Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Hard 2 Come 2 A Christian End 4 U2

I just published Hard 2 Come 2 A Christian End 4 U2. They are so Christian, mostly Catholic and partly Protestant, that they seem to be unable to go beyond Christian love and Christian ethics to reach real empathy and the visionary spirituality of Jesus. It is difficult to make the difference between the symbolic Jesus hanging on his cross in a church and the human Jesus who loved his family, his friends, his disciples, and even of course and naturally his enemies to the point that we can maybe imagine Jesus did not have enemies, only obstacles on the road of his mission, obstacles that had to be negotiated and detoured. The more I think of it and of the dilemma of U2 in this world of ours, the more I find it difficult to bring together the cautious and open approach of the war in Ireland before the Good Friday agreement when they were still young, and the one-sided support to Ukraine right now, at the end of their life. The Ukrainian conflict is between two linguistic communities, two orthodox churches, and two slav cultures that are so close and yet have been so distant historically for at least maybe ten centuries.

U2 is bringing together and confronting music and Christianity, electronic music and Christian faith, the consciousness of the squalor of the world in Africa and other places, and the desire to correct some of the horrors of it, and yet their Obsessive-Compulsive reference to their Christian faith is slightly bothering because I am afraid they missed Jesus's love and favored Saul/Paul's narrow conception of comfortable if not cozy Christian love.

Éditrions La Dondaine, Medium.com, 2022

Music,  *  Africa,  *  HIV/AIDS,  *  Christian Spirituality,  *  Rock and Roll History   

# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:50 AM