I’m staring at a computer screen in my Colorado office one fine fall day in 2001 when the phone rings. “Hello, my name is Jack Heaslip,” says a voice with a foreign accent. “The boys in the band call me Father Jack, and I’m their chaplain.” He proceeds to tell me his role in helping to bring together four aimless souls at an Anglican school in the mostly-Catholic Republic of Ireland. They formed a garage band that went on to become the renowned and durable rock & roll group known as U2. Father Jack continues, “The boys were staying up way too late after the concerts, and facing all sorts of temptations. So we started a practice of having them study a book or the Bible together, and they’ve read a couple of your books, including What’s So Amazing About Grace. Well, we’re all coming to Denver for a concert in November, and Bono would like to meet with you. Would that be all right?” |
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| I love music, and listen to it all day long as I work. But I have a limited range: classical music written before the twentieth century. Yet even I have heard of U2, so I tell Father Jack that I’d be happy to meet with Bono. A few weeks later Father Jack phones again from Ireland on a staticky line. “Philip, it turns out that all four of the boys want to meet, so I need to ask you a favor. |
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Could you find a restaurant with a private room just a couple of blocks from the hotel where we’ll be staying? We can all have lunch together with you and your wife, but it needs to be in a secure place because there will be fans milling around.” Janet, my wife, takes on the restaurant assignment, and soon locates an appropriate venue.... [CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW TO READ THE FULL BLOG] |
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“Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book (which these days is dirt cheap on Amazon): ” The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is….the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you are a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ we have none-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament on the other hand, we look across at Jesus who looks familiar. The combination is what makes the cross.” (p. 200).
ReplyDeleteAnother of my favorite lines is Bono’s exegesis of ‘Be Still and Know that I Am God’. He interprets this to mean ‘Shut Up and let me love you!!!’ Whatever else you say, both through U2’s music and performances, and through his many contacts and activism and influence with the movers and shakers not merely in the music business, but in normal business, and in politics as well, Bono has done more for the good of humanity and indeed the broader cause of Christ, than almost any other living Christian. He embodies the saying of Wesley “there is no true spiritual holiness, without social holiness’— works of piety and mercy. And he loves Eugene Peterson’s work, especially the Message.“
Ben Worthington
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2020/04/04/bono-on-bono-mano-a-mano/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Sharing+the+Gospel&utm_content=46&lctg=4690173&rsid=&recipId=4690173&siteId=7DF2956C-D2F1-40D4-A777-98E450E58360