more wonderful than gloss

I caught just the end of the U2 special on Good Morning America this morning. I loved the moment in the interview when Bono was prompted by the interviewer saying, “It’s all about positive energy and hope.” And Bono said, “Yeah, but you’ve got to be real at the same time and… we’re more from the blues in that sense. You know, gospel music is great but the music we like has got an honesty and a grit. Rock n Roll is a mixture of the blues as well as the gospel highness.”

And if that case, then for me, the gospel is more rock and roll than gospel music (and if it’s U2’s rock and roll, then most definitely!). Bono is reacting to a very common theme that I hear on TV, in popular media and in conversations all around me that are only concerned with “positive energy.” Positive energy has a lot going for it. It is a lot about choice – the power to choose our response to life, to see the positive rather than the negative. And I think in a spiritual sense, it can be about putting ourselves in the pathway of the Spirit of God and opening ourselves up to transformation and transcendence.

But for me, it’s not just that. If that were all, I could easily switch religions or leave religion all together. The thing that keeps me tied to Christianity is the “honesty” and the “grit.” It’s a faith that is real even where there is no “positive energy and hope” to be found – in the midst of oppression, under the finger of empire, in the death of God on the day before Easter. “You’ve got to be real at the same time…” otherwise all the positive energy in the world will be a delusion of the privileged and the wealthy who have the luxury of shaping their future. Or it is a positive energy that is about my well-being without consideration for others.

There are echoes of this in other faiths as well and I am greatly encouraged by the possibilities of coming together across faiths to address the gritty places in this world but for me, the story of Jesus keeps me grounded in both the hope and the grit and provides me a way to live holding onto both tightly.