Just The Wei I Am

Ps Lawrence showed us a Bill Hybels interview with Bono on Sunday, and there was a clip where Bono was speaking at a National Prayer Broadcast in Washington. I mean, I knew Bono is special and he's been doing many wonderful things in recent years, and was a Time magazine Person of the Year. But now I'm beginning to see where his passion stems from.

And it's not just Bono (who is the frontman of the Irish band U2) alone but the story of the band itself is special. So when I saw Walk On - The Spiritual Journey of U2 at Tecman yesterday, I grabbed it. I wanted to know their story and be encouraged, even inspired.

The author is Steve Stockman, a Presbyterian minister. Here are some excerpts from the book:

As the band was just starting off many years ago, Bono wrote the following words to his father, who has now passed away: "[God] gives us our strength and a joy that does not depend on drink or drugs. This strength will, I believe, be the quality that will take us to the top of the music business. I hope our lives will be a testament to the people who follow us, and to the music business where never before have so many lost and sorrowful people gathered in one place pretending they're having a good time. It is our ambition to make more than good music."

[...] many talented musicians are steered into a gospel band scenario, going from church to church singing cliche-driven songs with limited content. The audience members are almost exclusively Christian, and, as the majority of them already assented to the beliefs being preached from the stage, the cliches are wasted. A safe Christian industry ghetto is created with pop stars and record companies. There is a magazine, Contemporary Christian Music, which has become the label for the entire industry - an industry that is always in danger of ending up culturally irrelevant. When Jesus told His disciples they were the light of the world, where did He want them to shine (Matt. 5:14)? As more beams of light that make the light shine blindingly bright upon itself, or as strobes of illumination flashing radical alternative lifestyles across the darkness? Do you blame the dark for being dark, or the light for not shining?

For many years the band members said that their faith - not their rock 'n' roll lifestyle - was the real rebellion. In 1983, Bono told Rolling Stone: "I think that, ultimately, the group is toltally rebellious because of our stance against what people accept as rebellion. The whole thing about rock stars driving cars into swimming pools - that's not rebellion ... Rebellion starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love." For this band, it was more rebellious to be reading Bibles in the back of the tour bus than it was to be doing drugs - a perspective on Christianity that was not a cultural norm.

From the foreword by Steve Beard:

When I saw U2 during their Elevation tour, I was amazed at how often I felt the presence of God in the arena. [...] The culmination of the evening was the final encore. After thanking "the Almighty" numerous times, Bono began singing "hallelujah" over and over and over again. This rather contagious melody and message rang throughout the audience's soul. Soon, it seemed as though all sixteen-thousand fans in the arena were singing the song with Bono. This one word: hallelujah - praise ye the Lord. With that, they walked off the stage.

Time magazine's Person of the Year is "You". You - as in everyone of you, us, that is a participant of the information revolution taking place. Examples abound of how the amateur, the person-next-door, is leveraging this millenium's infocomm technologies - Web2.0, video phones, YouTube, MySpace, etc - to change the way information is created, shared and received.

After that promising sounding paragraph, you'd probably have sense that I intended some irony. Well, amidst all the euphoria over how technology is reshaping the social landscape, some things don't change. Like human nature. Terrible human nature.

It's not news now that Saddam's execution was secretly filmed on a mobile phone and is all over the place - a quick search on YouTube turns up many copies. I could only watch up to the point where the people in the chamber started jeering. Then I felt sick. What was sickening was not the execution (which I skipped) but rather how people celebrated. I certainly know that he has commited many heinous crimes and stands guilty. I oppose capital punishment, but that's not the point here either. The disturbing thing is how people would celebrate over the death of another human being, hated as he might be. I guess what disturbed me more was how the responses of some christians are not unlike those of non-believers. Dismissive, or even gleeful.

There is something wrong with our generation when our entertainment is to be happy at someone dying. On a lesser magnitude, but bad also, is the example of American Idol (and other offshoots). I was watching an episode on TV Mobile just now. I certainly enjoy the entertainment of the actual competition - great singing and all. What put me off is the audition part.

Specifically it's the part where they show the contestants who didn't make it. The angle is just terrible. For the entertainment of the TV audience, those brave souls are mocked and parodied in front of millions worldwide. Their crimes: not having a pretty face, a fab body, slick moves and a voice Simon approves of. Some of those contestants actually looked depressed, or they looked like they have some unmet needs in life. They looked like they might not necessarily have thought they might make it, but they certainly wanted to try, with the hope that perhaps this might change their life. Not making the cut, fine. But not only do they not at least receive some sort of encouragement or celebration for having tried, instead they get mocked and ridiculed on global TV. The 3 judges were perhaps polite enough to apologise after not being able to contain their laughter upon seeing some of the more awkward contestants. But really, what was the point of editing those clips into the show, even making a mini-feature of all the bad performances? To entertain? At whose expense? For every successful Idol story, there are countless untold sad stories.