I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
By
Bert Gary
“Well, we
wrote the song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”—which is a gospel
song, pretty much. I mean, it doesn’t sound much like a gospel song the way we
do it, but if you look at the lyric, the basic music, that’s exactly what it
is.”
From an interview with U2
guitarist, David Howell Evans, known as “The Edge”
The
Irish rock band’s album The Joshua Tree topped the charts in the US
and eighteen other countries, going on to sell over 25 million copies worldwide
and making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. A number one hit from
the album is a song of spiritual yearning with a distinct gospel flavor. The
marching drumbeat and the ringing single-note ostinato on guitar are a
percussive contrast to lead-singer Bono’s soaring, plaintive vocals. And the
lyrics are a revelation. Bono penned a hymn of hope, a psalm of lament, and a
profession of faith. The band is U2. And the song is “I Still Haven’t Found
What I’m Looking For.”
The
songs on the album were born of the band’s newfound love of America—its lands,
its people, and its music. Their photographer told them about the striking Joshua
Trees of the Southwest US and suggested shooting them for the album photos.
Bono, the band’s lead singer and lyricist, discovered that the Mormons named
the tree after Joshua, the Old Testament commander of Israel, because it looked
as though its “arms” were raised in prayer (though in the Bible it was actually
Moses who raised his hand—holding his staff—to sustain a miraculous military
victory for Joshua against the Amalekites in Exodus 17:11). Bono suggested The Joshua Tree as the album’s title and
the band agreed.
There is a New
Testament connection, too. The Hebrew name Yehoshua (meaning “God is
salvation” or God’s gift,” often abbreviated to Yeshua) translates into
English as both Joshua and Jesus, and Jesus died on a tree.
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us -- for it is written,
"Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” (see also Deuteronomy 21:22-23
and Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29)
In this sense, the album title (The Joshua Tree) connects to Bono’s verse:
You broke the
bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh, of my shame, you know I believe it.
Whether U2 consciously
matched the album title to this verse in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m
Looking For,” it is a fit. Yeshua did indeed carry the tree of shame,
and his nail-scarred hands were indeed raised. As the chorus insists, however,
even though the lyricist believes in the cross and has experienced its
liberation from shame, he marvels and grieves that his heart still aches; his
soul still yearns for something. He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
A man said to Jesus,
“I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) That same tension, that same paradox
of doubtful faith or faithful doubt, that same ongoing spiritual struggle with
which we, if honest, are all too familiar, seems alive and well in U2’s
contemplative anthem. So universal is the experience, it seems, that Bono’s sacred
song has touched our nation and his. Yea, verily, it seems to have touched the
world.
There is in “I Still
Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” the celebration of freedom (you broke
the bonds), the admission of sin (I have held the hand of a devil),
and the relentless search for . . . what? The song does not say. Perhaps
that is the point. We all yearn for something essential that we struggle to
name. Belonging? Contentment? Truth? Happiness? Peace? Faith? Joy? Love? Home? God?
The Apostle Paul
likewise wrote of freedom in Christ, of sin that enslaves, and of a universal
searching. He brought his message first to the synagogues and then to the
agorae (plural of agora – a downtown marketplace) of the ancient Roman world.
When in Athens, Paul left the door open for pagans and philosophers when asked
to speak at the Areopagus, also called Mars Hill (Act 17: 15-34), by
interpreting Athens’ religiosity as a spiritual search (though misdirected) for
Yahweh, the one true God (and his Son, Yehoshua, though at the
Areopagus that day Paul sensitively and astutely never mentions Yaweh or
Yehoshua by name).
Paul noticed that the
Athenians had all their religious bases covered, even displaying an altar “To
an unknown god” so as not to inadvertently neglect and thereby offend any gods
with which they might be unfamiliar. The
Apostle used the Athenian monument dedicated to an unknown god as his springboard
to claim that there is one true God (without giving his name), a God who does
not live in temples to be served by people as if God needed anything, a God who
gives life and breath to all, and a God who appointed a day when the world will
be rightly judged by a man, a human being (without giving his name), one who
died but was raised by God from the dead as assurance to all.
Paul’s message was to
and for and about “all.” He noted that all of Athens appeared to be very
religious. The one true God gives life and breath to all. All the
world will be judged in righteousness by a man who died. But God raised that
man to give assurance to all. And then, most poignantly, Paul claims that
God made all people and nations so that they might seek for him, grope
for him, and find him, though God is not far from them all. He even
claims that within God we all live and move and have our being.
I
believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running.
In this verse Bono
speaks to the universality of the kingdom of heaven and its coming unity, when he
sees all colors and creeds “bleed into one.” But believing, again, does not ease
the pain of the longing. Until the kingdom comes in fullness, and even though
we live and move and have our being in it now, we long for its coming completed
unity. Now, in the meantime, the yearning drives us, and sometimes drives us
crazy. That is why we run. We run through the fields, we climb the highest
mountain, we hold the hand of the devil in our blindness and desperation, and
we search for union in a lover’s embrace.
I
have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire.
Yet nothing works. We
are indeed still running because, beyond the fields, the mountains, the
fingertips of a lover, the hope of the kingdom, and even the freedom of the
cross, we still haven’t found what we’re looking for, or perhaps who we
are looking for.
I
have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you.
U2’s song of spiritual
groping syncs powerfully with the Apostle Paul’s speech to the Athenian
philosophers.
Acts 17:26-27 “From one ancestor
he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times
of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him
and find him -- though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” (emphasis
mine)
This may disturb some
but it thrills me: U2’s gospel song is more biblical—specifically it has more
in common with Paul’s approach to evangelism—than the modern evangelical
playbook. Do you see it?
One will not likely
find a universal human feeling of discontent in the message of modern
evangelicalism. It troubles me that church insiders wear the cloak of false
certainty. But it is even more troubling that the certainty crowd tends to
shame fellow insiders who risk sharing their longings and questions, and that
they judge outsiders as wholly separated from God. Can a dominant corner of the
church today have forgotten the words of Jesus—that the admission of lostness
is the beginning of being found, that the recognition of blindness is the
beginning of sight, and those who seek will find? How can any of us lord our
certainty over anyone else? How can followers of Jesus take it upon themselves
to separate the sheep from the goats? How can one prodigal judge another
prodigal?
The official music video
for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was shot in the streets of Las
Vegas, Nevada on Palm Sunday, the day on which Christians around the world
remember and celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, “the
city that stones the prophets and kills those who are sent to it,” the city
whose children Jesus desired to gather together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, but they were not willing (Matthew 23:37). The Irish rockers
strolled the “commercial agora” of US’s “Sin City” singing and playing their
gospel of spiritual yearning to anyone and everyone with ears to hear. More
than a performance, it seems to me, the video shows an interaction, a dialogue,
a meeting of minds, and a sharing of hearts.
The agorae that Paul
frequented were open public squares with colonnaded sidewalks lined with shops,
public gathering halls, libraries, fountains, and, yes, temples—lots of them, temples
to gods and goddesses and emperors. U2 sang before the casino-temples that line
the Las Vegas Strip, not unlike Paul sharing his gospel song before temples dedicated
to the worship of Venus, Herakles, and Augustus. In Corinth, for example, some
dozen temples have been excavated on or adjacent to its commercial agora. How
insignificant and counter-cultural Paul’s small house-church there must have
felt!
While in conversation with
some philosophers in the Roman agora of Athens, Greece, Paul was invited to
speak at the lofty Areopagus, a place where the intelligentsia gathered to hear and debate new ideas. Paul went. And as the Jew from
Tarsus stood before the philosophers atop the Areopagus, above him the Parthenon
loomed, pronouncing from Athens’ lofty Acropolis that Athena ruled as the
goddess of the city. If the gospel belongs in “Sin City,” then Paul was in the
right place. So was U2.
Today, modern
evangelicalism seems of two minds about the marketplace. On the one hand, they
shy away from the agorae lest they tarnish their reputations among the “sinners”—or
to put it in the vernacular, lest they should “mess up their witness.” On the
other hand, compelled to enter the marketplace to “save sinners from ‘hell,’”
they do so in packs with tracts and rehearsed psychological-pressure techniques
based on death, fear, and threats of afterlife torture. None of that on the
Areopagus from Paul. None of that on the Las Vegas Strip from U2.
WHAT PAUL DID AT THE AREOPAGUS
1.
He
met people where they were in the marketplace and began relationships.
2.
He
joined in conversation there and at the Areopagus when invited.
3.
He
included himself with them by speaking to a universal search for God, a
universal spiritual yearning behind all misguided religious impulses, establishing
common ground and standing with them in the search.
4.
He
lastly spoke of a just man appointed by an unnamed God of all, a God who raised
that man from the dead as assurance to all people.
WHAT PAUL DIDN’T DO AT THE AREOGAPUS
1.
He
did not intrude uninvited to deploy impersonal, decisional, fear-based,
death-focused, hell-centered, hit-and-run, psychological pressure techniques to
emotionally manipulate them.
2.
He
did not mention the name of Jesus, using respectful relational restraint.
3.
He
did not label them or judge them as separated from God, because Paul did not
believe they were, and he said so boldly and repeatedly.
4.
He
did not give an altar call, take up a collection, pass out a tract, or invite
them to church.
I
have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone.
To me this verse is
about religiosity. Speaking in tongues is paired with holding the hand of a
devil, meaning that a beautiful gift of the Spirit can, in the hands of broken
human beings, tragically degenerate into the deadly peril of religious proving,
posing, boasting, and judging. And for Bono to be warm in the night but cold
as a stone means that even though the warmth of the Spirit is ever-present,
broken human beings create religious proving grounds that leave one cold as a
stone idol. Religiosity, then, is the human capacity to take the Spirit’s
generous gifts and universal warmth and pervert them, marketing them for the
sake of self-serving (idolatrous) exclusivist institutions bent on body-count
momentum and revenue generation. The hand of a devil is as cold as stone
indeed. Why cannot we humans have Spirit warmth without devil idols entering
into it?
Sent by the Spirit first to the synagogues,
then to the agorae of the ancient cities of the Roman Empire, the Apostle Paul
had no squeamishness about entering either place, he did not worry about
“messing up his witness,” nor did he judge anyone as separated from God or use threats-of-hell
fear-tactics to convert them from their “godless” ways. He crossed the
thresholds of Jewish synagogues and pagan marketplaces alike, he began
relationships of respectful conversation, he spoke of the yearning for
something that all humans of every nation and race experience, he took the
position that while gods and temples were evidence of a universal spiritual
impulse, these gods and temples were not what we yearn for. He pointed to one
God who made us all, and he pointed to one man whom God sent to all, a man who
died and rose from the dead as God’s assurance to all. Interestingly, Paul
never mentioned that God-sent man’s name—demonstrating both reverence for that
name and an unwillingness to hurl that name at his hearers. More interestingly,
he never spoke of “hell.”
According to
Scripture, the prototype missionary, the model evangelist if there was one, the
Apostle Paul never used any of the words translated (or mistranslated) into
English as “hell.” Let that sink in: Paul never wrote or spoke the word,
ever. “Hell” was not in his vocabulary. If the word had been important
to Paul or if it had been important to the gospel (good news), would he
not have used it at least once? How can it be, then, that “hell” is number one
in the playbook of much of modern evangelicalism? The whole point of their
“gospel” is to save people from God’s hell-bent intention to roast “sinners.” How
can anyone who proudly calls himself “evangelical” replace so comfortably (and so
ignorantly) Paul’s evangelical message and method with one whose foundation is fear
of “hell”?
If Paul had followed
modern evangelicalism, his address at the Areopagus might have been different:
“Vain ignorant philosophers,
superstitious pagan polytheists, unsaved idolatrous heathens, unrepentant
sinners separated from God: Do you know where you are going when you die? You
are all going to hell where God will torture you in fire forever unless you repent
of your sins, promise to clean up your act, accept Jesus Christ into your
heart, make him your personal Lord and savior, and find yourself a
Bible-believing church. Amen.”
It is so ironical. Those
evangelicals who claim to be concerned that God will judge me have already
judged me as separated from God and hell-bound. Why? Because I do not put
“hell” first. In their view, those who do not put “hell” first are going to
“hell.” God, save us from circular reasoning, and, while you are at it, save us
from ourselves.
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.
Paul declared to the
Areopagites of Athens that God made all of us, gave all of us places to live,
so that in our home countries and each of us in our own way “. . . would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him --
though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:27) Not might, but would search
for God. All of us, he said, quoting
one of the Areopagites’ popular poems (lyrics!), all of us live and move and
have our being in him, for we are all
his offspring (Acts 17:28). There is no separation. Paul preached that he
and they were in the same boat sailing for the horizon in search of the same home.
Is this the searching that C.S.
Lewis wrote about—this yearning, this inconsolable secret, this overwhelming
sensation of wanting, this urgent craving, this aching desire, this longing
beneath all longings that dominated his life?
“I desired with almost sickening intensity
something never to be described.” (Surprised
By Joy, p. 17)
“It is the
secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want.” (The Problem of Pain, p. 146)
“Apparently, then, our life-long nostalgia, our
longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut
off . . . is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real
situation.” (The Weight of Glory and
Other Addresses, pp. 15-16)
C.S. Lewis describes it as dissatisfaction,
restlessness, and homesickness. This homing instinct thrills, taunts, and even
drives to despair. As U2’s pounding, relentless chorus insists, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
I could tell you what I believe
it is, this inescapable, universal “thing,” but it might ring hollow to you, as
others’ pat answers often do for me. I could give it a name, but it has been my
experience that naming it does not make the excruciating bliss go away. Paul
leaves it unnamed at the Areopagus. U2 leaves it unnamed on the strip in Las
Vegas. I will do the same here.
Their song is a proclamation
to the world and an open-armed invitation to yearning hearts everywhere. U2’s
gospel is for “you, too.”
This blog entry is also the Cover Article of the Summer 2015 CWR (Christianity Without Religion) magazine. To see the gorgeous layout, click here.
“For I am convinced that neither squawk nor squeak,
neither blare nor bleep, neither growl nor screech, nor any droning organ
prelude, neither Christian metal nor Pentecostal polka, nor any caterwauling
in
all creation, will be able to separate us from the melody of grace that is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.” ---Bert
