped all his fans were. And an imitator of Christ.
Follow me
Fans will find plenty of Christian rock idols to choose from today: Creed, Moby, Sixpence None the Richer, plus any number of acts that straddle the zone between "secular" and "Christian" audiences. Christian music stars come in all music flavors, too: hip-hop, dance, pop, techno, reggae, rock . . .
There are plenty of reasons for young Christian music fans to look up to them-not least of which is the fact (it might seem obvious) that they're Christian. Many of them, Bono included, pour out their imperfect lives just like the rest of us: with as much integrity as they can muster. They wrestle with their calling as artists, live their lives to the full, preach the gospel in word and deed. They give millions of dollars away for work that promotes the kingdom of God.
With a popular culture dominated by adherents of every other worldview, young Christian music fans could do worse than imitate a Christian musician.
After they are first imitating Christ.
If they're not, the fans risk living someone else's life, that of an idol who-despite a connection with Christ, despite an often express wish otherwise-could ultimately lead them away from Jesus.
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Paul Mitchell writes from the Melbourne area of Australia, where he is coordinating editor of Zadok Perspectives and contributing editor for the literary journal Cordite.
